Recruitment and selection process

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Recruitment and selection process is concerned with identifying, attracting and choosing suitable person to meet organisations human resource requirements (Anderson, 1994). A useful definition of recruitment is “searching for and obtaining potential job candidates in sufficient number and quality so that the organisation can select the most appropriate people to fill its job needs” (Dowling and Schuler, 1990). Selection is more concerned with predicting which candidates will make the most appropriate contribution to the organisation – now and in the future (Hackett, 1991). This essay

There could be several reasons for recruiting new staff as vacancies could occur in many situations such as changing the structure of the business, growth of the business, resignation, retirement or dismissal, and even promotions.

When a vacancy arises the business must decide whether or not it wishes to recruit from existing employees or attract new experience into the business. Internal recruits have the advantage that they will be familiar with the business. However, business has a limited number of existing employees and they might do not have the skills or experience that the vacancy needs. By contrast, the external candidates have the advantage that they can bring new ideas, methods or knowledge to the company. However, advertising externally is an expensive process and the candidates are not previously known to the business which makes selecting to be more difficult.

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Recruitment process includes four parts: Job Analysis, Job Description and Person Specification and Job Advertisement. Before starting the actual recruitment and selection process, employers or HR manager should analyse the job to identify its main responsibilities and duties, tasks involved in the job, qualification and experience needed and any other required skills and attributes if necessary. After job analysis, the business should draw up a job description based on analysis to confirm the requirements. This helps the company to recruit the right person by providing all the essential points and requirements for the job. When the job description is drawn up, the company will prepare a person specification. It states the requirements that the candidates should have which help the company grading candidates efficiently by evaluating them. Next stage is publishing a job advertisement. This forms an important part of the recruitment process as the company actually informs their job vacancies to the potential employees by the job advertisement.

Unlike recruitment process, there is no specific step to follow for selection process. There are many different kinds of selection methods that business could use to assess candidates. 97% of UK businesses are using application forms. By summarizing the candidate’s qualifications, skills and experience, business could draw up a short list to go through to the final stage of the selection process.

Interview is a face-to-face meeting to question short-listed candidates and find out more about their suitability for the job. This provides an opportunity for business to discuss with candidates and enable business to evaluate candidate. However, the quality of the tradition interview is very limited.

Decision making might be affected by impressions of candidate’s appearance or interview technique. However, these factors do not affect a candidate’s ability to succeed in a job.

Testing is another selection method which is being used to test a candidate’s specific skills relevant to the job. It directly simulates the challenges and requirements of the job to see whether a candidate could cope. However, time pressure might causes candidates are not able to show all of their capabilities. Moreover, test ignores the fact that successful job performance depends on a number of issues, such as the relationships that impact and interact with the employees. People might change as a result of job experiences and in the course of their career in organizations. These will clearly impact on job performance in different and unpredictable ways that are not amenable to testing.

Assessment centres include a range of assessment techniques which include interviews, testing, group exercises and simulations that reflect the demands of the job. The trained assessors will rate the performances of each individual in order to select the right candidate. This is a reliable and valid selection technique because it includes a wide range of methods relevant to the job role and the candidates are rated by qualified assessors. However, it is a time-consuming and expensive method of selection because these methods take time to complete, and also companies have to train assessors to be qualified which needs money.

The costs of the recruitment and selection process in time and money can be considerable, but the costs of selecting and appointing the wrong person for a job can be even greater. If business chooses the wrong person for a position then the business could suffer problems associated with low productivity, poor quality production and customer service. It might also increase labour turnover and further costs of recruitment and selection replacing other employees who have left.