What is Recruitment
Recruitment process involves generating a pool of qualified candidates for a particular job. In recruitment process the firms must announce the job’s availability to the market and attract qualified candidates to apply. The firm may seek applicants from inside the organization, out side the organization or both.
Challenges in the Hiring Process
Despite the obvious importance of selecting the best available talent, the hiring process is fraught with challenges. The most important challenges of hiring process are:
- Determining which characteristics that differentiate people are most important to performance.
- Measuring those characteristics
- Evaluating applicants’ motivation levels
- Deciding who should make the selection decisions
1. Determining which characteristics that differentiate people are most important to performance
- First, the job itself is very often a moving target. For instance, the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) necessary for a good computer programmer right now are certainly going to change as hardware and software continue evolving.
- Second, the organization’s culture may need to be taken into account. Sun Microsystems, a fast-growing computer company, interviews up to 20 applicants between four to seven times before it makes a hiring decision because it is very concerned that new hires fit in with Sun’s dynamic, growth oriented culture.
- Third,different people in the organization often want different characteristics in a new hire. For example, upper level managers may want the new manager of an engineering group to be financially astute, while the engineers in the group may want a manager with technical expertise.
2. Measuring those Characteristics
Once it is determined that a set of characteristics is important for job performance, how are those characteristics to be measured? Suppose that mathematical ability is considered critical. You can’t infer from looking at someone what level of mathematical ability does he or she possess. Rather, you must administer some test of mathematical ability.
3. Evaluating applicants’ motivation levels
Most of the measures used in hiring decisions focus on ability rather than motivation. There are countless tests of mathematical ability, verbal ability, and mechanical ability. But motivation is also critical to performance.
Performance = Ability x Motivation
This equation shows that a high ability level can yield poor job performance if it is combined with low motivation. Likewise, a high level of motivation cannot offset a lack of ability.
4. Deciding who should make the selection decisions
In many organizations, staffing decisions are routinely made by the HR department, particularly for entry level jobs. There are two good reasons for letting the HR department run the staffing process.
- The first reason is that the organization must ensure that its employment practices comply with the legal requirements, and making HR staff responsible for all hiring decisions can help avoid problems in this area.
- The second reason is convenience. Since HR staff is usually responsible for processing initial contacts with applicants, many organizations find it easier to let the HR department follow through and make hiring decisions.
If an organization decides to involve line employees in hiring decisions, which one should it consult? There are at least three separate groups.
- The first, and most obvious, are the managers who will be supervising the new hire.
- The second group consists of the new hire’s co-workers.
- The third group, where applicable, is the new hire’s subordinates.
Planning the Recruitment Effort
Once the HRP – Human Resource Planning has been performed, an important question remains: How many candidates should the recruitment effort attempt to attract for each job opening? The answer lies on yield ratios, which relate recruiting input to recruiting output. For example, if the firm finds that it has to make two job offers to get one acceptance, this offer to acceptance ratio indicates that approximately 200 offers will have to be extended to have 100 offers accepted. This shows the ratio of 2:1.
Each firm sets its own number of candidates to number of job openings ratio. The desired level of recruitment effort may be higher if the firm wishes to be particularly selective in making employment offers.