to maternity coverage in the health plan. It also affects the type of recruitment pitch HR makes, since men and women tend to respond to different types of advertising and incentives. At the same time, HR needs to be sensitive to the fact that unqualified male applicants, or even existing male employees, may assume that the women are being hired simply because they are women, making the men a new minority group that could initiate some form of legal redress. Therefore, HR has to work to balance its recruitment at the same time it is making an effort to appeal to the groups that are most likely to provide the greatest number of well-qualified candidates. Alternatively, changing demographics might mean that HR cannot find enough qualified candidates in its local area and would have to branch out to find candidates elsewhere around the country.
In addition to changing demographics, the HR department for a cable TV company has to contend with the rapid technological change that affects any media company. Candidates need to be recruited not only on the basis of what they can do immediately but also in terms of what they will be able to transition to in the future. Therefore, HR has to be alert for signs that a candidate does not adapt well to change or is not keeping up with industry developments and technology improvements. Rapid technological change can mean that virtually overnight, ôthe way we used to do thingsö is completely gone and replaced by a completely new and different technology that must be learned quickly to be supported. This means that candidates must also be fast learners and able to transport prior knowledge quickly into new arenas and rapidly apprehend the similarities and differences.
In addition to rapid technology change within the cable TV industry, HR also has to accommodate the facility with which media companies form conglomerates. There are actually very few media companies now, most of the small...