Probability of meeting someone from Accounting Department

You have just been hired by the JFC Engineering Company. It is a mid-size company located in Phoenix, Arizona. Your prior experience has been with very small firms of less than ten employees, so you are excited about the opportunity of working for a much larger firm. You want to make sure and get to know as many of the employees as you can at JFC Engineering. You were told in college that the more networking that you do in the firm the more likely you are to get promoted or assigned to better jobs with more responsibility.

Your first few days are spent in training within the personnel department. You meet a few of the employees, but only those who have come to the HR Department. Once your initial training is completed your new supervisor takes you to your department to meet everyone that you will be working with. The engineering department is one of the largest in the company and you meet many people your first few days on the job. Once you get settled into your new job you meet more of the employees, and you try to remember what department everyone works in.

Six months after you were hired into the company they hold an "all-hands" meeting in the company's auditorium. You had asked the personnel department prior to the meeting how many people work in each of the departments within the company. Once you get to the meeting, you wonder what your probability is of meeting someone from the Administration Department. You are also hoping to meet someone from the Accounting Department. What is your probability of that occurring at this meeting? The numbers below represent the departmental totals that you received from personnel.

Department Number in
1) Accounting Department 30
2) Administration Department 40
3) Engineering Department 100
4) Human Resources Department 20
5) Marketing Department 60
6) Technical Support Department 50
Total Employees 300

You have also decided to chart the number of employees working for JFC Engineering, so that you can get a better perspective on the size of each department to one another. It will take a while to meet a number of employees from each department, but the "all-hands" meeting is a start in getting to know everyone.