Job description
When creating the job description for the job role of the Shift manager, I had to consider the roles and responsibilities that they had to take on everyday. It was important that I included as much as possible to eliminate people who didn’t fit the criteria, and didn’t have the relevant qualifications and skills required. I made sure I included as much as I could relating to the hours of work, the basic job and what was expected of them, so that the chosen recruit would know what to expect. I’m going to write about the advantage and disadvantage of using a job description.
Advantages
The advantage of using a job description as one of my documents for the recruitment process at McDonalds meant that its a lot easier to compare potential candidates to it, by helping with the selection process. It also allows possible candidates to compare themselves with the job. It is also an legal requirement and allows candidates to know the relevant information needed about what the job involves and the responsibilities they will have before applying for the job role. It therefore it makes it a lot easier for myself to draw up a relevant job advert, which had relevant information on it and allowed me to obtain candidates who could the necessary tasks.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of using the job description as a document when recruiting means, that there is a high chance you can lose an ideal candidate for another type of job within the job. It also means that a recruit may have skills in a certain area on the job description but they can’t carry out a particular task therefore they don’t apply meaning you may have lost a good candidate.
Application form
It was important to give out application form McDonalds for the potential recruit to fill out to find out background information about the person who is applying for the job. It also meant that I was able to see their previous work place, and what type of skills they had, by using application forms there is advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
All application forms are the same for the applicants to fill out so it makes it a lot easier to scan and compare information on the different employees. By using an application form it mean that I could get all the information I need to know in order to schedule an interview. It is also beneficial to see what educational qualifications they have to plus work experience to see if they had the experience requested. It is also great to learn more about the person.
Disadvantages
There are disadvantages to using application forms, is that applicants don’t have the space like they do on a CV, (although cover letter’s and CV’s were also aloud which also added). Therefore the applicant can’t write much about themselves so as the recruiter you don’t know a great deal about them as its just cold facts on paper . It’s also know so great as people could lie and then they don’t know its true because they are only filling out the form.
CV/ Cover letter
When recruiting an new employee it’s important that you receive a CV and cover letter from them to find out their specific qualification and what previous jobs the have had, if they have completed any awards and their current skills. For the job role of the shift manager it was specifically requested what was expected of them, therefore on the CV’s and cover letters being handed in they should have all consisted of the expectations before receiving an interview.
Advantages
The advantage of a CV/ cover letters are that they help the recruiter to some up applicants and choose between people from what they have written about themselves on their CV.
disadvantage
There are also disadvantages of CV’s / cover letters are, if someone perhaps didn't write as much as they could have or is not very good in getting their personal attributes and skills across to people, they could miss out to someone who is good at writing about themselves, and is better at big words therefore it hard to make the decision when choosing an interviewee
Personal specification
A person specification describes the requirements a job holder needs to perform the job. It mainly includes Education and qualification, Training experience, skills and ability attributes. For the job role of the shift manager it was important that in depth detail went into the personal specification as it’s a high job role. There are advantages, and disadvantages to using a personal specification.
Advantage
The advantages of using a personal specification is While clarifying the job on offer it also enables potential applicants to more clearly determine whether they are capable of meeting the requirements of the job, thereby reducing unsuitable candidates at an early stage before the short listing criteria which reduces a lot of time.
Disadvantage
The disadvantages you can have when doing a personal specification is that you may loose a great potential employee because they don’t have a particular qualification, in this case catering, but they may want to learn about catering but already have every other speciation.
Interview questions
Once the chosen applicants got through to the interview they were asked a list of 15 questions which was chosen by myself, it was important for myself to consider the types of questions asked and what I thought was relevant to the job they had applied for and what I felt was important to know about the applicant. There are disadvantages and advantages to having a structured question interview.
Advantages
The main advantage is that all the applicants have an equal opportunity to prove that they have the required skills and experience for the job. Additionally, as an initial selection process, the interview questions are basically set up in a manner which allows the interviewer to obtain all the initial data as well as details about each applicant.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of question interviews are that you have to interview a sufficient number of applicants in order to begin the comparison; this is time consuming and requires designing questions and intensive resources.
From all for the documents used for the recruitment process, they all contributed to the interview, as well as being able to them make a suitable selection. From the start of designing my documents they all helped to work towards where I wanted to head for instance, the job description was the first vital piece of information to be sent out to the public to see what job was available and what was expected for them and what was needed, this meant that people looking for a job within this criteria were able to apply for this job from the first part of the documents. The personal specification is possibly the most important document which I made as it eliminates a lot of the applicants due to being so specific, which means not all potential applicants would have been able to apply. Finally, the interview questions enabled the final part of the process to work, by being bale to give out a list of questions that were needed to be answered to find out more specific information about the employee and helped to see how passionate they were about the job role by seeing the one on one.
It is so very important to have these documents when recruiting. Without them I would not have been able to get to where I did, and be able to even interview applicants. Firstly if my job advert had not been designed correctly with specific information such as the closing date it could have meant people may have waited and thought about applying for the job when they wanted, rather rushing to do it and getting it in by the deadline. Also if I didn’t include the information that it was full time hours, I may have had an applicant who applied for the job who wasn’t available to work full time. Another problem that could occur by not having the correct documentation is by not using the personal specification correctly or not using it at all. This is a very specific document that eliminates a massive amount of applicants due to the qualifications, skills and previous job experiences that the applicant has. Without this document so many people could apply for the job because they don’t know what is required of them, which would take up a lot of the time for myself the recruiter. It very important for the application form to be filled out by the applicants, with the sufficient information. If the application form does not include the correct questions that need to be asked and details it could result in interviewing someone who doesn’t have the correct qualifications. It could also result in not having contact details to invite an applicant to an interview. Another documents that would cause an effect is by not using the job description correctly, this is one of the first documents to be sent out to be read by the public therefore it need to consist of everything they need to know down to the specific hours, they skills required, the qualifications and their job role, if this wasn’t filled in correctly then an applicant may be unaware what time of job the are walking into. Finally if interview questions were not done before the interview, the interview would be a lot in formal due to the interviewer having to think of questions of their head to ask, and not being able to get specific answers, to what they really need, it also means that each interviewee may be asked different questions not making it fair.
To conclude, as you can see from the information I have provided above it is so important to plan ahead before recruiting an employee. You need to ensure you are making the correct documents with the information that is required for the applicant to know. I feel as though the documents I used have been beneficial and without them there could have been a huge problem when trying to find a correct employee to work for McDonalds.