Employee Recruitment and Employee Selection Processes - Coursework Example

HRM The paper represents an essay that enlightens the fact that in any human resource management environment, recruitment of new employees is a science; however, selection the best-suited person out of many applicants is an art. The paper discusses both the processes and the techniques involved in these processes of employee recruitment and employee selection and then conclude the above-mentioned statement. Making job recruitments or performing the process of job recruitment is more of the hard and fast process and steps that determines the abilities of individuals applied for the job. Recruitment is a process of inviting and gathering the well-suited, appropriate, and fit candidates for a particular job or task to complete. Recruitment is about making pipelines of brilliant and talented candidates, and it is the one of the factors on which, the stability of organization and its position in external market depends. The recruitment process has to obey certain limitations and criteria in order to be effective and fruitful for the organization (Roberts, pp. 11-13). The criteria for the recruitment process of any organization include the processes that are simple, convenient, and easy to understand. Moreover, the recruitment processes have to catch up with company’s legal and ethical standards. The heads of the recruitment processes that are generally the managers follow the rules and regulations of the organization tightly and consistently. In order to determine if the recruitment process is a science or an art, the papers gives the detailed analysis of recruitment processes, techniques tools, and steps involved. First, the organization has to develop the strategy of recruitment. This includes the decisions made and standards set over the types of candidates, their qualification and educational background, their work experiences, the interpersonal skills, their talents, and knacks that are important, significant, and decisive in candidates for achieving this job. The recruitment strategy is the first step towards making and performing a recruitment process in a sound manner. The next steps usually followed in all the recruiting organization is determining if the recruitment is internal or external. Internal recruit is the well known for of recruitment; it involves recruiting the existing employees of the organization for another and completely different sector. This change the job position of existing employees and this phenomenon is very famous in developed countries a lot. This recruitment holds its basis on the complete background information provided to the recruiting board in order to aid the process. This type of recruitment follows the rules and regulations as determined by the organization in a very strict manner, as there is always a chance of favoritism and biasing while performing an internal recruitment. However, the other type of recruitment is the external recruitment that allows new and fresh people from world outside the organization in order to make some good changes and induce a difference in organization’s development. By performing an external recruitment, introduction of new people is possible to the organization resulting in greater advantages for the organization (Taylor, pp. 23-25). The process more rapid as the outside market is always full of talented people fit for the positions required by different organizations. Both the types of recruitments follow the hard and fast rules and process standardized for them. There is another type of recruitment usually involved in recruitment processes across the globe, referral recruitment. This is a kind of recruitment, where an external recruitment agency or group renders and provides its services in order to provide the organization with the well-suited and most appropriate candidates required for the job openings. The reason behind choosing this type of recruitment is the fact that recruitment process on large scale is a very tedious task to perform. Therefore, in order to save time the organization hands this responsibility over to the recruitment agencies that perform the task for organizations and earn fortune for it (Advice, 2009). The process of referral recruitment is again the same process that undergoes revision over and again. When an organization itself performs, the processes required for internal or external recruitment then general recruitment takes place and referral recruitment otherwise. The first step in practicing the recruitment process is making a job opening or defining the vacancy available for particular type of job. This is a very important step and it is very crucial in attracting the suitable candidates to apply for the job (Roberts, pp. 51-57). The successful job vacancies are always clear, direct, easy to understand, and well defined. Information about job vacancies spreads though different forms of media and reaches to the doorsteps of candidates in the job market outside the organization. This step again is a science that consists of strict processes and techniques followed in the same manner every time. In response to the job vacancies, recruitment agencies or the recruitment staff of organization receives professional resumes of candidates wishing to get the job position. The recruitment process then holds its basis on the data, information, and attributes collected from these resumes. The information that does not match with the attributes required for the job position goes neglected while the recruitment process proceeds further with the data and information complimenting the job requirements and attributes of the position. The matching process is simply comparing the information provided by the candidates as their personal data, educational backgrounds, personal and interpersonal skills, work experiences, and achievements etc with the credentials required by the organization in order to compliment the job vacancy and serve as a valuable asset for the organization. This very systematic process does not usually create any extra ordinary situation other than the routine and expected problems. Just after the selecting committee chooses the candidates that appear to be well suited and prepared for the job position through the process executed for job resumes. The organizations gives an opportunity to the candidates to have an official job interview with the selecting committee in order to proceed further with the recruitment and hiring process in best interest of the organization (Roberts, pp. 51-57). The job interview is very critical step in evaluation and personality analysis of the candidates applied for the job. The job interview is a now or never situation for the candidates as it is the last chance for them to impress the employers well enough to get the job position in presence of many candidates applied for the same job. The nature of job interviews can differ for various forms of recruitment, for instance, the nature of job interview for an internal recruitment vary to that of an external recruitment. No matter what form of recruitment takes place, job interview is the most critical and key factor in the whole process of recruitment and hiring, and renders greater influence on the result of job recruitment. From the candidate’s side of the story, the job interview plays a vital role in forming an impression of the organization or of the job position, and helps greatly in making the decision of availing this job position or rejecting it. The decision of the job candidate usually holds its basis on the fact that job interview is the first chance to view the organization, functioning, and performance close enough to find the level of professionalism induced in the organization. The candidate matches the information provided by the organization and information that the candidate gathered from its own experiences and then concludes regarding the job decision. Amazingly, the situation is same for the organization’s perspective as well; job interview is a very crucial factor in determining the actual credibility and attributes of applied candidates. The organization, or the recruitment staff, or any outside recruitment agency can evaluate the performance or traits of candidates applied for the job by matching their attributes present in their resumes to their personalities and visions as experienced by the interviewing staff during the job interview (Advice, 2009). After job interviews, the recruitment process thus continues in the form of selection process that results in hiring of best-suited employees for the company. The paper has now discussed the recruitment process in a very detailed manner. Observations and researches made in this regard have shown that the techniques, tools and steps involves in recruitment process are more or less the same for every process and every form of recruitment (Taylor, pp. 39-41). This phenomenon makes the recruitment process more of a science than an art. It is obvious that there is always some part of art involved in every process related to human resource management and hiring, and so is true for recruitment process as well. However, the processes are chronic, logical, and always have a great deal of science behind it. Thus, the recruitment process is more of a science and not much of an art. However, the selection of new employees is not the same phenomenon. It is a very sensitive issue and critical point in terms of organizational development. The selection staff feels that it is a very difficult task as hard as walking on a minefield. The selectors have to consider all the legal and ethical issues, compulsions, and requirements. Moreover, they have to make sure that the selecting team is confident over the brilliancy and ability of being the best of the selected employee. In addition to that, the selectors encounter much of the office politics, favoritism, biasing, and related issues that they have to overcome yet keeping the interest of organization as their foremost priority. For countering these issues, the selectors have to devise new strategy every time depending upon the situation and nature of the forces exerting pressure. The paper signifies and clears the situation some more with the help of different exemplary situations that may arise while performing the selection process. One situation that usually arises while making an appropriate selection is that of differentiating a sheep out of the large herd of lambs. This is the situation where the selectors get the positive feedback from many of the applicants applied for the job. The tasks of the selectors are now to short list the candidates and select the best one for the job. The first task is relatively easy i.e. to cut down the list and exclude the candidates that have low profile and slightly less appropriate for the job (Advice, 2009). However, the real problem arises when the selectors have to choose one candidate out of the many best in the short listed lists. All these candidates are brilliant, focused, well prepared, and best suited for the job. This is the point where the process of selection becomes an art as the science or the process fails here and extraction of results solely depends on the intellect of selectors. By utilizing this art, the selectors choose the best candidate, well suited for the job (Taylor, pp. 7). Another common situation that the members of selecting committee come across is the biasness of head of committee towards any one applicant. The heads is fond of an applicant that showed poor communication skills, has no proper educational and work backgrounds, was not confident in answering while interviewing, and was not well suited for the job. Instead, the other member wants to select an applicant who was confident, had brilliant academic records and appraisable work experiences, has effective communication skills, and was all confident during the interview session. The members have a feeling that the head want to select the unsuited applicant so that the applicant is never going to challenge or make problems for him. Instead, the members insist on the deserved member who is now desired member as well. In this situation, there is no procedure to carry out the desired task instead; it is an art to tackle things and shaping them up in interests of organization and its development. Usually, the selecting committee run into in another interesting situation when an existing employee or group of existing employees have to select a group of people working in the same organization for an upcoming project or plan that requires height of brilliancy and talents in members for the plan group. The task of the group or the selection committee is to recommend and select employees that are suitable for this highly demanding project. The situation gets very political and biased due to personal likings, favoritism, internal and external pressure, and other related issues. To cope up in this situation without doing injustice with the job the selection committee does not have any hard and fast rule, processes, or techniques rather they have to devise, design, and implement techniques themselves. This art comes natural to the selecting committee from their deep insight on the situation and experience gained from years of working. Due to the ever-increasing importance and significance of selection, various technique and process have evolved in order to facilitate the selection committee in performing this art (Roberts, pp. 26). These options aiding selection includes different assessment centers and other tools that helps the selection board in determining the abilities of applicants. Despite of numerable tools available for assessment and analysis of a person’s credibility, the selection process is not a science at all, no matter how precise and how accurate measurements and techniques of assessments and analysis are. There is always a chance of the fact that the selected employee does not match with employers’ expectations and does not provide desired results (Banfield and Kay, pp. 64). This part of discussion suggests that as in selection process the art is major portion of all the tools, techniques and steps thus, the selection process is more of an art than the science. Works Cited Advice, HRM. HRM Advice: Recruitment and Selection. Retrieved on December 01, 2009: www.hrmadvice.com/hrmadvice/hr-processes/recruitment-and-selection.html Banfield, Paul and Kay, Rebecca. Introduction to Human Resource Management. Oxford Univeristy Press, 2008. Roberts, Gareth. Recruitment and Selection: A Competancy Approach. CIPD Publishing, 1997. Taylor, Ia. A practical Guide to Assessment Centres and Selection Methods. Kogan Publishers, 2007. Read More