Recruitment occurs across all occupations from school and college leavers to the unskilled and semi-skilled, to technologically-oriented staff and successful senior managers. The police service, forces and even judiciary have recruitment problems and systems.
Recruitment activity has an aspect of
Public relations about it. The organisation opens its doors to job seekers and hence the outside world. Certain organisation development, marketing, promotional and quality aspects take recruitment activity beyond being just a maintenance process. Strategic policy questions are raised. The organisation in communicating to recruits and potential recruits wishes to present itself in the best possible light - as a virtuous, successful, worthy organisation. Culture maintenance and power about it. The processes of recruitment are enacted by the powerful. Gate keepers to the organisation select those they feel will not only be capable but who are acceptable to the organisation. They may recruit according to
• Some iconic vision of an “ideal type” for the organisation today.
• Their own preferences and desires. This could be called a “doppelganger effect” .... they recruit in their own mirror image, with a slight ‘phase’ difference but nonetheless as a clone or doppelganger.
• Some notion of proper and perhaps ethically guided belief.
Selection is a latter stage of recruitment. It involves choosing
• Competent and qualified applicants suited to the job.
• new members of the organisation
The selection scheme focuses on;
• Selection methods and skills in terms of contribution to the reliability of decisions made.
• The criteria defined and applied (explicitly and implicitly) by decision-makers and how these reflect their comprehension of necessary competence.
• How the selection processes take in the assumptions and commitments, the generalities, truths and confusions of decision-makers about the imperatives of the organisation culture and who they seek to maintain and change this.
Thank-you for offering me the job but - No.
Remember too that job candidates select the organisation. Some candidates can afford to turn away and say this organisation is not for me.
Selection Methods
The selection process for any company is vital. The selection processes narrows down the selection decision and increase the chances of choosing the right candidate.
Selection methods range across
• interviews - the most popular and hence the skills of interviewing are important
• references
• analysis of candidate career/life data
• evaluation of candidate behaviour/ performance in group activities
• work attachments/experience (trial periods)
• skill testing with task/work simulations e.g. typing, computer programming, brick-laying and candidates making presentations etc
• knowledge, aptitude and psycho-metric tests of various facets of know-how, intelligence and personality
• graphology
Selection is a social, interactive activity and skill development and the textbooks recommend the use of structured and tested methods to secure objectivity, reliability and reduced risk and uncertainty.
How to get the right candidates:
When a business decides to recruit someone to fill a vacancy, they then have to decide who they are targeting to get the right person for the job. You need to identify all the appropriate target markets for recruitment, such as older people. Then you need to use targeted messages and targeted activities to reach those people.
There are many ways that a candidate can be influenced by joining the company e.g. parents, teachers, counselors, organizations who may influence potential employees.
There are two kinds ofjob seekers:
• Motivated, i.e. unemployed, desperate for a job
• People who already have a job.
Most newspaper ads attract the motivated job seeker, compared to ones happily employed. Thus, you need to shift your thinking to placing ads that say what you have to offer e.g. the benefits of working for the company. The advertising messages have to be compelling, so that they draw people who really weren’t looking for a job.
Creating a positive recruitment image
If your employment ad is in the newspaper week after week, people will start thinking your organization is such a bad place to work that it can’t keep people, which show that the company may be desperate for help but the company shouldn’t appear that way.
Any message on an outside reader board that says “Help Wanted” sounds extremely desperate. One fast-food location solved that with a message that read, “Place your name on our employment waiting list.” It helped them actually generate a waiting list.
One of the most inexpensive ways to turn around your image as an employer is through public relations campaigns. Send a news release to the media when your employees earn an award, are involved in some charities or other noteworthy activities.
There are great programs for any targeted group you would like to attract. There are groups that can help place older adults, people with disabilities, displaced homemakers and dislocated workers.
Employee transfer is still the most effective recruiting resource you can use. It tends to replicate the current makeup of your current workforce. Offer some kind of incentive for employee referrals: a special prize or individual bonus. Some offer trips, VCRs, laptop computers.
Recruitment and Selection Stages:
1. Response to vacancy:
• Vacancy arises. Impact on staffing plan? Job re-design, re-shuffle?
• Permission to recruit/replace?
• Exit interviews?
2. Job analysis:
• Is the post understood by participants in the process?
• What are the priorities, demands, competences required? Analyse of the job.
• Job description or personnel specification.
• Define target groups - where are they and what will attract them to apply?
3. Employment terms:
• Define the terms and conditions of employment.
• Agree the rewards package internally.
• Anticipate irregular relationships with other jobs.
• Equal opportunities?
4. Communicate Vacancy:
• Where will the candidates come from (sources)?
• Should the vacancy be offered openly?
• Is there scope for internal promotions and job transfers? Knock-on effects?
• External sourcing. DIY and/or use agencies? Confidentiality?
• Determine budgets and placement schedules.
• Prepare copy and place. Advertising - standards?
5. Process applications:
• Responding to applications? Is job documentation for candidates prepared?
• Log applications/C Vs. Compare each with personnel profile
• Follow-up on references/security clearances
• Decide onlorganise recruitment programme. Who, when (meetings, appointments), where (on-site, off-site).
• Short-list and invite candidates to selection activity
• Polite rejections/on-hold candidates
6. Carry out selection programme:
• Organise candidate accommodation and arrangements for testing
• Brief reception staff.
• Finalise selector briefing/training and interviewer preparation/strategy
• Implement selection programme: conduct interviews, exercises, tests
• Review candidate data and make selection
7. Make job offer(s) and finalise contract:
• Advise unsuccessful candidates ofrejection or stand-by
• Process job acceptances
• Complete reference investigations
• Confirm terms and conditions of employment
• Confirm arrangements for job start
• Design new starter induction programme
8. Evaluate effectiveness of:
• Recruitment process and methods. Validity, reliability and utility?
• The recruitment service - internal or external agency. Were all the costs necessary?
• The selection decisions. Is the new employee really suitable? If not how was the selection process at fault?
Job Analysis:
The first consideration must be the purpose for which ajob analysis is required. Job analysis can be used to establish criteria for selection and performance appraisal, to establish training and development programs, for job evaluation and compensation purposes, to assist in job design, and for organizational restructuring purposes. Job analysis also has important implications for fair employment practises. In order to demonstrate job relatedness in selection, the criteria utilized should be directly related to, or embody constructs associated with job performance.
Therefore the purpose of the job analysis will determine which information is considered important, and which specialist (e.g., training, selection, and job evaluation) would be most qualified to make sound judgements.
The nature of the information elicited from job analysis incorporates the following:
• The nature of the work activities, including work procedures or processes, human behaviour, physical job demands, personal responsibility and accountability.
• The machinery and equipment used.
• The nature of the work inputs and outputs, e.g. raw materials and finished goods.
• Work performance, including productivity standards and product quality specifications.
• Job context, incorporating the work the organizational environment, societal context, compensation and motivational factors.
• Personal requirements of incumbents, including requisite knowledge and skills, aptitudes, physical and psychological characteristics.
Thus, in analyzing a job, an attempt is made to measure various aspects of that job. As mentioned previously, effective measurement requires reliable and valid measures. To ensure this, more than one rater or rating technique should be used, eliciting both qualitative and quantitative data. Methods of collecting this data include.
• Job interviews and / or observing employees at their work place, using structured or unstructured approaches.
• Interviewing individual workers away from their work place.
• Interviewing groups of workers.
• Interviewing supervisors and technical specialists.
• Utilizing structured or open ended questionnaires.
• Requiring workers to complete self report diaries.
A factor that should be emphasized is that job analysis typically focuses on the job itself, rather than on the incumbent. However, the incumbent cannot be ignored. A total focus on the work itself would imply that following ajob analysis, ajob would be designed to ensure optimal productivity, and that the incumbent would merely be required to perform the job.
However, this rather mechanistic approach ignores two factors.
• First, the ideal incumbent might not exist or be available for placement.
• A second, individual difference between people necessitates some adjustment of the job to accommodate the individual needs of the incumbent.
Use of Job Analysis:
Job analysis is used for three important purposes in the employment process.
• First, it provides information for compiling job descriptions. Job descriptions typically contain a brief summary of the nature of the job, and lists the duties and responsibilities thereof.
• Second, job analysis assists in the compiling ofjob specifications. Job specifications set out the traits and characteristics considered to be essential for successful job performance. These include education level, relevant experience, skill level or physical characteristics. Job descriptions and specifications are generally used in combination for recruitment purposes. They enable accurate information dissemination, which, in turn, maximizes the number of appropriate applicants.
• The third purpose, for which job analysis is used, is in the development of selection criteria, criterion measures and predictors.
In doing job analysis, the tasks are extracted from the job description, if available, and listed in a column. The line manager together with the personnel specialist and the immediate supervisor of the person to be recruited then complete the skills and knowledge column.
In this manner a very clear picture emerges of the total job. Based on this information both personnel and management are in a better position to structure a job interview that could lead to an effective selection decision; a one where the most appropriate person is hired.
Interview:
The specific purposes of the job interview are:
• To assist in the assessment of candidates capacity and motivation to perform a particular job within an organization, to the satisfaction of the organizations.
• To help the candidates formulate her / his own assessment of the job and the organization.
The interview may be the only tool which is used for selection, or it may form one stage in a sequence of eliminating hurdles. These can include medical checks, school reports, references, intelligence tests, personality tests, aptitude tests and group assessment techniques.
Undoubtedly, a properly conducted job interview should have a place, and a fairly significant one, in any selection process. A properly conducted selection interview is one where the interviewer does not pretend to be free from bias and prejudice and susceptibility to the halo effect. It is one where the interviewer has examined his own
attitudes sufficiently thoroughly to be aware when these forces may be coming into play, and to make allowance for them.
Job Interview Requirements:
What is required during the job interview in particular is interviewer discipline. Discipline to work out what it is that interviewer is looking for and why is he looking for it; to consider how he will recognize it when he sees it; and how he will judge whether it is there in sufficient quantity; and to assess each new candidate strictly in terms of the qualities and attributes he has described, rather than in terms of his own likes and dislikes.
This discipline can only be achieved with effort. It is after all, much easy to say “1 just did not take to him”, but you may have lost the organization an effective worker or even potential saviour. So we start with discipline and the embodiment of this will be found in the stages of preparation for selection interviewing that will be described shortly.
Self discipline is but one factor. It would be foolish to discount the power of gut instinct. If at the end of a detailed and objective assessment the interviewer finds that there is something that just does not fit, he / she should beware. He / she should revaluate his / her data, search his / her inner self afresh to be sure that it is not the accent with which the interviewee speaks, or the way he parts his hair that is reminiscent of someone who holds unfortunate associations for him / her.
If he / she is still not satisfied, if there is still something he / she cannot quite put his / her finger on, he / she should either seek a second opinion, through references or a second interview with an unprepared colleague or, if neither of these is feasible, write a polite letter rejecting the candidate.
Importance of Employee Selection:
Correct selection is of crucial importance to a business and correct selection must mean that both interviewer and interviewee to the selection decision are satisfied, in all circumstances, the right decisions have been made. The candidate who has been subjected to a number of tests, however thoroughly validated, will not necessarily feel this if he / she have never had a chance to talk to a member of the organization.
Similarly, the interviewer who has never met the candidate cannot be sure that the approved ingredients detected by the tests do really go to make up an acceptable whole whose appearance and impact on others match his / her test scores and whose tenacity and motivation augur well for success in the job.