Trends and Practices in Recruitment - Book Report/Review Example

Trends and Practices in Recruitment. Human resource is the pillar of every business organization. It deals with the most significant and fundamental support for the enterprise that is human labor. For any business to accomplish its set goals and objectives, it must plan and efficiently manage human resource. Human resource is the system of related activities and strategies that solely focus on successfully managing all employees in an organization. Human resource management ensures high productivity level of the firm and develops a high-performing workforce. The management ensures proper management through recruitment of skilled workers, adequate training of the recruited labor, and compensation of the workforce. Recruiting for the workforce in an organization is important and very expensive. Firms need to be careful and study the past, present and future trends in this process in order to obtain and manage skilled labor. The process of labor recruitment by major firms has changed significantly over the last few decades. In the past, office managers placed job advertisements in the magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals to attract interest in vacant positions in their companies. This form of the job advertisement attracted a number of job seekers who submitted cover letters, resumes, and application forms to their potential employers. According to Belcourt et al. (2014 p.200), these documents were vital for screening candidates in order to get significant information. They further say that during those days, resume and cover letters used to determine the suitability of an applicant for significant and salaried positions in the firm. Those documents were used to lock out unqualified people for the advertised position. For instance, a lack of one of the vital records was a sure way of eliminating applicants. The management manually examined the submitted resumes to determine qualified personnel for the advertised job. The manual evaluation of resumes to identify qualified workers proved a difficult and hectic task for many managers. This form of labor assessment and recruitment posed a serious challenge to evaluators who could not consistently apply the same standards for all candidates. Due to this, a new way of explicit evaluation and review of resumes was invented. Immediately after elimination of incompetent applicants, the managers used an assessment grid that used guesswork to select job seekers (Belcourt et al., 200). Through this system, candidates were ranked according to the suitability of their skills to the vacant position. The top applicant undoubtedly got the job. Currently, according to Belcourt et al. (200) firms have adopted the resume screening software to make the process less subjective. This software screens all applicants’ resumes and only approves the qualified ones. It produces a list of qualified candidates ranked according to their scores. The software records the most skillful and efficient candidate for the job at the top with the less accomplished at the bottom. Scoreboard presents skills of workers that gives employers an easy time in recruiting experienced workers. In addition, some firms use applicant tracking system instead. It is a complex system that consists of a resume screening feature and an automated feature that produces a questionnaire for applicants to fill. Monitoring system is used preliminarily to eliminate unqualified and inappropriate applicants for the job with the aim of reducing workload during selection. Although this software serves the managers well, it has loopholes that employees use to get past the screening process. In addition, managers have been enlightened and are keener on the human labor they hire. These professionals often research applicants’ names and reputations online (Belcourt et al., 201). Through social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, these managers get vital information of their potential workers. Such information plays a significant role in deciding whether to hire the employee or not. The use of online research is sure way of efficiently researching and getting information about applicants. Most managers are destined to use this system entirely in the evaluation of candidates and will abandon the manual and software screening method. Though helpful, this trend serves to compromise individuals’ privacy. As a result of the changing trends in the recruitment process, many companies have adopted new recruitment practices to ensure success of this process. Most companies currently are using online application system (Belcourt et al., 203). This system ensures availability of applications forms online for interested applicants. Through this system, most organization can reasonably and quickly obtain important and relevant information about the candidates. It results in faster recruitment of applicants that applied for the job. Also, other companies have resorted to using online screening test. It enables employers to efficiently screen candidates for the vacant position and also save time and resources. Use of these two methods, result in massive applications for the available job. With many people applying for the job, it leads to employee diversity. Besides, these managers conduct reference checks of the selected candidates (Belcourt et al., 212). During job interviews, workers are required to give contacts and addresses of reference sources the company can reach. Through reliable information from supervisors of the applicants’ previous job, managers can get a detailed report about the applicant’s habit and performance level. In addition, the report provides information on the previous pay and discipline level. Some employers go to the extent of checking background information of the newly recruited employees. Most companies use telephone checks to know the background information of the employees. This form is time-saving and provides an excellent candor. Also, most employers currently conduct pre-employment tests to employees. Applicants are taken through a vigorous and thorough testing of their job skill for the vacant position (Belcourt et al., 214). Tests such as job knowledge tests are done to test applicants’ knowledge and the conversancy with that particular job in question. Work sample test is done as well to see the productive level of the potential employees. The purpose of this practice is to ascertain recruitment of well-behaved, skillful, and competent employees. With qualified workers, firms are assured of consistent production of quality goods and services that will spur the company to greater heights. Looking at the present trends, it is clear that in future recruitment may not rely so much on academic qualifications, but skills and personalities of the applicants. Additionally, human resource managers are likely to adopt innovative technological means for recruiting employees. Given that human resource managers receive thousands of applications, they are bound to come up with efficient ways of narrowing down the candidates. An example of on-shelf product available in HR recruitment is using Skype to conduct interviews among other job recruitment practices. Skype is mostly used for candidates who are in far places. Instead of traveling from one country or town to the other to participate in an interview at the company’s headquarters, candidates simply avail themselves online for a video through Skype. Another on-shelf product available for HR recruitment is the employment of aptitude test to the candidates. This helps narrow down applicants in cases where many candidates have similar qualifications. References Belcourt, M., Singh, P. Bohlander, G., & Snell, S. (2014) Managing Human Resources (7th Edition). ITP Nelson, Toronto. Read More