Many businesses carry out a job needs analysis to help them decide whether to recruit. The analysis will collect information to write a description. Information collected will include:
- Tasks the job include
- Which tasks are the most important
- Skills needed to complete each task
- How long tasks will take
- Responsibilities involved
- Likely contact with others – inside and outside the businesses
- Any special circumstances – weekend work, dangerous work etc
- Training the might be offered or required
- Reporting lines
- Whether the job requites experience
- How the job will develop in the future
Job Descriptions
The first stage in the recruitment process is to decide what tasks and responsibilities the job involves. Anwar & Co will need to analyse the job and prepare a job description.
The job description is a more formal way of setting out details of the vacancy.
Anwar & Co will usually write the job description before it fills a vacancy and use it to inform prospective employees about the job. When it has filled the vacancy, it can use the job description to help assess employee performance and salary levels. Small organisations, in particular, expect employees to be flexible. Job descriptions will need updating periodically to include new tasks and responsibilities.
An Anwar & Co job description:
Personal Specification
Once the details of the job are finalised the next step is to decide on the sort of individual who best matches the job. In order to achieve this a Personal Specification will be prepared which clearly identifies the skill, experience and personality traits required of the successful candidate.
This document is crucial to the recruitment process as it forms the basis of all that follows. This document can be seen as a blue print for the ideal employee. These documents vary depending upon the type of job on offer. The attributes required of a surgeon will obviously be different those required of a welder. However, it is common practice to adopt a similar format when preparing the personal specification for either.
One method of presenting the information is based upon the ‘Seven Point Plan’. There are seven sections identified but all seven may not be relevant in each individual case.
The Personal Specification at Anwar & Co looked like:
Job Analysis & Job Evaluation
Job analysis
This is an investigation into the demands of a job to identify the tasks and skills required for high performance (to draw up a job description). These can then be related to the abilities demanded from the employee in order to draw up a job specification.
The use of the Job analysis is:
- That it helps produce job descriptions and specifications
- Helps to recruit and select people
- Performance standards
- Training and development
- Compensation
Job analysis is important because:
- It meets legal obligations
- Understanding the required tasks and employee specifications needed on the job
- Troubleshoot performance problems
- Design effective training programs
- Identify safety problems
Job evaluation
Anwar & Co can use Job Evaluation to compare the value of different jobs. Any job can be broken into a number of factors. These are the skill, effort, responsibility, knowledge and tasks that the job entails. This allows Anwar & Co to decide on the wages or salary for that job. If another job has greater skill or responsibility, then Anwar & Co may award it at a higher rate of pay.
Job evaluation has become more popular over the last decade. It has been seen by businesses as a rational way of working out why some jobs are paid more than others. It has also been used in equal pay cases. When using job evaluation Anwar & Co must consider certain points:
- Job evaluation is about the job and not the job of the employee in the job
- Experienced people decide on the value of a job. Whilst this is likely to useful results, they are not ‘perfect’
- It allows the firm to set differential rewards for jobs. This does not rule out collective bargaining to raise these rates
- Only pay is determined, not other earnings, such as incentives
The most popular method of job evaluation is a point’s scheme. A number of factors (skill, problem solving etc) are found which are common to all jobs. Each factor is given a weighting according to its importance. A job description is then prepared and points are allocated to each factor. The total number of points determines the value of the job, and the wages or salary to be paid.
Whilst it can be useful, job evaluation is costly fir firms. Also, some jobs will still be ‘underpaid’ or ‘overpaid’, as it is a matter of human judgement.
Plans for How & When to Advertise
The next step is to attract candidates to apply for a job. Advertising may be aimed at internal and external candidates (or both), but in either case the recruiter has to decide on the best method of reaching the potential applicants. Ideally the advertisement should contain enough information to prevent applications from unsuitable people. The amount of information that the advertisement can carry will largely depend upon the budgetary limitations imposed on the recruiter and the cost of the media selected.
Attracting Employees
Potential applicants can be reached through external and internal methods.
There are Internal Methods of Advertising for Staff. These are:
- Memo
- Notice board
- E-mail
- Recommendation
Internal vacancies may be advertised to all employees or limited to sections depending upon the job and the degree of expertise and experience necessary.
Since Anwar & Co has an internal job advertisement. This advertisement is fairly limited as it does not include any of the necessary details. The internal job advertisement at Anwar & Co looks like this:
There are also External methods of advertising are:
- Local papers/free papers
- National newspapers
- Tele – text
- National / local / TV
- Job fairs
- Shop windows
- Agencies
- Recruitment consultants
- Internet
Location is not the only criteria and, as costs of advertising are nationally is significant; such advertisements are for senior positions. TV advertising can be very expensive and is usually only used by large organisations.
Since Anwar & Co has a job advertisement, but they heavily rely on the Rochdale Job Centre to advertise their vacancy any way they choose. An external job advertisement at Anwar & Co looks like this:
The Application Form
An application form consists of different areas; the employer wants to know about the employee. These could be:
- Personal information. Such as:
- Qualifications
- Experience
- Skills/Qualities
It also has other areas. Anwar & Co have no application form but potential employees are invited to send a letter of application with a CV to the company, who will then assess the candidates against their requirements and invite the short listed candidates for interviews.
Applicants are Short listed
As a result of the advertising mentioned above the business can expect to receive applications for the position. Some advertisements generate huge numbers of applicants. The recruiter then has the task of selecting one candidate that most closely matches the personal specification.
The advertisement will clearly state what method of contact is to be used. In the case of Anwar & Co the type of contact to be used is the telephone. The quality of people that apply will determine how many of them have the skills needed for the job.
References are Requested
Before the interview it is useful to have more information on the interviewees. Anwar & Co will contact the people nominated as referees and ask them to provide a reference. At Anwar & Co they do ask for a reference, but this does not have to be their current employer.
Candidates are Invited for Interviews & Selection Tests
Once the shortlist is complete the stages that follow are designed to find which candidate most closely matches the personnel specification. This person should then be offered the job. The interview will only reveal a limited amount of information on the interviewee’s abilities and for this reason selection tests may also be conducted at this stage. The more information the recruiter can get on each candidate the better placed they are to chose the most suitable. The interview is a two way process. While the representative of the business get the opportunity to meet the applicant, the applicant also gets the opportunity to assess the business. At Anwar & Co the potential candidates are invited to the business to see what they would be doing, and for the interviewer to see what they are like. In the end of all the interviews the recruiter will choose the one that is not only the most enthusiastic to join but who also has a good personality and who isn’t afraid to say things on his mind. One of the main questions that are asked at Anwar & Co is that are they able to work as a team. They are also asked if they can work unsupervised and are able to show that they are able to show that they can work under pressure as well. Some of the questions that are likely to come up in the interviews are:
- Why did you choose to apply for this job?
- Can you think of an example where you have been part of a team and what was accomplished?
- Do you think you will be able to cope with the work entailed with this job?
- What skills can you bring to this job?
- What do you think are your strengths and weaknesses?
These are the most important questions asked during the interviews. And if they have passed then the job is theirs, after they have told them what the job entails.
Contract of Employment
It is usual to inform the successful candidate of the result of the process first as the job could always be offered to someone else if the offer is declined. The signature of both parties to the contract of employment then seals the employment relationship.
There are certain areas of an employment contract that have to be include in the employment contract. These are:
- Name and Address of the Employer
- Date when the Employment Began
- Job Title
- Scale or Rate of Pay
- Intervals at which Remuneration is Paid
- Terms Relating to Hours of Work and Related Conditions
- Arrangements Relating to Holidays and Holiday Pay
- Arrangements Relating to Sickness, Injury and Sick Pay
- Pensions and Pension Scheme
- Termination of Employment Arrangements
- Disciplinary Rules which Apply to the Employee
- Persons to Whom Appeals can be Made
- Arrangements for Handling Grievances
- Location of Work
Since Anwar & Co have not shown me their contract of employment because of confidentially, I have had to design one on what is involved in the contract of employment and how it acted out in the company. A typical employment contract for Anwar & Co looks like this:
©
CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT
Name of Employer: Rashid Anwar
Address of Employer: 194 Yorkshire Street
Rochdale
OL12
Name of Employee: Fàké Nâmé
Address of Employee: 123 Fake Street
Bogus City
OL4 4KE
Employment To Begin: 01 – 06 - 2002
Job Title: Account Clerk
Rate of Pay: £22,000 Starting, Subject To Review
Remuneration: Monthly
Hours of Work: 40 0900 – 1700 Mon – Fri
Holidays & Pay: 4 Weeks Holiday WITH Pay per Annum
Sickness: Sickness Pay Offered Annually
Pensions: Pension Scheme Offered
Termination of Employment: Termination of employment can happen without the knowledge of the employee. The employee has to give 1 months notice for the termination of employment
Location of Work: 194 Yorkshire Street
Rochdale
OL12
SIGNED: (Employee)
SIGNED: (Bob Hudson – General Manager)
SIGNED: (Anwar Rashid – Managing Director)
At this point the successful employee has to sign the document, to agree to its condition, as well as the general manager and the managing director. At the end of this, the employee will go on to be a successful accounts clerk at the great and exciting accounts/insurance company Anwar & Co.
