Recruitment And Selection

Source: (Recruitment And Selection Guide, New South Wales, Australia, 2019)

Introduction

Barber (1998) has provided this widely accepted definition of recruitment: “Recruitment includes those practices and activities carried by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees”. Among all the activities with human resource management, the recruitment process is the first formal chance company have to manage their employee turnover (David and Philip, 2012). As brilliant words put by Amos (2020), “people are an organizations’ greatest asset”, so the effective recruitment and selection play a critical role to an organizations success.

Today, With the rapid growth of the economies the labour market fluctuates like a roller coaster ride, most employers are not enough competent to launch aggressive recruitment efforts (Arthur, 2012).

To overcome these challenges, as discussed by Armstrong (2006) there is a three steps process in recruitment and selection:

1. Defining Requirements – Creating job descriptions and specifications; determine terms and conditions of employment;

2. Attracting Candidates – Reviewing, evaluating additional sources of candidates, internal and external to the company, advertising campaigns, using agencies and consultants;

3. Selecting Candidates – Screening of applications, evaluation of candidates, conducting interviews, evaluation centres, offering employment, obtaining references; preparing employment contracts;

Figure 1.0: The Process Of RecruitmentSource: (Stephen, 2020)

1.0  Defining Requirements

More typically requirements are expressed in the form of ad hoc demands for positions because of the creation of new posts, expansion into new activities or areas for an existing post, or the need for a replacement (Armstrong, 2010). Job descriptions and specifications are very essential to run an organization smoothly and it allows people to understand their role in the organization (Pakdil and Leonard, 2016).

Most of the times the requirements are built up in the form of role profiles and personal specifications and this information required to post vacancies on the company’s website or the internet, draft advertisements, brief the agencies or recruitment consultants (Armstrong and Tylor, 2014). In addition to the knowledge, skill, and abilities (KSA), also it needs to consider the behavioural aspects and right competencies of the person and it supports his job performance (Armstrong, 2010).

2.0  Attracting Candidates

The approach should be targeting to narrow down the very specific audience to get better responses and these will be from an elite group of candidates who are truly best fit for the position (Fyock, 2007). Attracting talent is primarily consists of the identification, evaluation, and use of the most suitable sources of applicants (Armstrong, 2006). However, if there is a difficulty of attracting or retaining candidates, it may need to conduct a preliminary study and identify the right factors (Amos, 2020).

Armstrong and Tylor (2014) has described, the following steps are required when planning on how to attract candidates:

1.    Analyse recruitment strengths and weaknesses to develop a worker price proposition and brand of the employer.

2.    Analyse the necessity to what sort of person is required.

3.    Establish potential sources of candidates.

When the potential facts are analysed in recruiting, defining the employer brand vision is to re-emphasize strengths and weaknesses and develop the qualities that will further increase the external appeals (Simon et al, 2011). There may be factors such as similar experience and knowledge that will enable the right candidate to hit the ground when they take up the role, however, it can be achieved through effective induction and training if they are not already in place (Stephen, 2020). So it matters the nature of the person who hires have underlying characteristics such as adaptability and a desire to learn then it is for them to have specific experience (David, 2012).

It is not like early days, the modern sources of candidates reside on the internet, so it needs to harness the power of social media channels including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat to spread the word about the organization offers employees (Mosely and Schmit, 2017). However, legacy methods of the sourcing candidates are still contributing significantly, such as advertising, recruitment agencies, employment centres, consulting, and direct approach the education authorities  (Armstrong and Tyler, 2014). For example the world's giant companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple, they are following their innovative recruitment strategies to attract the superior level of candidates (Heckman, 2018).

3.0 Selecting Candidates

Dessler (2018) indicates that when there is a pool of candidates, the subsequent stage is to choose the most ideally equipped individual for the activity. This normally implies shortlisting the candidate pool by utilizing the selection framework including tests, meetings, and record verifications (Miller, 2017). The cautious selection very important since it will impact to the organization as well as the candidate’s future, and ultimately to the whole society that they serve (Arthur, 2012). The most significant example for selecting the right candidate is Steve Job, after he hired back to Apple he brought up the market capital from $ 3 billion to $1 trillion by the designing and executing a completely new business strategy of his own (Heckman, 2018).

Why Careful Selection Is Important;

As described by Dessler (2018), effective employee selection is important for several reasons;

To improve employee and organizational performance. For example, a call centre employee attrition rate of 90 days left after 90 days increased from 41% to 12% after the test started applicant.

Hiring manager performance is in. Hire employees who are lack skills or are obstructive, and the manager performance will suffer (Kennedy, 2019).

Screening reduces dysfunctional behaviour at work. In one account, about 30% of all employees say they have stolen from their employers; about 41% of them are managers. Time to track down these people is before they are incurred (Dessler, 2018).

Even hiring and training an employee can cost $ 10,000 in costs and time monitoring. This money is wasted if the person does not retain (Paul and Lovelock, 2019)

Conclusion

In present, most of the companies have formed a separate entity called “Talent Acquisition Department” to boost the recruitment and selection process (Kennedy, 2019). In Sri Lanka, global companies like Pearson, Willey, Virtusa and London Stocks Exchange have their very own talent acquisition teams to aggressively grasp the cream of industry talent to cater their business requirements. And also to attract the candidates, those companies run huge campaigns on Facebook, LinkedIn and many online spaces to promote their brand value and the employee benefits. Furthermore, they are reaching directly to universities organizing career days and participating career fairs such as the most famous, FutureMinds and Edex Expo.

Also, most of the companies nowadays in Sri Lanka conducting a series of interviews to select the right candidates including technical tests, aptitude tests and psychometric tests. Furthermore, well-structured interviews and feedback documents enhanced the quality and transparency of the selection process which most of the multinational companies have adhered. Recruitment and selection always go hand-in-hand, and it is vital to bring the value to the business which inherits the organization's success (Paul and Lovelock, 2019).

Reference

Amos, S., 2020. Successful recruitment. 1st ed. New York, United States: Business Expert Press.

Armstrong, M., 2006. Handbook of human resource management practice. 10th ed. London, United Kingdom: Kogan Page Limited.

Armstrong, M., 2010. Armstrong’s essential human resource management practice. 1st ed. London, United Kingdom: Kogan Page Limited.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. 14th ed. London, United Kingdom: Kogan Page Limited.

Arthur, D., 2012. Recruiting, interviewing, selecting & orienting new employees. 5th ed. New York, United States: AMACOM.

Barber, A., 1998. Recruiting employees: individual and organizational perspectives. 1st ed. California, United states: Sage Publications Inc.

Barrow, S. and Mosley, R., 2005. The employer brand . 1st ed. Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

David, A. and Phillip, B., 2012. Managing employee turnover. 1st ed. New York, United States: Business Expert Press LLC.

Dessler, G., 2018. Fundamentals of human resource management. 5th ed. London, United Kingdom: Pearson Education, Inc.

Fyock, C., 2007. The truth about recruiting the best job candidates. 1st ed. New Jersey, United States: Pearson Education, Inc.

Heckman, R., 2018. The talent manifesto. 1st ed. New York, United States: McGraw-Hill Education LLC.

Miller, T., 2017. Successful interviewing. 1st ed. New York, United States: Business Expert Press, LLC.

Mosley, R. and Schmidt, L., 2017. Employer branding for dummies. 1st ed. New Jersey, United States: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Pakdil, F. and Leonard, K., 2016. Performance leadership. 1st ed. New York, United States: Business Expert Press LLC.

Paul, D. and Lovelock, C., 2019. Delivering business analysis: the BA service handbook. 1st ed. Swindon, United Kingdom: BCS Learning & Development Limited.

Kennedy, B., 2019. Flat, fluid, and fast. 1st ed. New York, United States: McGraw-Hill Education LLC.