Recruitment and selection

Authors Avatar

Recruitment and selection

Available vacancy

Vacancies for jobs exist in businesses for one of the reasons below:

  • A new job becomes available because of the expansion of the organisation. When the economy is growing and people are becoming better off organisations take advantage of that and expand their operations. To do this they may take on extra employees. This is more likely to create new jobs, preferring instead to use other methods listed below under ‘alternatives to filling a vacancy’.
  • Someone in the organisation has retired
  • Someone has been dismissed
  • Internal promotions have occurred- the vacancy arises because the previous holder has been given a better job either in the same business or establishment. This is dealt with below under ‘filling the vacancy- internal candidates.
  • Someone has died- Some employees may die during their working lives.
  • There is a restructuring of the business, which means there are gaps to be filled in the organisation
  • Someone has left because they have found a better one or don’t like there job.

Alternatives to filling a vacancy

Human resources management departments are under constant pressure to justify the filling of a vacancy because it will save the organisation money if they do not. There are several alternatives to filling a vacancy, all with benefits and all with disadvantages too:

  • overtime by the remaining employees
  • restructuring of the work  
  • employing part-time staff
  • more use of machinery/technology

At this critical stage it is important that the human resources manager looks critically at the job description and person specification for this vacancy. From these documents (examined later in this chapter) it will be possible to assess how far it is practical to rely on these options instead of the filling the vacancy.

                        

Finding applicants

If the human resources manager, after consideration of alternatives examined above, decides that the vacancy will need filling, then the next stage will be where to look for candidates. There are only two sources of candidate- internal and external.

Internal candidates

Unless a vacancy is for the lowest grade job possible, there will be internal candidates who are interested in the vacancy for promotion.

Internal promotion is an important method of motivating employees and is identified by several writers as a feature of a ‘best practise’ employer (i.e. a ‘good’ employer who tries to do everything properly).

Advantages to the employer of internal appointments

  • An organisation with a reputation for internal advancement will find it easier to motivate staff, whereas in organisations where internal advancement is rare, staff will be less committed to the work and may be preoccupied with external job applications.
  • The organisation will attract better candidates if they see there is a future career in it.
  • Many candidates will be local people who have bought homes there, have children at local schools and husbands/wives in other local jobs.
  • Internal candidates know the business and what will be expected of them, and they can become effective in the new job very quickly.
  • Although there is bound to be bitterness from other internal applications who do not get the job, they will at least feel that there will be another career opportunities in the organisations and that they will get promotion later on.
  •  The organisation will not need to rely upon external references when choosing from internal applicants - accurate information will be available from departmental heads and other colleague.
Join now!

Disadvantages to the employer of internal appointments

  • The candidates doing well role conflict in that they are now senior to people with who they worked with as equals- there may be a problem for them in asserting their power.
  • A person promoted internally may be expected to pick up the new job in an unreasonably short space of time.
  • Filling a vacancy internally leaves another vacancy to fill note also that where an employer is practising ‘equal opportunity’ policies they cannot favour internal when filling vacancies.

External candidates

Job Description

...

This is a preview of the whole essay