From Which Recruitment Sources Do the Best Employees Come - Literature review Example

From Which Recruitment Sources Do The Best Employees Come? Irrespective of the type of organizations, the way they recruit the employees can determine their success in the industry to a large extent. In order to stay competitive, every organization must attract and retain the best employees. In this regard, using proper recruitment strategy can assist in accessing the preeminent talent pool. With respect to recruitment, one of the key critical aspects is source through which employees are recruited. This essay provides a careful review of different recruitment sources that can be used by an organization in order to attract pool of applicants. The objective of the essay is to recognize the effectiveness of different recruitment sources in order to obtain best employees. Keywords: Recruitment, best employees, recruitment sources, employment market. Introduction Recruiting talented individuals are critical factor for the success of organization in the current highly competitive and dynamic business environment. However, with the increasing rivalry in the employment market and varied growth of skills, recruiters require to be more prudent in their choices of sources, as weak sources can generate long-run negative impacts, comprising high training and development expenses, high level of employee turnover and low employee morale among others. Even during the period of economic recession, it becomes quite hard for recruiters to fill certain job position. If not done properly, organization’s recruitment effort can generate unqualified job claimants, lack workforce diversity or weak employment opportunities. Poorly designed recruitment procedure can deprive organization from obtaining skilled and competent employees. In worst circumstance, organizations can also fail to accomplish its goals and thus lose the competitive advantage and market share (Shafique, 2012). Attracting Employees Attracting best employees is quite expensive activity, particularly if applicants acquired lacks in desire skills. While looking at past years, the recruitment of employees was always quite difficult for gaining excellent applicants. A best planned recruitment strategy can attract excellent applicants by providing sign of brightened career. Applicants can have positive view regarding an organization in case they observe that there is clear association between recruitment and job. In order to attract potential applicant to fulfil the vacancy, organizations must use systemic and logical approach of recruitment (Shafique, 2012). The key objective of selecting proper recruitment sources is to appeal appropriate pool of applicants and to sponsor the job position. Different recruitment sources are appropriate to attract best employee on the basis of the group of possible applicants that is required to become target employees. For instance, job center can be used as recruitment source for fulfilling semi-skilled job position. On other hand, internet can be used as recruitment source in order to attract managerial or technical job position (Page & Persch, 2013). Effectiveness of Different Recruitment Sources for Attracting Best Employees Employees basically learn about vacancies by extensive variety of sources such as advertisement, internet and job fairs among others. There are basically two types of recruitment sources, one is formal and the other one is informal. Where formal recruitment sources such as job advertisement comprise formal mediators in order to reach to key employment seekers, several findings depicts that employees who are recruited by informal sources demonstrate high level of employment satisfaction, better employment performance and lower employee turnover. Organizational desirability can be impacted by extensive variety of sources and not restricted to the ones organizations deliberately integrate in the recruitment activities (Cromheecke et al., 2013). Basically, there are two key dimensions of recruitment sources one is dependent-independent dimension and the other one is experiential-informational dimension. The dependent-independent dimension signifies to the level of control an organization has on the recruitment source. For example, advertisement is a dependent source which can directly be managed by organization in order to communicate the intended message to the employment seekers. On the other hand, word-of-mouth (WOM) is an independent source which cannot be controlled directly by an organization; rather it can be influenced indirectly by other staffing functions. On the other hand, experiential-informational dimension signifies the level to which a recruitment source permit employment seekers to acquire information by private media such as employee referral, intense media such as job event and vivid media such as publicity among others (Hoye, 2011). Employee Referral as Recruitment Source Employee referral inspires the existing employees to choose and recruit suitable applicant from the social network. Successful employee referral program provides certain monetary advantages in order to stimulate employees to make more referrals. Employee referral is extensively acknowledged as one of the most effective sources to recruit employees. Due to this reason, organizations irrespective of any size and across every industry attempt to use this source for recruiting individuals (Hansen & Pedersen, 2012). The key advantage of employee referral as recruitment source is that it provides organizations with source of positive applicants, i.e. those employees who are actively seeking new employment. Applicants referred by employees also have a tendency of high quality because referred employees are typically screened by the existing employees closely before entering into employment contract; after all the reputation of the employees is somewhat related with the applicants they refer for a particular position (Mani, 2012). WOM as Recruitment Source Beyond employee referral, WOM is also regarded as vital recruitment source for obtaining best employees. WOM comprise information from employees to communicate information and individual opinions regarding the organizations, within and beyond the social network. WOM help to generate and maintain applicants’ interest and address areas of critical requirements for recruitment. WOM generally represents a powerful and direct influence on employment seekers. Thus, organizations can use WOM as valuable recruitment source which have the possibility to enhance the diversity, size and quality of application pool (Keeling et al., 2013). Advertisement as Recruitment Source Advertisement is regarded as an important formal recruitment source used by most organizations. With respect to other sources, advertisement has the potentiality to reach large span of target applicants. However, unlike other recruitment sources advertisement also attract much unsuitable applicants for a specific job position. Additionally, advertisement source having geographical limitation such as newspaper has moderate possibility to reach people who are better fit for an organization. In comparison to other informal sources, advertisement lack self-screening. Furthermore, unlike informal sources, in advertisement, the recruiting applicants obtain less information regarding the organizational culture (Rafaeli et al., 2005). Internet as Recruitment Source Internet recruitment or e-recruitment denotes practice of promoting employment vacancies through online media. It is a formal source of recruitment and is relatively new concept for organizations. The increased popularity of e-recruitment is ascribed to the unexpected growth in the use of internet and development in IT. In developed and developing nations considerable number of human resource professionals use internet as recruitment source in conjunction with other sources such as newspaper advertisement or employee referral among others. Modern organizations observe internet as a medium to promote variety of job positions from blue collar job to white collar professional post. The internet has transformed the way organizations recruit the employees and search for job. There are three common ways of recruitment through internet. First alternative can be recruitment by using organizational website. It is a common and primary method of e-recruitment which is widely used due to its flexibility and inexpensiveness characteristics. The second way of e-recruitment is use of specific websites which act as a medium between organization and possible applicants such as employment panels, employment portals, employment agencies and online recruiters. Likewise, the third way of e-recruitment is the use of media websites which involves positioning an advertisement in traditional media such as newspaper having its own website as well as on organization’s website. It is believed that large firms preferring formal recruitment sources are more likely to use internet in order to hire employees. Organizations also stimulate and inspire the use of e-recruitment by incorporating it with overall corporate marketing and branding approaches and by the insertion of categorized advertisement (Hansen & Pedersen, 2012). However, the key concern of internet as a source of recruitment is that it creates extensive quantity of applications. This outcome is accredited mainly to the variety and geographical reach of the source. Since internet has globalized market, it can be presumed that more prospective applicants can access and observe the employment being promoted through the internet. Whilst increase in the size of applicant pool permit an organization to be more selective, potentially resulting in getting best employees, can have negative impact on growing cost of managing recruitment and selecting accordingly. Literally, increase in quantity of applicants does not necessarily result in increase in quality of applicants through internet (Marr, 2007). Social Media as Recruitment Source Social media is regarded as a new panacea of communication and involvement. It has become an integral part of life for most people in present days. Social media is regarded as a passive approach for recruitment that assists in looking for talent across extensive variety of social networking platform. The key advantages of social media as recruitment source is that it is a cost effective approach to reach to potential job applicants. Once a website is created, organizations can access potential candidates through it. It also has the capability to target specific population. For instance, an organization can establish an account that specifically targets the required applicants they seek. The social media page can also be customized in order to define additional information. One incredible benefit of using social media as recruitment source is prompt international reach. Through social media, organizations can instantly reach to large target applicants having internet accessibility. In advertisement, the recruitment is limited to specific physical location where recruitment through social media travels beyond the boundaries of traditional advertisement media. Besides, the interactivity of social media increases the effectiveness to select best employees for an organization. The historical recruitment sources were included primarily of non-interactive strategies, i.e. one way communication from the recruiter to the potential applicants. With the evolution of social media, the recruitment procedures have become interactive platforms that enable conversation between applicants and recruiters. As a result, the applicants can gain reaction from queries and gather feedback on possible obstructions to employment. Hence, by addressing various concerns regarding employment, social media source can assist in aiming particularly on the target applicants (Andrews, 2012). Nevertheless, social media acts as double edged sword because in order to attract through this source, organizations must wary regarding how the brand is perceived online. In present days, the balance of attraction has shifted as applicants have become more conscious regarding making the right move in employment market. Recruiting for certain job position requires organizations to perform closely with marketers in order to acquire the proper message. Likewise, it has also been claimed that several online profiles do not necessarily demonstrate actual picture of the applicant. Thus, it becomes time consuming for recruiter to undertake through and detailed search on prospective applicants. Managing the brand image through social media is tricky and inevitably undesirable component can slip through internet (Sinha & Thaly, 2013). College Campus and Recruitment Source College campus placement is another source used by organizations to search for potential applicants in educational institutions. Similar to other type of recruitment sources, the primary objective of campus placement is to recognize and attract best employees. However, the effectiveness of this recruitment source depends on familiarity of the organization. Employment seekers suggest that in college placement, they are more attracted by somewhat familiar organizations than the unfamiliar organization. Moreover, it has also been observed that college and university students depend more on familiarity of organization in order to determine corporate reputation and better reputation result in higher employee attraction. This signifies that campus placement act as prime vehicle for organizations in order to enhance the attractiveness by making the employment opportunities more perceptible to the students. However, successful college campus placement necessitates resources that can be quite exclusive. The use of college placement provides a way of distinguishing recruitment practices in an expressive way. In order to appeal students through campus placement, organizations involve in various practices such as planning conference at job fair, holding information assembly to familiarize the organization and to communicate job openings and other projections. These practices can have impact on the attitudes and behavior of students throughout the recruitment process. It has also been found that low-involvement practices necessitates low effort on the part of possible job applicants with relatively less information are suitable for such organization which have low level of advertising and reputation. On the other hand, high-involvement activities which provide valuable information on employment characteristics and usually necessitate more processing effort are effective for those organizations which have fairly high level of advertising and image (Wallace et al., 2014). Campus placement can impact on the approaches of applicants in two ways, the first way is to affecting the awareness of employment and organizational characteristics and the second way is to increasing the level of students’ familiarity with the organization. Student familiarity is likely dependent on acquiring knowledge and awareness about organizational existence and presence, organizational business, employment circumstances and organizational culture and principles (Breaugh, 2013). Conclusion On the basis of reviewing various articles, it has been found that among other sources, organizations prefer to adopt employee referrals, internet and campus recruitment. Basically, these sources assist in obtaining proper pool of talent while maintaining the expenses. However, it is worth mentioning that each source contain certain advantages and disadvantages. It is evident from the study that there is no single source which can alone help to reach the applicants and hence, a multi-channel source is essential to cover up the deficiencies of each approach. Apart from different other sources such as using internet, employee referrals and campus recruitment sources can also help to obtain best employees. Nevertheless, while selecting the source to obtain best employee, recruiters also need to consider the employment market flow and level of applications. Although these three sources are quite effective in selecting best candidates but at times they are unable to reach every possible applicants. Besides, with the changes in socio-cultural environment, new sources are being extensively used in order to hire prospective employees. To conclude, the determination of the most effective recruitment source that bring best employee not only dependent on the percentage of applicants they are capable of reach, but also the percentage of applicants they fail to reach along with the level of information the prospective applicants obtain from a particular source. References Andrews, C. (2012). Social media recruitment. Applied Clinical Trials, 21(11), 32-42. Breaugh, J. A. (2013). Employee recruitment. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 389–416. Cromheecke, S., Hoye, G. V., & Lievens, F. (2013). Changing things up in recruitment: Effects of a ‘strange’ recruitment medium on applicant pool quantity and quality. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 86(3), 410-416. Hansen, K. M., & Pedersen, R. T. (2012). Efficiency of different recruitment strategies for web panels. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 24(2), 238-249. Hoye, G. V. (2011). 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