HRM in a Business Context - Coursework Example

HRM in a business context Recruitment and selection practices are functions of human resources management that have a critical impact on the performance of the organization. Recruitment process is a process of looking for and attracting the right and capable applicants for the employment. Selection process comes after recruitment and it involves choosing a suitable candidate from the applicants to fill the required post. These processes discover the best sources of work force that will meet the requirements of the schedule meant for staffing. In order to come up with an effective selection, there is a need to employ measures that are effective attracting the adequate work force. The recruitment and selection process is said to be a continuous process through which a firm is trying to develop a pool of applicants that are qualified for the needs of future human resources though there is no existence of specific chances. The needs for the recruitment may be planned, anticipated or unexpected (Richardson 2010). Most of the small and medium sized enterprises employ the informal recruitment and selection process rather that the formal and systematic processes to come out with their preferred candidates. The informal process have the possibility of being biased which posses a great risk to performance of these organizations. Poor decisions on recruitment will always affect the performance of the organization and limit the organization’s achievement of goals (THE TIMES 100 2011). This article will address the aspects of a systematic recruitment and selection process, the importance of fairness in the recruitment and section process, human resource planning and labor markets in an enterprise in order to understand the effectiveness of a systematic recruitment and selection process. Finally, there will be a need to explain the benefits of a systematic and formal process of recruitment and selection. The informal recruitment and selection process may lead to recruitment of people who are wrong according to the vacancy. This will result to increased organizational costs, increased turnover on labor and most likely lowering morale of the current workforce. The unqualified candidates selected end up being discontented and are either sacked or leave voluntarily. Because of this, the managers will be required to spend extra time and money for more recruitment exercises. To prevent this, a need to adopt a systematic process through assessment of the specific role to be filled and the abilities and skills required to fill the role. For effectiveness of a business, the management must make sure that they have the right personnel. This is made possible through having the good job description of the vacant post. The employer must know the skills that are required for the new employee. It should be clear about the experience and qualifications of a potential employee. There should be absolute explanation of requirements in relation to qualities and qualifications for the vacancy. Job advertisement will also dictate the right applicants. The mangers or employers should also be aware of the transferable skills that are useful to the organization. Hence, employers need to be very specific on the advertisement of the vacancy. With an accurate and concise description of the expectations of the employee, there will be a good guidance on the type of employee required during the interviewing process. Consideration of these will simplify the recruitment and selection process where there will be a follow up of the stages as a routine in case of any vacancy arising (Boxall & Purcell 2000). Fairness in the recruitment process is essential as it determines the quality of the qualified candidate. Most of the informal processes of recruitment may lead to biasness because lack of a systematic process may make them to determine the requirements of the job based on the gender of the current holder of the job. If the current holder were a male, then one of the qualifications for the vacancy would be a male applicant. This means that applicants will be assessed not based on the essential qualifications of a job but on factors that will not lead to incompetent candidate. This process will limit the number of applicants on the grounds of gender. The informal process on recruitment and selection of candidate will be biased due to the type and range of information that will be collected on every applicant and variation of the effort that is given in collecting information such as referee reports and CVs. This is due to lack of a systematic process that will be identical to each candidate. Interviews are also the heart of the selection process used by a large number of employers. The biasness in interviews on informal process may be evidenced as the business favor applicants whose appearances and behaviors conform to the cultural norms of the dominant society. This leads to assessment of the applicants based primarily on personal qualities opposing the sound interviewing process that mainly focuses on job requirements. This shows that there is no equal opportunity in the informal process that is supposed to an integral part in the process of recruitment and selection. In order to eliminate biasness or to promote fairness, there will be a requirement of a systematic process of recruitment and selection that will include development of policies that will assist in the entire process, assessment of the needs to determine the organization’s current and future requirements of human resources that is, the requirements for each job category. The process should be able to identify the potential poll of human resource and the likely competition on skills and knowledge, assessing the qualification profiles based on job descriptions that identify the required abilities, skills, experience and knowledge and the responsibilities. A systematic process will also ensure there is documentation and identification of the process in a manner that adheres to the equality and other essential laws. These documentations will ensure conformity in the procedures and criteria for screening the applicants, criteria for long and short lists generation, criteria and procedures for interview panel selection, interviewing questions, interview scores and comments of the panelists and the results of the checks on references (Gennard & Kelly 1994). Planning of human resource in businesses practicing the informal process on recruitment and selection will not be effective as there are no standard guidelines to monitor their recruitment efforts with any change in the labor market. There may be occurrence of unexpected skill shortages that will require an abrupt recruitment and training process. Lack of human resource plan will affect the organization performance and failure in achievement of its goals. To avoid this, there is a need to adopt a systematic and formal process of recruitment and selection which follows a human resource plan. This will assist the organization to assess the needs of future recruitment, formulating programs in training, developing career development and promotion policies, anticipation an avoiding redundancies where possible, ensuring competitive salaries while controlling costs on staff, and assessing the future requirements of the organization (Boxall & Purcell 2000). During the changing of the labor markets, a business requires adoption of its retention and recruitment policies that will assist the business to effectively compete for staff with skills whose supply is short. Lack of a systematic process will make the business to lose attraction for the potential recruits ending up with a range of incompetent recruits. This will make the recruitment of candidates with specific skills to be difficult which calls for the need to redesign a particular job in order to make it more attractive. With a systematic and formal process of recruitment and selection, the employers will be able to make decisions on the best plan applicable for future recruitment. This will also give the organization a chance to counter any arising shortage on potential recruits with specific skills (Carroll et al. 1999). A systematic recruitment and selection process will be of importance as it will encourage and attract more and more applicants to the business. The talent pool of the applicants created will enable that there is a selection of the right and best candidate for the enterprise; it will determine the organization’s current and future planning due to its organized job analysis and planning of the personnel. The will increase the morale of employees and also create a link between them due to transparency in the process, the pool of the candidates for the job will be increased with the minimum cost maintained and the best candidate selected on competitive basis. Due to adherence to the guidelines on job description there is a reduced possibility of the successful candidate leaving the organization after only a short stay. There is increased performance as the business meets the social and legal obligations on its workforce composition and finally there is an increase in individual and the organization’s effectiveness due to a trusted and fair formal and systematic process of recruitment and selection (Agarwal 2011). In conclusion, the process of recruitment and selection is very essential in management of human resources in any organization as it may positively or negatively impact the performance of the organization. If an organization recruits an incompetent work force, the results will be dictated in its overall performance. Majority small to midsized enterprises employ the informal recruitment and selection methods that are mainly characterized by biasness due to lack of guidelines in job advertisement, job description and the process of interviewing. This negatively impacts their performance. To take care of this, there is a need for these enterprises to adopt systematic and formal processes of selection and recruitment. Documents Job advert Job description Personal specification Interview checklist: Induction program: References Agarwal, A 2011, Recruitment and Selection Process - Reasons for Its Importance, viewed 23 Nov. 2011, < http://ezinearticles.com/?Recruitment-And-Selection-Process---Reasons-For-Its-Importance&id=1663972> Boxall, P & Purcell, J 2000, ‘Strategic human resource management: where have we come from and where should we be going?’ International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 2, no. 2, pp 183–203. Carroll, M, Marchington, M, Earnshaw, J & Taylor, S 1999, ‘Recruitment in small firms Processes, methods and problems’, Employee Relations, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 236-250. Gennard, J & Kelly, J 1994, ‘Human Resource Management: the views of personnel directors’, Human Resource Management, vol.5 no.1, pp 15–32. Richardson, M 2010, ‘Recruitment Strategies’ Managing/Effecting the Recruitment Process, Pp. 1-23 THE TIMES 100 2011, Recruitment, selection and training, 23 Nov. 2011, Read More