Monday 12 December 2011

HR/IR Questions, useful for Interview preparations...

1. In HR parlance, who are 'Whistle-Blowers'?
Answer : Individuals who report unethical practices by their employers to outsiders.

2. Expand MPS, a scale used to measure the overall potential of workers' intrinsic motivation and used in the Job Diagnostic Survey developed by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham?
Answer : Motivating Potential Score

3. How do we better know the employment agencies and executive recruiters who locate suitable candidates?
Answer : Head hunters

4. What's the term used to describe an employee who is not tied to one country or company but moves around?
Answer : Mobile worker

5. Name the Process of Certifying the competence of a person, an employee, in an area of capability?
Answer : Accredition

6. What are "Blind Ads" in HR parlance?
Answer : Recruitment advertisements that do not have the name or identity of the employer.

7. Boulwarism is a popular negotiation strategy. Who developed this concept?
Answer : General Electric Company

8. We all familiar with Buyback of shares. But while managing people what is 'Buyback'?
Answer : Buying back of a personnel, who attempts to resign, with an offer of increase in salary or wages and/or other benefits.

9. Who proposed the 'Equity Theory' in the year 1960?
Answer :  J Stacy Adams

10. What are 'Cafetaria Benefit Programs'?
Answer : Flexible benefits that allow employees to select the frings benefits and services that satisfy their needs.

11. ASA Framework was developed by Ben Schneider, a researcher from University of Maryland, and used in selection of personalities. What does ASA stand for?
Answer : Attraction - Selection - Attrition

12. What is known as the relationship between what a worker gets from the job and what he contributes to the job according to the Equity Theory?
Answer : Outcome/Input Ratio

13. In Clayton Alderfer's ERG Theory, R stands for Relatedness and G for Growth then what does E mean?
Answer : Existence

14. Employees hired or contracted by organisations on a temporary basis to fulfill the needs of the labor for a specific period are known as what?
Answer : Contingent Workers

15. What is the tendency of the personnel to experience and express their negative emotional attitude and generally perceive themselves and others surrounding them negatively called?
Answer : Neuroticism

16. Who introduced the modern concept of 360 Degree Appraisal?
Answer : General Electric Company

17. What is a 'Career Plateau'?
Answer : A chance of obtaining a promotion or a position with more responsibility is small.

18. Which internationally acclaimed Indian movie has been included as a case study for 'Human Behavior at Work' by Indian Institute of Management, Indore?
Answer : Lagaan

19. Elton Mayo, one of the pioneers in human behavior studies, called the assumptions of McGregor as "Rabble Hypothesis". What are they?
Answer : Theory X and Theory Y

20. Who is known as the "Father of 401k"?
Answer : Ted Benna

21. What is MBGO and who proposed it?
Answer : Management By Group Objectives by Likert and Fisher

22. Richard Beckhard developed a concept known as 'Beckhard's Confrontation Meeting'. What is the concept?
Answer : One day meeting of entire management of an organisation in which they take the reading of their original health

23. Name the personality who introduced the concept of 'Bureaucracy' in 1922?
Answer : Max Weber

24. Name the title of the book in which Douglas McGregor described his famous Theory X and Theory Y?
Answer : The Humanside of Enterprise

25. We all are familiar with the concept ESOP, thanks to the IT revolution. But in HR what is ETOP?
Answer : Environmental Threat and Opportunity Profile

26. In McKinsey's 7S Framework there are four 'soft variables', Staff, Skills, Style and Shared Values. What are the other three 'hard variables'?
Answer : Strategy, Structure and System

27. Fill in the blank. In Expectancy theory Force = ________ x Expectancy?
Answer : Valency

28. What is known as 'Great man Theory'?
Answer : Leaders are born and not made

29. Who proposed the "Surplus Value Theory of Wages". The theory states the labor was an article of commerce, which could be purchased on payment of 'Subsistance Theory'?
Answer : Karl Marx

30. Where is the famous 'Western Career Fair' take place annualy
Answer : Silicon Valley

31. Which theory is commonly referred as the 'Hierarchy of Human Needs'?
Answer : Maslow Theory

32. Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed a framework to improve the effectiveness of communication. Name it?
Answer : JOHARI Window

33. Name the person who called for the scientific selection of workers and 'Harmonious Cooperation' between labour and management?
Answer : Henry L. Gantt

34. Where did Elton Mayo and F.J.Roethlisberger conduct their famous studies which dealt the influence of work groups on performance?
Answer : Hawthorne Plant at Western Electric Company

35. In HR parlance what is known as an 'Agency Shop'?
Answer : The union where employees do not have to join but they must pay union dues to keep their jobs alive

36. Who is known as 'The father of Social Systems Approach' to organisation and management?
Answer : Vilfredo Pareto

37. The degree to which a person prefers doing two or more things simultaneously is known as what?
Answer : Polychronic

38. Name the creativity-simulation technique which tries to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange?
Answer : Synectics

39. An illegal strike called by employees who refuse to work during the term of a binding contract is known as 'Wildcat Strike'. State True or False?
Answer : True

40. What does 'Theory X' and 'Theory Y' argue?
Answer : View of Human Nature and Motivation

41. The degree to which people are willing to take chances is known as what?
Answer : Risk Propensity

42. What does 'Peter Principle' state?
Answer : In a hierarchy, people tend to rise to their level of incompetence

43. In Change management or general HR parlance what are Psychic Costs?
Answer : Stress, Strain and Anxieties that affect the inner self of a person during a period of change

44. Which term is used to describe the use of a person's cultural reference points to evaluate others?
Answer : Ethnocentrism

45. This term is derived from the typographer's word for a painting plate made from the previously composed type. Walter Lippman applied this word to perception in 1922. Since then it has became a term frequently used for perceptual errors. What is it?
Answer : Stereotype

46. Who is widely recognised as the pioneer in Cognitive Theory?
Answer : Edward Tolman

47. In an organisation if your feedback is like PIGS, what does it denotify?
Answer : Positive, Immediate, Graphic, Specific

48. What is the systematic study of cause and effect of personal space requirements called?
Answer : Proxemics

49. Expand COBRA?
Answer : Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconicliation Act

50. Name the effect of successes made by unions at the negotiating bench influencing the wages, working conditions and other terms of employment benefits for workers who are not yet the members of unions?
Answer : Spillover Effect