RECRUITMENT, SELECTION
Defining the terms
• Recruitment is often the first contact
between the organization and a
prospective employee
– Create a positive first impression
• Whether people respond to the
recruiting effort depends on the
attitudes they have toward:
– The tasks
– The organization
Recruiting Requirements
• The process begins with a detailed
job description and job specification
– Without these, it is impossible for recruiters to
determine how well any applicant fits the job
– The recruiter must know which requirements
are essential and which are merely desirable
• This helps avoid unrealistic expectations
Preferences of Recruits
• Recruits often have a set of job
preferences:
– Education and skill levels
– Geographic location
– Salary levels
– Advancement opportunities
• Occupational choice is most heavily
influenced by parents, followed by:
– Teachers
– Career counselors
– Friends
– Relatives
• Organizational choice is influenced
by:
– Corporate image
– Corporate size
Job Search: The Recruit
• People who successfully find the
“right job” tend to follow similar job
search processes:
– Self-assessment
– Information gathering
– Networking
– Targeting specific jobs
– Successful self-presentation
Methods of Recruiting
• Most organizations must use both
internal and external sources to
generate sufficient applicants
– When there is an inadequate supply within
the organization, it must seek external
candidates
– The choice of a recruiting method can make
all the difference in the success of the
recruiting effort
Internal Recruiting
• Job Posting
– Skills inventories can be used to identify internal
applicants for job vacancies
– It is hard to identify everyone who might be
interested in the opening, so firms use job posting
and bidding
• Today, postings are computerized and easily accessible
to employees via the company’s intranet
• Software allows employees to match an available job
with their skills and experience
• It may also highlight where gaps exist
• Inside Moonlighting and Employees’
Friends
– Inside moonlighting may be used when there
is:
• A short-term shortage
• No great amount of additional work
– Workers can be enticed to take a ―second‖ job
with bonuses
– Moonlighting is so common at some
organizations that HR departments issue
moonlighting policies
• Inside Moonlighting and Employees’
Friends
– Before going outside to recruit, many
organizations ask employees to encourage
friends and relatives to apply
– Some offer ―finders fees‖ for successful
referrals
– Employee referrals should be used cautiously,
especially if the workforce is already racially
or culturally imbalanced
External Recruiting
• Walk-ins are an important source of
applicants
– As labor shortages increase, however, organizations
must become more proactive in their recruiting efforts
• External recruiting can be done through:
– Media advertising
– E-recruiting
– Employment agencies
– Executive search firms
– Special-events recruiting
– Internships
Media Advertising
• Media include:
• Newspapers
• Trade/professional publications
• Billboards
• Subway and bus cards
• Radio
• Telephone
• Television
E-Recruiting
• The Internet has revolutionized
organizational recruitment practices
– 30,000 websites are devoted to job posting activities
– However, 71 percent of all job listings are on a
handful of the ―big boards‖
• Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, HotJobs.com,
Jobsearch.org, Naukari.com
– These websites saw huge increases in resumes
posted and visitors in the first month of 2005
– Over 96 percent of all U.S. companies,36% of Indian
Companies now use the Internet for recruitment
activities
Employment Agencies/Executive Search
• Executive search firms:
– Focus on higher-level managerial
positions with salaries of $50,000+
– Are on retainer
– Charge higher fees
• Employment agencies:
– Deal primarily with middle-level
management and below
– Are paid only when they have
provided a new hire
Special Events Recruiting
• Organizations attract applicants with
special events:
• Open houses
• Scheduled visits to headquarters
• Informative literature
• Hospitality suites
• Speeches
• Job fairs
Job fairs:
– Can reduce recruiting costs by up to 80
percent
– May be scheduled on holidays or weekends to
reach college students and the currently
employed
– Are especially useful for smaller, less well
known employers
– Appeal to job seekers who wish to locate in a
particular area and those wanting to minimize
travel and interview time
Summer Internships
• Internship programs have a number of
purposes:
– Allows organizations to get specific projects done
– Exposes organizations to talented, potential
employees who may become ―recruiters‖ at school
– Provides trial-run employment
– Can attract the best people where there are labor
shortages
– Can improve diversity
From the student’s point of
view:
– An internship means a job with pay
– It provides real work experience
– There is the potential of a future job
– It offers a chance to use one’s talents in a
realistic environment
– It may offer course credit hours
• There are costs to internships:
– Interns take up a lot of supervisory time
– Their work is not always the best
• Some students expect everything to
be perfect
– When it is not, they become disillusioned
– Disillusioned students become reverse
recruiters
College Recruiting
• College recruiting can be difficult, time
consuming, and expensive
– The typical recruiting sequence:
• Students register at the college placement office
• During the recruiting season, candidates are told of
scheduled visits
• At the placement service, they reserve interviews and
pick up brochures/literature about the firms
• The preliminary interviews are held
• Before leaving campus, the recruiter invites chosen
candidates to make a site visit
• Students who are invited to the site:
– Are given more job information
– Meet potential supervisors and other
executives
– Are entertained
– May be tested
• If the visit goes well:
– The student is given an offer
– Bargaining may take place on salary and
benefits
– The candidate accepts or rejects the offer
Alternatives to Recruitment
• Overtime
– Organizations avoid the cost of recruiting and
having additional employees
– Employees earn additional income
– Potential problems include fatigue, higher
accident rates, and increased absenteeism
– Continuous overtime often results in higher
labor costs and reduced productivity
Outsourcing
– Sometimes called ―staff sourcing‖
– Involves paying a fee to a leasing company or
professional employer organization (PEO) that
handles payroll, benefits, and routine HRM
functions
– Especially attractive to small and midsize firms
that can’t afford a full-service HR department
– Can save 15 to 30 percent of benefit costs
– Exercise care when choosing a leasing
company; many are financially unstable
Temporary Employment
– One of the most noticeable effects of the
downsizing epidemic and labor shortages of
the past two decades
– ―Just-in-time‖ employees staff all types of jobs
(professional, technical, and executive
positions)
– Nearly 7,000 temporary employment agencies
in the U.S. have been in business for more
than one year
Major advantages of using
temporary workers:
– Relatively low labor costs
– Easily accessible source of experience labor
– Flexibility
• The cost advantage stems from the fact
that temporary workers do not receive:
– Fringe benefits
– Training
– A compensation and career plan
Temp workers do not know the culture or work flow of the firm
Cost-Benefit Analysis of Recruiting
• Many aspects of recruitment can be
evaluated
– Recruiters can be assigned goals by type of employee
– Sources of recruits can be evaluated by dividing the
number of job acceptances by the number of campus
interviews
– Methods of recruiting can be evaluated along various
dimensions, such as the cost of the method divided
by the number of job offer acceptances
• The quality of a new hire can be evaluated
using the formula QH = (PR + HP + HR)/N
QH = quality of recruits hired
PR = average job performance ratings
HP = percent of new hires promoted within one year
HR = percent of hires retained after one year
N = number of indicators used
• Use caution when using the quality-of-hire
measure to evaluate the recruitment
strategy
– Good employees can be lost for reasons that have
nothing to do with recruiter effectiveness
Selection
• Selection is the process by which
an organization chooses the person(s)
who best meets the selection criteria
for the position available
– Selection programs try to identify applicants
with the best chance of meeting or exceeding
the organization’s standards of performance
• Performance refers to more than
quantity of output
– It can also mean quality of output, good
attendance, and honesty
• Successful selection doesn’t always
mean finding someone with the most
of a given quality
– The goal is an optimal match between the job
and
the characteristics an applicant possesses
– Identify which characteristics are the most
important for the circumstances
Internal Environmental Influences
– Size
– Complexity
– Technological volatility
– Development and implementation of
large-scale selection efforts can be
costly
External Environmental Influences
• Employment laws/regulations affect
what an organization can do in its
selection system
• When unemployment rates are low, it
may be hard to attract and hire the
number of people needed
• When there is an oversupply of qualified
applicants, selection strategies differ
External Environmental Influences
• Human resource specialists evaluate the
effects of the labor market on selection by
using a selection ratio:
– Selection ratio =
Number of applicants hired ·\· Total applicants
• When the selection ratio is close to 1:1, it
is a
high selection ratio
– The lower the selection ratio, the more detailed the
selection process
– The organization can be more selective, but the
selection decision will require more time and money
Selection Criteria
• Understanding the characteristics essential for
high performance
– The characteristics are identified during job analysis
– They must be reflected in the job specification
• The goal of any selection system is to:
– Determine which applicants possess the knowledge, skills,
abilities, and KSAOs dictated by the job
• The system must distinguish between
characteristics that are:
– Needed at the time of hiring, acquired during training, and
developed on the job
Categories of Criteria
• Criteria for making selection
decisions fall into these broad
categories:
– Education
– Experience
– Physical characteristics
– Other personal characteristics
The Selection Process
• The selection decision is a series of
steps through which applicants pass
– At each step, more applicants
are screened out
Step 1: Preliminary Screening
– Application blanks vary in length and
sophistication
– The application eliminates the need for
interviewers to gather basic information
– Application blanks are subject to the same
legal standards as any other selection method
– They generally limit questions that imply
something about the applicant’s physical
health
Step 1: Preliminary Screening
• The biographical information blank (BIB):
– Contains more items than typical application blanks
– Asks for information related to a wider array of
attitudes and experiences
• BIB items are based on an assumption
that prior experiences are related to future
behavior
– Example: People who preferred English in school will
perform differently on a given job than people who
preferred science or math
Step 2: Employment Interview
• The interview is the selection
technique most often encountered by
persons applying for jobs
– Interview should be structured to be
reliable and valid
– Managers should be trained to use good
interviewing techniques
Types of Interviews
• Structured
• And Unstructured
• An unstructured interview has no
predetermined script or protocol
– Structured interviews are more reliable and valid than
unstructured interviews
– Standardization lowers the possibility that biases have
been introduced by the interviewer
• Two types of structured interviews
have gained popularity :
– Behavioral interview—applicants are asked to
relate actual incidents from their past work
experience to the job for which they are
applying
– Situational interview—seeks to identify
whether an applicant possesses relevant job
knowledge and motivation by asking
hypothetical questions
Step 3: Employment Tests
• An employment test attempts to
measure certain characteristics, such
as:
– Aptitudes
– Manual dexterity
– Intelligence
– Personality
Step 4: Reference Checks
• When applying for a job, you may be
asked for a list of references
– Rarely does someone knowingly include the
name of a reference who will give a negative
impression
– This built-in bias is why references are
criticized.
– Fears of being sued have led many
managers to refuse to provide
references for former employees
Selection of Managers
• The employment tests used vary with the type of
employee being hired
– Organizations frequently spend more time, effort,
and money hiring middle- to upper-level executives
• One of the best-known multiple selection
methods used for this purpose is the assessment
center
– First used by the German military in World War II
– Used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the U.S. in the
1940s
– Introduced to the business world in the 1950s by AT&T
• An assessment center uses a variety
of testing methods, including:
– Interviews
– Work samples and simulations
– Paper-and-pencil tests of abilities and
attitudes
• Assessment centers are similar in a
number of areas:
– Groups of approx. 12 individuals are
evaluated
– Individual and group activities are observed
and evaluated
– Multiple methods of assessment are used
– Assessors are usually a panel of line
managers for the organization, consultants, or
outsiders trained to conduct assessments
– Assessment centers are relevant to the job
• Assessors then evaluate each
individual on a number of
dimensions, such as:
– Organizational and planning ability
– Decisiveness
– Flexibility
– Resistance to stress
– Poise
– Personal style
• Rater’s judgments are consolidated
and developed into a final report
• Assessment center reports permit the
organization to determine:
– Qualifications for particular positions
– Promotability
– How individuals function in a group
– Type of training/development needed
– How good assessors are at observing,
evaluating, and reporting on the performance
of others
Selection Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Whether a selection system should be
developed and used depends on whether it
saves more money than it costs
– A cost-vs-benefits analysis requires estimates of the
direct and indirect costs associated with the system
• Direct costs: the price of the tests, the salary paid to an
interviewer, the equipment used, and so on
• Indirect costs: such things as changes in public image
associated with implementing drug testing
Selection Cost-Benefit Analysis
• An organization must also estimate how
much money it saves by hiring more
qualified employees
– Higher levels of quality or quantity
– Reduced absenteeism
– Lower accident rates
– Less turnover
• Valid selection procedures can
yield huge benefits
– This is especially true where the
costs of hiring a poor performer are high
– Putting more money into selection can reduce the
amount that must be spent on training