RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION

In today’s competitive scenario, when employees are becoming increasingly

knowledgeable and mobile, the challenge lies in attracting the best man power.
Recruiting and selecting the right candidate, keep in mind the overall vision,
strategy and broad, environmental context of the organization, is increasingly
gaining ground.

Definition of Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment encompasses all organizational practices and decision that affect

either the number or type of individual who are willing to apply for, or to accept
a given vacancy. The focus of recruitment and selection is on matching the
capabilities and inclination of prospective candidates against the demand and
rewards inherent in a given job. Recruitment and selection lie at the heart of
how businesses procure human resources required to maintain a suitable
competitive advantage over its competitor.

The recruitment process

Job analysis

The recruitment process starts with job analysis. This job analysis is essential in
order to gather all relevant information about the job demands and to set the
hiring standards. In order to carry out a proper job analysis a carefully planned
internal communication is needed.

Recruitment decision

The second component concerns the recruitment strategy, the strategy to

spread all relevant information among the possible set of candidates. There are
three broad considerations under recruitment,

1. Time to recruit

2. Sourcing decision ( where from to recruit ) and,

3. Channel or medium through which to attract potential

candidates.

1.Time to recruit :-
While recruitment can happen at any point of time in an organization’s life, it
might vary depending on the life cycle and size of the organization. It also
depends on the number of existing employees the firm has and the quality of
employees to meet current and future challenges.

Number of people to recruit

Number of employees to recruit would vary according to the organizational
structure, if the organization has elaborate hierarchical structure, and the
existing skill set doesn’t suffice, then organizations might recruit large number
of people phase-wise or at a time depending on the org.’s expansion plan. If the
organization has comparatively flat structure, and the existing skill set doesn’t
suffice, then organizations might less number of people, taking into
consideration the organizational resource constraints.

2. Sourcing Decision
After taking the two important decisions on the quality of people to recruit and
the number of people to recruit, comes the important decision about wherefrom
to recruit. It is more likely that new entrants are going to recruit people from
well-established firms to access tacit business knowledge. Larger organizations
have a greater tendency to recruit internally, across all managerial grades, than
do their smaller counterparts. This is not surprising since large organization, by
virtue of their size, have access to a larger pool of potentially suitable
candidates. If suppose the organization is large but it has lost its relevance
( because of technological obsolescence or change in customer’s preferences )
would the org. still rely on its internal knowledge pool to sustain itself. Most
likely answer will be negative.

Possible Sources of Recruitment

1. Existing Employees

2. Competitor’s Employees

3. New people joining the industry

- Campus recruitment

- People working in related field, but not directly related to the industry.

On the basis of above argument made above we can make the following
proposition:-

• Established organization with strong tacit knowledge base would make

internal recruitment more often.

• New entrants with weak or no tacit knowledge base would involve in

external recruitment.

3. Channel or Medium used to attract new employees

from outside :--
After taking the decision on whether to recruit internally or use external
sources, the next decision is, how to attract and which medium to use for
recruiting people. We can think of five possible sources of attracting potential
candidates for recruitment, they are :--

• Newspaper

• Magazines

• Online recruitment

• Words-of-mouth

• Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)

Newspaper

Where stakes for an individual is very high, printed medium of advertisement is

more effective than any other medium. Organizations having less knowledge in
the existing market would tend to opt for newspaper to elaborately explain who
they are and help people make an involved choice by detailing job recruitments,
opportunities for growth etc.

Magazine

Given the logic above, well established organizations would use specialized
magazines to attract people who are not actively hunting for jobs and carve a
niche for themselves. On the other hand, we use of specialized magazine in the
case of relatively less-established player would be less, since they first need to
build up an awareness of people through the help of mass communication
medium, like newspaper and then would tend to convince people of specialized
competency to join their organization.

Online Recruitment

The term Online Recruitment (OR), e-cruiting, cybercruiting, or internet

recruiting imply the formal sourcing of job information online. The scope of OR
is wide open. It can provide information on job vacancies, conduct online
interviews, psychometric assessment, electronic mailing list, etc. it provides
shorter recruiting cycle and online recruitment reaches a wider range of
applicants, thereby giving better quality of response.
Word-of-mouth

Since taking a decision to work for an org. has some amount of risk involved at
the juncture of decision-making, hence people would tend to decide on their
joining an org. from a reliable network. In this case, friends and relatives’
opinion play a major role. Well established organizations’ major source of
recruitment related information is word-of-mouth promotion of the organization
through its employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. For a new
entrant or those with less domain knowledge this would be substantially
missing.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing

Recruitment process Outsourcing is a form of BPO where an employer

outsources or transfer all or part of the staffing process to an external service
provider. A true or total RPO solution involves the outsourcing of the entire
recruiting function or process to an external service provider. This provider
serves to provide the necessary skills, tools, technologies, and activities to
serve as their client’s virtual “recruiting department”.

Costs can be reduced because an RPO provider typically provides greater

recruiting efficiencies with benchmarks processes and improved sourcing
techniques. In addition RPO solutions typically allow for greater fluctuations in
volumes and do not require dedicated staff to support a department when
volumes are low.

Selection
After the recruitment-related decision, perhaps the most important
decision is manpower sourcing, the decision to select or reject the candidates.
The process of choosing the most suitable candidate for a job from among the
available applicants is called selection. The purpose of selection is to screen the
applicants’ abilities and traits in order to assess the degree of success and
compatibility of the individual in the organization. This is phase of the
recruitment strategy where the communication between the employers and job
seekers is crucial. Though there are various means of setting selection criteria
such as written test, group discussion, psychometric test, video-conferencing
with recruitee, yet no formal recruitment cycle can ever be complete without
face-to-face discussion between the recruiter and the recruitee.

The only difference of approach between the well established and less
established organization is that while taking the decision as to who is the right
candidate, well-established organization is going to make an analysis of person-
culture fit. For a less-established, the culture is at a nascent stage. Their
decision to recruit from outside, show they want to have a higher fit with the
environment and hence the emphasis would be on person-outside fit.