Recruitment and Selection Essay

Recruitment and Selection is not only a basic but as well a crucial activity of Human Resource Management and it also is the main approach to recommend talents into companies and organizations. Under the context of increased global competition, high- level individuals are the crucial factor for the survival and development of enterprises and organizations. So as an eligible manager, how to decide on which approach towards recruitment and selection is most appropriate for their organization gets important increasingly.

This assignment will argue about the necessary principles which recruitment and selection process should have and what key points should be focused on by HR managers. Furthermore, several suggestions and measures could be provided to the HR manager in order to decide on which approach is most appropriate for their organizations.

Context of recruitment and selection

Recruitment and selection process is concerned with identifying, attracting and choosing suitable person to meet organisations human resource requirements. (Anderson, 2001), it also can be explained like Watson said: “Recruitment and selection are conceived as the processes by which organizations solicit, contract and interest potential appointees, and then establish whether it would be appropriate to appoint any of them” (Watson, 1994)

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From those explanations, it is not difficult to conclude that hiring the right person in the right place at the right time is crucial to organizational performance. In other words, ‘fit’ is the basic factor the HR manager should be concerned. ‘Fit’ got more mature from traditional psychometric view to social exchange model. In traditional psychometric view of recruitment and selection, “‘fit’ is assumed between personal characteristics of the individual and the technical demands of the particular job” (Stephen Bach, 2005). But in the social exchange model, “‘fit’ relates to the matching of expectations and needs of the individual with the values, climate and goals of the organization” (Stephen Bach, 2005).

Recruitment and selection are the two different stages in HR management theoretically. Recruitment “searching for and obtaining potential job candidates in sufficient numbers and quality so that the organization can select the most appropriate people to fill its job needs” (Dowling and Schuler, 1990). And selection is the next stage in employment cycle. It is the process to predict which candidates is qualifiedand good to the development of to the organization.

So after understanding the context and identifications of recruitment and selection, to make sense about the processes of recruitment and selection is the first stage for the HR manager’s decision-making.

The Process of Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment Process

In the recruitment process, job analysis is the first stage within the organizations. It is very important to gather data about the whole situation of organization positions’ nature and structure. The principle to check whether the structure is eligibility is the ‘fit’. Is the job fit this person or is that person fit the organization? How about the employee performance and records? The answers of those questions should be found out within the job analysis.

This period involved data collection and materials retrial, such as employee performance appraisal and records, and so on. Job holders records is a vital factor should be concerned as well. Job holder could use interviews, structures questionnaires, diaries to record their activities and get information in order to gain validity job analysis. Considering the reports form colleagues is another approach within the job analysis. So those three aspects underlay job analysis in the first stage of recruitment in organizations.

Next stage is job description, person specification. Firstly, the function of job description gives the applicants or recruitment agencies an orientation about the organizations’ needs. Once the applicants and recruitment agencies knew the orientation, the staff will design the employment contracts and begin to prepare the selection techniques to ensure next stage’s normal operation. And the other benefit of job description for the recruitment process is to provide the applicants a fairly condition without the recruiters’ subjective bias.

The person specification is a vital criterion should be concerned within the process of selection. Specification includes several details following Rodger’s seven-point plan: physical make up, attainments, general intelligence, special aptitudes, interests, disposition and circumstances. Those seven point is always be used in modern selection process, but the weakness is over rigidity, so increasingly organizations based on a set of competency as the crucial factor for person specification. This part will be explained in the following session.

Attracting and managing application (recruitment)

Once the job analysis phase is finished and job description and person specification are identified, the next stage is to consider how to attract people who meet the requirement and to manage application. There are two methods to be chosen: one is internal method, the other one is external method.

Internal methods meaning that pay more attention to the internal talent pool within the organization when recruiting. This method provides opportunities for development and career progression increases employee engagement and retention and supports succession planning (online, 2009). This methods bring several advantages to the organization. Firstly, using this method could economize time and cost of money and labor. Because the practice of recruitment takes place within the organization, the recruits already know some context of organization’s culture and the responsibility of the job so the briefing and training before starting work would be reduced or cancelled. In addition, the cost of advertisement and recruitment consultancy fees could be avoided as well, so that is why it saves time and cost. Secondly, providing opportunity to existing employees could embrave then to obtain better performance and get more motivation when doing task. So using the internal recruitment methods could develop the organization’s own internal talents pool and then realize the win-win situation (employee-organization), sequentially causes the long-term stable development of an organization. It also has disadvantages by using this method. It is unfair to the applicants outside. Internal recruitment is therefore less common in the public sector, where concerns about discrimination tend to be a higher priority than in the private sector (Harris 2000). In addition, recruit person without outside could make the organization become obturation and stagnancy without now ideas and innovation’ coming. Because new person could bring the now thought to make organization’s change, and change means development.

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‘soft’ HRM approach pp.122

If an organization considers expanding the dimension of organization or the internal recruitment failed, the external method could be operated effectively. The external method means that recruit individuals from outside. The merit and demerit of external method is the contrary side of the merit and demerit of internal method. There are several options available for external recruitment. To attract more individuals and increase the applicants pool, external assistance, such as job centers, ‘head-hunters’, employment agencies, professional bodies, career service, always be used. There are a number of corporation uses formal personal contacts to attract individuals, such as career fairs, open days and leaflet drops. Notice board, accessible by current staff or the general public, to be used by recruitment; the advertisement, including local and national press, specialist publications, radio and TV and the Internet, published by organizations as well. As calculating by CIPD, the proportion of UK organization used advertisement in local press occupied 84%, the proportion of using specialist journals and trade press and using corporate website occupied 73% and 72% separated (CIPD, 2003). What I want to emphasize is that the Internet recruitment becoming increasingly popular in modern society. It is more convenient than the traditional recruitment. Effective recruitment is crucial to organizational success (Barber 1988). Time-consuming is the obvious advantage by using Internet to recruit individuals. All the individuals’ information, company’ introduction and job details are on the Internet together. It is convenient for the individuals and companies to collect data what meets their demand. And the online application forms or the CV are managed in an effective way in order to the operation of next stage- selection.

Selection Process

In the selection phase, there are three basic principles included: reliability, validity and usefulness (Stephen Bach, 2005). The reliability also takes place in ‘testee’ and ‘tester’. ‘testee’ reliability means that the value of selection method should be a consistency over time. In other words, if a selection methods test a person is a passionate person, than the same result should be generated over time. ‘tester’ reliability means that the purpose of any selection method should have a well targeted and the principle of this well-targeted method should be reliable. The same logic as ‘testee’ reliability has. The criterion-related validity is the main type of validity and usefulness. This evidence is helpful to organizations since it clearly indicates that some selections methods have higher validity than others and that it is desirable to try and validate the selection methods used systematically within a given organizational context, rather than rely on intuition or secondary data. Unfortunately, the evidence also suggests that those methods with the highest validity are not the most popular. Rather, most organizations rely on the classic trio of short-listing, interviewing and references (Cook 2003; Millmore 2003).

Two main selection methods by selection candidates, there are shortlisting and assessing applicants whether they should be offered a job.

A variety of methods can be used to make selection decisions, but the first thing to note is that the interview remains the most common method, often used alone, although increasingly combined with additional methods (Shackleton and Newell 1991)

The obligation of shortlisting is to selection applicants’ personal material by

: shortlisting and assessing applicants to decide who should be offered a job.

Selection decisions should be made after using a range of tools appropriate to the time and resources available. Care should be taken to use techniques which are relevant to the job and the business objectives of the organisation. All tools used should be validated and constantly reviewed to ensure their fairness and reliability

Making the appointment

Joining the organization

Competency frameworks may be substituted for job or person specifications but these should include an indication of roles and responsibilities. See our factsheet on competence and competency frameworks for more information.

Hiring orthodox

References:

• Anderson, N. 2001: Towards a theory of socialization impact: Selection as pre-entry socialization, International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9(1/2), 84-91. Barber, A. 1988: Recruiting Employees: Individual and Organizational Perspectives, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cook, M. 2003: Personnel Selection: Adding Value through People, 4th edn, Chichester: John Wiley. Dowling, P. and Schuler, R. (1990) International Dimensions of Human Resource Management. Boston, Mass: PWS-Kent Publishing. Harris, L. (2000) Procedural justice and perceptions of fairness in selection practice, International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 8(3), 148-58 Shackleton, V.J. and Newell, S. 1994: European management selection methods: A comparison of five countries, International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2, 91-102 Watson, T. 1994: Recruitment and selection, in K. Sisson (ed.), Personnel Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice in Britain, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. http://www.cipd.co.uk/sujects/recruitmen/general/recruiymt.htm