Recruitment and selection important to organisations

"Why is effective recruitment and selection important to organisations? Which selection techniques are the most useful and why? " This essay will inform people how effective recruitment and selection methods are important to organisations. It will also enlighten people on the different techniques that are used for selection purposes as well as which method is the most useful and why it is useful.

Recruitment is a procedure that is undertaken in order to fill in a gap in the management and selection can be described as an assessed procedure in order to select a candidate that is most suitable for the position in hand. The main aim of recruitment and selection is to aid the decision making of the upper management to fill a gap; it helps them find the right candidate with the right qualifications and skills to be able to do the job not taking in to consideration their race, age, gender, colour or nationality. This is important as it is a fair, effective and in good practice.

The recruitment and selection process is important to all organisations but at the same time there can be implications towards the organisational health and success i. e. costs that may incur in case a wrong decision are made, decisions made on dismissing a member of staff on false pretences. The overall cost for this process can vary and end up being very large. The recruitment process is usually started when someone in the management leaves and this opens up an opportunity to a person with the same or more amount of qualifications and experience to fill this position.

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Some organisations may even analyse the position and try and promote someone to fill the space or even spread the responsibility amongst other members of staff in the same department if they think that they do not need someone new and the work load can be managed by other members of staff. In order for this to be carried out managers need to consider the vacancy very carefully. Recruitment process can be expensive; this is why managers need to think carefully before starting the process.

Only if it is considerably necessary for the organisation to fill the position, will they start it. It is also very time consuming as well and a lot of consideration will need to be taken by the managers in order to choose the right candidate. This applies to the Michigan model, as this model describes an organisation as using their employees as much as they can but at the same time they are very money conscious. So starting the recruitment process will be avoided as much as they can even though they want the best members of staff possible.

Many small organisations will follow this model as they would not have the resources to start this process or even the workforce to enable the process to start i. e. running interviews, staff to go through application forms or CVs. On the other hand Guest model represents organisations that like to have their workforce to the highest quality and does not matter about the costs as long as they have got a high workforce that can be flexible. It will be more likely that big organisations that incur much more profits will be able to spend that extra amount of money to make sure they have the right candidate to do the job right.

Recruitment process can be quite intense and may prove to be difficult as there are always shortages in the amount of people that are qualified in specific/certain areas and the labour markets are tight. In these instances organisations needs to be able to sell their jobs through job descriptions in the job adverts in order to get the right people enquiring about the adverts. Members of the public need to understand that the recruitment and selection process does not end when you are called for an interview, but is carried right up to the point where an offer is being made and it is also accepted by the candidate (Barber, 1999)

A job analysis is carried out to specify the job description (what job needs to be done) and a person specification (what type of person is required for the position). A job analysis has certain processes to go through to finalise the job description and person specification. The organisation provides the Human resource department criteria that are set out about the organisation as well the functional department where the vacancy is held. These criteria's help identify the individual criteria for the job so a job specification can be written out. The way a job is adverted and the place it is adverted is important to an organisation.

A job can be adverted in the local press, specialist journals or magazines, recruitment agencies, job centres, the company's website, etc. An organisation needs to think carefully depending on the vacancy where they want to advertise as they may get time wasting applicants which can be very costly to the organisation i. e. if you place a job advert in the local job centre you are more likely to get an unemployed person who may not be so qualified where as if you place the advert in a newspaper or a specific journal / magazine you will get applicants who are qualified, experienced and are more willing.

Once an advert is placed the selection process will start. There are many different methods of selection such as interviews, application forms, self-Assessment, telephone screening, testing, group Selection Centres, work Sampling/Portfolios. One of the most commonly used and traditional selection methods is interviews, although more and more organisations are trying out different methods to identify one that suits them best or find one which is most effective. An interview can be described as a controlled conversation with a purpose.

An interview is effective as it's a face to face conversation and the organisation can get an idea of what the applicant is like - first impressions count towards elimination; it also gives the applicant a more in depth information about the company and what the job entails. An interview focuses on the outer skills rather than intellectual i. e. communication skills, body language, these can say a lot for a person. Application forms are preliminary of the selection process; most organisations provide an application form in order to judge a person by the personnel details they provide.

By doing this interviews may be arranged for candidates who are most suited for the job by looking at their application forms. The process of short listing is made easier by application form, it is a lot faster and the whole recruitment and selection process may become slightly less expensive. However application forms cannot be used as a sole method of the selection process as it does not provide the organisation enough information about the candidate to go on. Testing is another method that may be used during the selection process.

Testing is usually a follow up from an interview. It is mainly used when selecting applicants for managerial or at professional level. You will tend to find that testing is used only used for these positions as they need to find the right characteristics and to see if they can apply there qualifications and skills to the job in hand i. e. if it is for a managers position, leadership skills need to be shown clearly. However more industries i. e. retail, are resolving to use this method within their interviews to make it easier on the decision making on the right candidate.

On the other hand some people may look at testing being bias, on the basis of socially or sexually or even racial. Another method that is used if the position needs to be filled in urgency is telephone interviewing. These interviews can be arranged quite quickly as long as they have application forms or CVs to relate to. This is a good method if the vacancy requires good communication skills. The right type of language and clear speech is very important if the job entails talking to clients over the phone.

Although telephone interviewing may not be the best method to use as it hardly gives any indication of what the person is like i. e. body language, appearance and in some instances it may not even be the right person you are talking to; you are only assessing one part of the person, the ability to communicate. It is not the fairest method either. In conclusion, effective recruitment and selection is important to organisations as they need to be able to choose the candidate with the right skills and qualifications who will be able to apply these attributes to the job.

Experience would be an extra benefit to the organisation if the candidate has been in the same sort of environment before. Although it all depends on the type of organisation it is and what type of human resource model they follow. If an organisation is to follow the Michigan model, recruitment and selection is not looked at very carefully as most of these organisations do not have the right resources to go ahead with the process. On the other hand if the organisation follows the Guest model, more time, effort and money is spent on this process as they require a high quality workforce.

Each selection techniques have their advantages and disadvantages but the technique that is most useful would have to be interviews as they are the most effective. Although along with the interview other methods such as application forms may be used for the first part of the process to help during elimination and testing may be used for a further part of the process to aid the decision making.

References

Forson, C, Lecture notes, 2006 Torrington, D, Hall, L, Taylor, S, Human Resource Management 6th edition, Prentice hall, Pearson education Bach, S, Managing Human Resources - personnel management in transition 4th edition, Blackwell

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