Various organizations today tend to use the competency based approach in their recruitment and selection process, Robert (1997) suggests that “the benefit of taking a competencies approach is that people can identify and isolate the key characteristics which would be used as the basics for selection, and that those characteristics will be described in terms which both can understand and agree……. The competencies therefore become a fundamental part of the selection process”.
The competency approach helps the interviewer to know the type of questions that would be asked during the interview in order to know if the person that is interviewed for that position fits the job that he/she is being interviewed for. The competency based approach helps the personnel team support the recruitment and selection purpose when they are about to make their choices. The recruitment and selection process based on the competency based approach is meant to meet a particular standard that is meant for the new employee on the basis of if the new employee would be of value to the organization and can be used as a level of development for the organization in the long run.
When the organization is deciding on the type of employee that they would need the personnel team would have to draw the right kind using the factors that would make them involved in the job. They are meant to consider adding both the hygiene and motivational factors in place, for example payment and reward, future promotions, social mobility, job security and so on this makes the prospective employee understand really the type of job he/she is getting into.
Another type selection method that may be used in that particular organization could be the application form, the interviewing, or the referencing based on what Cook (1993) referred to as the “classic trio”. Going by some organizations they are likely to substitute the classic trio of selection with bidet, psychological tests or even the assessment centers.
Organizational practices could be said to be the laid down convention or rules that govern a firm and the prescriptive manner of operation in an organization.
The gap between the recruitment and selection and organizational practice could be said to stem from how organizations fail to recruit and select correctly because of the laid down laws that they have enacted into their organizational practices as illustrated from the conflict mentioned earlier.
The use of ancient recruitment and selection technique as a result of the lack of practices to change with the times; that is, firms not reviewing their rules and practices in accordance with innovations that is take place in the world today like new skills introduced into the system and more cost effective means of recruitment.
The organization believes that since the same system helped them in pulling the employees they have at present that they should continue to use the same system. In a case where the organization believes that using their own system still caters for the new breed of employees may not enable them to pick the right or the best possible candidate from the lot. This causes a gap between organizational practices and recruitment and selection because the system does not recruit the right sort of employees and it affects the organization in the long run because of the loss in improvement that they might have been able to get where they able to pick the right sort of candidate into their organization. This gives their competitors a market edge over them when they introduce a new and better improvement into their own product.
The gap between the organizational practice and the
Recruitment and selection could also be seen in how organizations recruit objectively when they recruit and select new employees into the organization. Theoretically it is important that organizational practice ensures that recruitment is fair and equal, non bias and non racial not to mention non preferential. Unfortunately in practice it turns out that quite a few organizations are usually unorthodox about employment. This occurs because senior managers have family members and do favors for business associates, colleagues and would result in preferential treatment when treating applications of such individuals applying for a particular position even though the qualification for the particular position they were vying for are not as strong as other applicants. Take for example in a country where there is a high level of corruption and it is the survival of the fittest; many organizations carry out recruitment and selection processes regardless of the fact the candidate has been predetermined so as to cover up the corrupt nature of such activity.
When an organization is privately owned and small there is always or most times a preference issue in the organization to employ members of the family (mostly the males) to run the business after the death or retirement of the owner which may be the father or an uncle depending on the case like in the case of a succession. In most cases, where such a member of the family is not as qualified as an outsider who has the training in that area he is picked over the outsider who has the better qualification. This is a case where the recruitment and selection of the best candidate has gone wrong.
This shows how much gap is there between organizational practices and its prescriptive recruitment and selection process.
In some organizations the level of professionalism that they put into the recruitment and selection of the new employees is very little or more than the other. Some organizations handle the recruitment and
selection better than others .The organizational practice in some organizations in the way they handle the recruitment and selection of staff in way that does not bring any merit to the organization. The
Organizational practice that an organization might have might be one that does not show particular concern to the way the new employees are recruited and selected. It might be an organization that focuses on the level of productivity and increase in profits leaving out the people who are actually brought in to do the jobs. The organization not having the right sort of employees limits how far they can go in achieving their organizational goals. The level of professionalism that the organization put into their recruitment and selection shows how much gap is there between recruitment and selection and organizational practice, if the organization carries out extensive recruitment and selection process by using the best methods and techniques to get the desired performance it goes to show how little the gap is between the recruitment and selection.
The gap between organizational practice and recruitment and selection could be seen in the various steps that the organization takes when they are recruiting their new staff. In some organizations the organizational practice that is going on may involve using some but not all the steps when they are recruiting their new employees. They might decide to skip some process because the organization feel that such a process is irrelevant to the decision making or it is time consuming and cost ineffective. This argument has been mentioned above and it is very important to stress that where an organization practices cost minimization and utility maximization from operation there would be an inevitable gap between the practices and recruitment and selection.
The organization might also feel that the practice which they have been using in the past (they did not make provision for changes) is the best so changing it might disrupt their standing organizational practice.
Another gap that could be said to exist between organizational practice and recruitment and selection could be the over emphasis placed on the importance of interviews, some organizations believe that without the interview that proper recruitment and selection cannot be made even though this is true to some extent. But there are other means that proper and a good recruitment and selection process can be made. This can be seen in the case of tests, placement, and references (when even though referencing is not a type of selection practice, the reference can act as a measure to know if the right decision was made).
The gap might also be brought about in case where the organization does not realize that there has been considerably big changes in the way the recruitment and selection process is been carried out.
The gap between these two can also be emphasized in the case where what the organization wants is different from what the human resource management department feels is necessary to advertise. This brings about a conflict of interest between the two for example the wage rate fit for the job being advertised that would attract extremely valuable recruits to the company while the organization may not be able to actually afford such a wage thereby restricting the performance of the human resource department.
From principle and theory the fact that recruitment and selection is prescribed by the organization itself and is governed under the organizational practices; then there should be no gap between organizational practices and prescriptive selection and recruitment process. In essence they should synchronous in the operations of the organization but to be practical from the discussion above it is evident that at times there is actually an extensive gap between them and these gaps can fortunately be easily closed if an organization has external governance measures that ensure that the organizational practices are as accommodating from the onset as need be to prevent the gap arising from organizational practices and recruitment and selection.
REFERENCES:
Books
Armstrong M. A handbook of human resource management practice, 9th Edition, (2004) Kogan Page, pp
Chris Hendry, Human resource management: A strategic approach to employment, Butterworth Heinemann, pp 6, 22, 201- 202, 99- 100
Graham Hollinshead& Mike Leat, Human resource management: An International and comparative perspective on the employment relationship, Financial times Pitman publishing, pp 169- 172
K.J. Pratt & S.G. Bennett, Elements of personnel management, 2nd Edition. pp130- 135, 136- 145.
Rosemary Harrison, University of Durham Business School Human resource management: Issues and strategies, Addison- Wesley, pp 219- 245, 284, 304, 324-5, 337, 226-234.