Issues Related to Staffing and Recruiting - Term Paper Example

Issues Related to Staffing and Recruiting Issues Related to Staffing and Recruiting In today’s increasingly global and competitive world, the competition for capable and qualified workers has never been greater. No longer does a company necessarily have all of the talent they need right around the corner. In many cases, talent recruiters must go on a nationwide, or even global, search for just the right candidate. As a result, numerous issues have emerged in recent years related to the recruiting and staffing of new personnel. It is a reality that organizations must go to a great deal of expense, both financially speaking and in the sense of time, to located, hire, and train new staff (DeCenzo, 2014). Because of this reason alone, it is important to understand the issues discussed in this paper and learn how to better overcome the modern day obstacles related to staff and recruiting. It is important to note that current trends indicate the current year has seen the competition for highly qualified individuals only intensity. This is partly due to the reality that the employment market has picked up substantially. As a result, it is important to note that talented professionals now have many job prospects in front of them, so companies are forced to really provide increased incentives if they are to truly attract the best of the best. In essence, it is up to the company today to market themselves in an attractive manner to prospective employees. There will likely be the need for counteroffers to be accepted, many applicants will outright reject solid job offers, that there will be a renewed focus on recruiting those that are already employed at another firm. In essence, we are regressing to the boom years of the late 90’s where if was definitely a job seekers market. One commonly held theory today is that employers need to return to a strategy of branding their organization as a long term recruiting strategy moving forward. In previous years, many organizations were forced to drastically reduce their budgets related to Human Resources, meaning that recruiters did not have much to work with. Now that business is picking up across numerous sectors, however, it is possible to change this to a more long term outlook detailing the various attributes of a company and what it has to offer prospective employees, particularly related to salary and benefits. This is similar to the branding of a product. The need for branding has emerged partially as a result of the increased competition for taken, but also because of the various ways that companies around the company are making use of social media sites to promote their organization. As a consequence, it is quite easy for current and former employees to comment about a company in an anonymous manner, both positively and negatively, in a way that can be seen by the world (Gourlay, 2014). What is revealed about a company online today largely forms the perception that prospective employees have about the organization. Social media has truly created de facto brand online that has tremendous implications for staffing and recruitment of new employees. Recruiters today are also learning that weaker candidates being considered for a position can also damage the brand. If the company is perceived as settling for lesser talent, then those that are highly skilled in a certain area may hesitate to accept a job offer on that basis alone. There are new trends in recruiting that are gaining traction today and will impact the field for years to come. Most of these trends involve new and emerging technologies in an effort to set one company apart from the competition. The mobile platform, for example, is currently developing in a formidable tool that is useful for recruiting purposes. The impact that such a platform is having on recruiting is already making itself known, and this area is expected to only continue to grow and expand in the coming years. There is now an emerging technical capability that allows individuals to apply directly for many given jobs instantly from a mobile application, thereby streamlining the recruitment process. The belief is that this will soon be the mainstream way of applying for most positions, and some recruiters are already only accepting applications via this new technological medium. There are also a number of applications currently in the design and development phase that will provide even more technological tools to aid in the recruitment of quality talent around the globe. Recent years have also seen the advancement and promotion of a data driven approach to many recruitment operations, to the point that they are now becoming mainstream. While it is true that most business functions have long since adapted much of its business making decisions to a data driven approach, it is now becoming increasingly utilized by recruiters in many cases. Google, for example, has long separated itself from most other organizations the world over because of its ability to use the data driven approach to spear head its recruiting efforts. This is largely done through the incorporation of predictive metrics that anticipate who will be most likely to be highly successful at the company in any given position. In effect, Google now swears by research they have generated that demonstrates many traditional recruiting tools, still be used by many companies, are largely in effective. As a result, it believes that its data driven approach to recruiting is the way of the future, and that future is now. Two other technological tools in use today, and continuing to grow in acceptance by recruiters and others charge with staffing related duties, are the use of live video interviewing and online candidate assessment. Live video interviews have proven highly effective both interns of logistics and cost saving measures. Many positions have candidates from a wide spectrum of geographical locations. Regardless of who pays for the actual travel expense associated with coming to the company headquarters for a physical interview, somebody is having to go through a great expense before even knowing how likely it is that candidate would be a good fit within the organization. There simply was no other way in the past, however, to accomplish the important objective of meeting a prospective candidate face to face. Live video interviews now make it possible to see a candidate and interact with them around the globe. Group interviews with members of a team or executive committee are also now possible and have formed a growing trend in the recruitment of new talent. In fact, many companies today will only bring in the top few candidates for a physical interview, narrowing down the field via video interviews. Many technical and professional positions requiring that assertion that a candidate is highly qualified for the position in question. Today, the online assessment of candidates in still in its infancy, yet is gaining much traction and will likely be mainstream moving into the future. It is now much cheat to assess the technical knowledge, and various skill assessments, of a prospective applicant on line than it is to bring them in for testing (Russell, 2013). The benefits in this area of recruiting and staffing are similar to those same advantages realized by video interviewing. The impact of these on line assessments go even further, however, because they can eliminate unnecessary interviews with unqualified applicants, and they can serve to dramatically increase the quality of the individuals being hired, particularly for ethnical and skilled professions. Technology is also opening up recruiting doors to individuals who could not feasibly move to where the company is feasibly located. Many companies today are not bound by a physical location, as technology has increased to the point to working remotely is common place in many professions, and the ability to telecommute has serve to dramatically expand the existing pool of talent in many disciplines. Many managers today are willing to accept remote work positions, if the applicant is exactly who they desire, and this is increasing the tools with which recruiters can pitch their company to the most qualified of applicants (Kakarika, 2013). This is a major benefit moving forward, particularly as technology is expanding to the point that employees are held more accountability in terms of their productivity and their actual ability to work stable and consistent hours remotely. In summary, the future is bright for recruiters. Even in the face of increasing competition for qualified and talented professionals, the most competitive of recruiters will be the ones that make use of the myriad of tools and resources at their disposal. The cost of recruiting qualified candidates is on the decrease, while the reach of the company is on the increase. Many companies are no longer bound by geographical location, and many are opening up satellite offices around the globe to accommodate the need to attract taken internationally. All of these moves are largely positive for recruiters and staffing professionals, yet the challenge still remains to sell the firm to a prospective candidate that might have multiple offers. This area will continue to develop in the coming years, so recruiters must work hard to stay on the cutting edge of their profession and learn to incorporate new an innovative methods to the promotion and retention of highly qualified and talented employees. References DeCenzo, R. (2014). Fundamentals of Management (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Gourlay, R. (2014). Staffing resources. Journal of Staff Development, 31(2), 6. Kakarika, M. (2013). Staffing an entrepreneurial team: Diversity breeds success. Journal of Business Strategy, 34(4), 31-38. Russell, D. (2013). Recruiting and staffing in the electronic age: A research-based perspective. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 59(2), 91-101. Read More