Case Study – Trilogy Enterprises Inc

Trilogy Enterprises Inc. of Austin, Texas, is a fast-growing software company and provides software solutions to giant global firms for improving sales and performance. It prides itself on its unique and unorthodox culture. Many of its approaches to business practice are unusual, but in Trilogy’s fast-changing and highly competitive environment, they seem to work.

There is no dress code, and employees make their own hours, often very long. They tend to socialize together (the average age is 26), both in the office’s well-stocked kitchen and on company-sponsored events and trips to places like local dance clubs and retreats in Las Vegas and Hawaii. An in-house jargon has developed, and the shared history of the firm has taken on the status of legend. Responsibility is heavy and comes early, with a “just do it now” attitude that dispenses with long apprenticeships. New recruits are given a few weeks of intensive training, known as “Trilogy University” and described by participants as “more like boot camp than business school.” Information is delivered as if with “a fire hose,” and new employees are expected to commit their expertise and vitality to everything they do. The director of college recruiting admits the intense and unconventional firm is not the employer for everybody. “But it’s definitely an environment where people who are passionate about what they do can thrive.”

The firm employs about 700 such passionate people. Trilogy’s managers know the rapid growth they seek depends on having a staff of the best people they can find, quickly trained, and given broad responsibility and freedom as soon as possible. Former CEO Joe Liemandt says, “At a software company, people are everything. You can’t build the next great software company, which is what we’re trying to do here, unless you’re totally committed to that. Of course, the leaders at every company say, ‘People are everything.’ But they don’t act on it.”

Trilogy makes finding the right people (it calls them “great people”) a companywide mission. Recruiters actively pursue the freshest, if least experienced, people in the job market, scouring college career fairs and computer science departments for talented overachievers with ambition and entrepreneurial instincts. Top managers conduct the first rounds of interviews, letting prospects know they will be pushed to achieve but will be well rewarded. Employees take top recruits and their significant others out on the town when they fly into Austin for the standard, three-day preliminary visit. A typical day might begin with grueling interviews but end with mountain biking, rollerblading, or laser tag. Executives have been known to fly out to meet and woo hot prospects who couldn’t make the trip.

One year, Trilogy reviewed 15,000 résumés, conducted 4,000 on-campus interviews, flew 850 prospects in for interviews, and hired 262 college graduates, who account for over a third of its current employees. The cost per hire was $13,000; the recruiting director believes it was worth every penny.

1: Identify at least three (3) of the established recruiting techniques that apparently underlie Trilogy’s unconventional approach to attracting talent.

Recruitment and selection make up the most vital stage in getting top talents in a company. Without the best-qualified individuals, it is hard to achieve company objectives. Thus, most companies have succeeded because they got the right candidates for the right positions. Yet, others have failed because of that mismatch. For Trilogy Enterprises Inc., talent management has been its focus. Its recruitment is characterized by the freshest and least qualified individuals, college graduates, and sourcing candidates from career fairs in schools.

The first technique at Trilogy is college recruiting. One of the company’s missions is to find the right people by scouring college career fairs and computer science departments for talented overachievers with ambition and entrepreneurial instincts. Another technique is recruiting the freshest and least experienced individuals, moving them from their locales to the interviews. After the interviews, the company offers the applicants a fun experience through dance clubs and mountain biking. Employers take top recruits and their significant others on a trip for a three-day preliminary visit, followed by interviews. The executives also fly out to meet the prospects that did not make it to the trip.

The college recruitment gives Trilogy access to fresh graduates willing to be committed to company objectives. Involvement in career fairs and sourcing candidates from computer science departments has been its recruitment practice. This strategy has allowed the company to train new employees and keep the operational cost as low as possible. The company provides fun experiences and pleasure moments to appeal to the applicants.

2: What elements of Trilogy’s culture most likely appeal to the kind of employees it seeks? How does it convey those elements to job prospects?

Organizational culture signifies the kind of working environment an employee expects in a company. That way, it builds interest in vacant positions. If a candidate is not pleased with the culture, they are less likely to apply for a job. At Trilogy, there is the freedom to schedule work hours and enjoy with other employees in mountain biking and dance clubs.

Trilogy’s culture is appealing to young employees, especially college graduates. One element of this strategy is the fun and the freedom to design their working schedules. This way, the company gets massive graduate recruits who love this aspect. Again, there is no dress code. It is appealing to the young generation, as the company’s employees average 26 years of age. There is a well-stocked kitchen for employees, allowing them to enjoy time cooking and making meals of their choice. Again, this is an element of pleasure that appeals most to the young generation. Trilogy features sponsored events for employees and facilitates them with a three-day enjoyment along with their significant others. During the trips, they do fun things, such as dance clubs and mountain biking. The company’s most employees are in Generation Y, which loves challenging work, creative expression, love freedom, flexibility, and hates micro-management (Zainuddin et al., 2019). Trilogy’s culture embodies these features.

Trilogy allows employees to design their work schedules, which appeals to those that love the freedom to work whenever they want. There is pleasure, which signifies why most of the employees are young (an average of 26 years of age). The company knows the essence of making the environment pleasing for its young generation of workers, which could boost workforce productivity.

3: Would Trilogy be an appealing employer for you? Why or why not? If not, what would it take for you to accept a job offer from Trilogy?

Despite the decline in job opportunities overall, as the population increases, people want to work in companies that align with their goals and preferences. Everyone has ideal working conditions, which determines whether they would be interested in a vacant position at a company or not. Trilogy is appealing to me because of its freedom and fun experiences.

I think Trilogy would be an appealing employer for me. At this point in life, I would find everything provided by the company a good working environment for my performance. I would like to have the freedom to design my working schedule whether I work under pressure at some moments or not. I would be thrilled by the fun, the meeting with other employees during dance clubs, and the opportunity to create new friends. Work should offer an employee a chance to enjoy life moderately and relieve any pressure or stresses they might have at home or somewhere else. Trilogy exemplifies such, hence a good company for my liking.

If I were working at Trilogy, I would be thrilled to enjoy the fun moments with my colleagues. I would also love the freedom to select work hours and design my schedule. Although we don’t know about compensation, wages, and other aspects of work, Trilogy would be an appealing employer for me.

4: What suggestions would you make to Trilogy for improving its recruiting processes, considering course material?

Every company aims to keep improving its processes, such as recruitment and selection because they impact workforce productivity. Without improvement, rivals would end up getting all the top talents. For Trilogy, it would be essential to increase the focus on minorities and the disabled during the recruitment process. They should also post job descriptions to colleges and carry out background checks.

Trilogy should encourage interest from minorities by offering remedial training, flexible work options, and redesigning jobs. It is also necessary to reserve some roles that don’t require strict schedules for the disabled because a significant percentage of such get ignored in recruitment processes today. The company should also develop a clear job description for each position to ensure the rights candidates are hired and make interviews more focused. With the number of interviews conducted over the year, there were likely no defined job descriptions that candidates could read before applying. The company should streamline background checks to avoid breaking employment laws. Negligent hiring can be critical for the company because of potential lawsuits, likely if the hired employees perform illegal activities or are inadequate for certain positions.

Trilogy should focus more on internal recruitment rather than relying on external sources. Internal recruitment could improve the company’s performance because the existing employees understand the culture better and require less training. With the high cost of the interviews every year, internal recruitment could be a crucial solution because it is cheaper and is associated with more productivity (DeVaro, 2020).

Job descriptions would help potential candidates know what is required in every position. Hiring more minorities and the disabled could eliminate potential discrimination lawsuits while improving its brand image. Internal hiring could reduce recruitment and training expenses. These improvements could be crucial in advancing the company’s human resources to the next level, which should be the focus of every company today.

5: Do Trilogy comply with employment labor laws considering their recruiting techniques? Explain your point of view.

Recruitment should be free of any discrimination against the protected classes. These include age, religion, race, sex, and religion. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on age (Hahn et al., 2018). Other than discrimination, another aspect, in this case, is overworking employees. Trilogy’s recruitment approach seems to focus less on protected classes while forcing employees to overwork.

Trilogy targets graduates who constitute over a third of the workforce. The employee’s average is 26 years. The focus of the recruitment process is to obtain graduates and not qualified employees of any age. The new hires get subjected to intensive training, known as “Trilogy University,” whereby information is delivered as if with a “fire horse.” The director of the college of recruiting admits the intense and unconventional firm is not the employer for everybody. This information implies that employees are possibly required to work overtime more than in most companies. It is why they target young college graduates. Requiring employees to work through breaks and put in “off-the-clock hours” can violate provisions, constituting a “hostile work environment’, hence entitling them to additional pay and damages.

The recruitment possibly does not comply with employment labor laws. The law prohibits any company from discriminating based on age, which Trilogy seems to do in its recruitment process that is focused on college graduates. Additionally, employees must be paid an extra amount if they are to work extra hours than those stipulated by the constitution and labor laws. Trilogy could face legal consequences for these two legal aspects.

References

DeVaro, J. (2020). undefined. IZA World of Labor. https://doi.org/10.15185/izawol.237.v2

Hahn, R., Truman, B., & Williams, D. (2018). Civil rights as determinants of public health and racial and ethnic health equity: Health care, education, employment, and housing in the United States. SSM – Population Health, 4, 17-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2017.10.006

Zainuddin, Z. N., Latif, N. E., Sulaiman, S., Yusof, F. M., & Ahmad, M. (2019). Critical thinking: Way forward for human capital in the age of millennial. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(13). https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v9-i13/6254