Recruitment and Selection Process and Its Current Challenges - Assignment Example

nаging Реrsоnnеl and Нumаn Rеsоurсеs Аssignmеnt 1: Name of the Student: Name of the Instructor: Name of the course: Code of the course: Submission date: Маnаging Реrsоnnеl and Нumаn Rеsоurсеs Аssignmеnt 1: The world is dynamic in nature, so are the business practices. A business practice which was deemed great in 1950 turns out to be irrelevant in 2012 and so on. There have been various changes in organizational management. The following essay will focus on human resource management, and specifically on selection and recruitment. The sole purpose of the recruitment and selection process is to ensure that an organization gets the best employees in the market to work for it (Beardwell & Claydon 2010, p.51).There are various recruitment and selection models which have come up in order to ensure that an organization gets the ‘perfect’ employees to work for it. With this, the previously regarded ‘classic trio’ has lost its prominence in the modern human resource management field. The classic trio involves the three basic elements; application form, interview and reference. As at today, organizations can no longer rely on the classic trio to select individuals who are best suited for them. The following essay argues why organizations can no longer rely on this previously highly regarded recruitment and selection system. In order to acknowledge why organizations can no longer rely on the classic trio for recruitment and selection needs, it is important to understand the objectives of the recruitment and selection process. The basic objective of the recruitment and selection process is to enable an organization to get the most competent people in the labour market to work for them (Miglic 2010, p.40). Recruitment and selection are two separate processes which are all aimed at ensuring that the staffing process is successful. Recruitment is a process which involves attracting a lot of people to apply for a job position which is offered in an organization (Bach 2009, p.115). On the other hand, the selection process is aimed at picking successful candidates from the large number of people who took part in the recruitment process. Therefore, the recruitment process must have the ability to attract a pool of potential employees who possess the desired attributes. This is one of the main points of contention of the classical trio model of recruitment and selection. The question as to whether the classic trio is able to meet the expectations of the recruitment and selection process. In the staffing process, there arises another set of objectives which the selected recruitment and selection model must meet in order for it to be deemed successful; in that it meets the goals and objectives of the organization. One of the main objectives which come about as a result of the main objective of the recruitment and selection process discussed above is accuracy (Niazi 2009, p.2). It is the desired of each and every organization to find the person who meets the job requirements of a specific organization. For this reason, organization opts for a process which maximizes on this accuracy. Looking at the classic trio, this accuracy is not the desired degrees. For this reason, more and more organizations are deeming the classic trio as an inappropriate model towards reaching the objective, hence turning to other models or integrating several aspects of other models into the classic trio. The shortcomings of the classic trio with respect to accuracy will be discussed later in this essay. Another objective of the recruitment and selection process is equity. Ideally, a good recruitment and selection process should offer equal chances to all applicants of getting a specific job (Niazi 2009, p.2). However, this is not possible with the classic trio as it will be a later seen in this essay. Equity ensures that a recruitment and selection process is fair. Looking at equity and its relationship to the staffing process from the perception of a systems thinker; it can be seen that a fair process ensures that the image of the organization in the market is good. It should be borne in mind that the applicants for various job positions in an organization are art of the market base of the organization; therefore, treating the applicants well means treating the customers well. Another objective of the recruitment and staffing process is the buying in process. The buying in process ensures that an organization is able to forego some of its expectations and also include some other expectations / requirements in the staffing process without compromising on the ability of the recruitment and staffing process to meet the objectives and goals of the organization (Niazi 2009, p.2). The type of recruitment and selection method used determines the extent to which the buying in will be done and its appropriateness. The classic trio lacks this very vital aspect as it will be seen in this easy later. For the arguments as to why the classic trio is no longer considered as a good recruitment and selection method by organizations in the modern human resource management field, it is also important to understand the classic trio method and how it works. It has already been pointed out that the classic trio method consists of three elements namely: form application, interviews and reference (Koster 2002, p.5). This method of staffing has for a long time being regarded highly in the many organizations. However, organizations are turning away from this traditional model owing to the various demands and expectations which organizations have from a prospective employee. In order to understand the classic trio, it is important to analyze it with respect to its constituting elements. The following analysis will also explain the reason as to why the classic trio is no longer an appropriate method for organizations to get the best candidates to employ in their organizations. The first element of the classic trio is the form application (Koster 2002, p.5). Just as the name sounds and means, the form application elements consist of the actual application for a job position. The classic trio involved a manual form filling and application. In some instances, it was also recommended that prospective applicants make a hand written application letter which they were to deliver by either by hand or by post to the organization which they were applying to. This is a major problem associated with the classic trio as it is a hindrance to an organisation’s strives to get the best employee to work for it in the market. The second element of the classic trio recruitment and selection process is the interview process (Koster 2002, p.5). The interview process in the classical trio involves the physical questioning of the prospective candidate. One major weakness of the interview process is that no matter how effective the process is in identifying vital attributes about the prospective employee, it only finds out the information about one aspect of an individual; hence failing to get details from the other aspects of the prospective employee. The last element of the classic trio is the reference element (Koster 2002, p.5). This element involves the contacting of various individuals; most of which hold respectable positions or roles who have known the candidate over a specified duration of time. It is expected that the remarks from the referees talk more about the prospective employee. The main objective of this element is to give an organization the assurance that the employee being hired is of the desired attributes and that his or her previous performance and conduct is something to write home about. However, the lack of credibility of the referees and also the subjective nature of the referees renders this process ineffective as it is expected to be, hence leading to the inability of the classic trio to get the right individual to work for an organization. There are various shortcomings of the classic trio method of recruitment and staffing. These shortcomings are the reason as to why it is not possible for organizations to rely on the classical trio to get the right individuals to work for them. This has led to many organizations turning to such systems such as bio data, electronic systems and psychological systems (Armstrong 2003, p.415). The first shortcoming is experienced in the recruitment process, which is the initial stage of the staffing process. As pointed out previously in the essay, the objective of the recruitment process is to attract a large number of candidates who possess the required skills, character and knowledge to the company (Beardwell and Claydon 2010, p.10). Ideally, it is meant to attract as many applicants as possible to apply to the job position offered (Bratton and Gold 2012, p.197). Looking at the classic trio with respect to its ability to attract applicants, it can be seen that it has a very great shortcoming (Koster 2002, p.5). As seen above, the application forms are used in the classic trio for application. The manual fling and delivery of the application is major hindrance to an organization with respect to it being able to get the right individual to work for it. Owing to the fact that the modern world is a globalised one, with the various business organizations in it being equally global, it is important that an organization is able to get a large pool of potential employees from the entire world. Moreover, the need to increase the number of applicants to a specific job posting also raises an eyebrow as to the ability of the classic trio to enable the realization of this objective. As a result of this, various recruitment and selection models have come up, with electronic recruitment topping the list with respect to the most widely used recruitment and staffing systems used in the modern human resource management world (MaCreath & Bozionelos 2001b, p.12). Another shortcoming of the classic trio is its ability to select the best individual to work for an organization, hence failing in accuracy and reliability (Koster 2002, p.5). With respect to this, it can be seen that the classic trio system is subject to a lot of external forces which compromise on the efficiency of the process. In addition to this, the classic trio does not have the mechanisms in place to ensure that the recruitment and staffing process gets the best suited individual to work for an organization. For this reason, there has been the integration of new elements from other staffing methods or the overall establishment of new staffing methods. As it has been seen in this essay, interviews do not have the ability to test the whole person, in that they only test one aspect of an individual oblivious of the fact that a job will necessitate an individual to employ the whole person in the job. This has led to the establishment of such tests such as aptitude, psychometric, and team work tests. All these tests are aimed at ensuring that the candidates are tested for the whole person in them. Lastly, lack of equity is another major shortcoming of the classic trio method of staffing. The fact that the staffing process is subject to influences from forces from within and without the organization, it is eminent that the chances of fairness are compromised in the process. In addition to creating a bad image for an organization, it ensures that the organization des not get the right people to work for it. From this essay, it has been seen that the classic trio is ineffective in ensuring that an organization has the right people to work for it. In place of the classic trio, many of the organizations are turning to electronic (E) recruitment as a one stop solution to their staffing needs. E-recruitment is web based, hence it enables an organization to capture the global labour market in addition to increasing the pool of potential employees which an organization is able to reach to (MaCreath & Bozionelos 2001a, p.8).It also compromises of several tests, hence enabling an organization to select a candidate with respect to various aspects as opposed to the classic trio. It is also automatic, hence increasing fairness in its processes. The accuracy of the system is also high, hence enabling an organization to find an employee fit for a job description or an employee matching to the organizational culture, as per the emerging trends in human resource management today (Miglic 2010 p.8). Lastly, the process offers such programs such as employee training, induction and orientation hence leading to employee development (Irving & Williams 2001, p.3). In conclusion, it can be seen from the paper that the traditional classic trio is slowly losing its power in the human resource management of the modern times. This is due to the various shortcomings discussed in the essay. The essay has talked about the inability of the classic trio to attract a large pool of potential employees as per the demands of the recruitment process (Bratton and Gold 2012, p.197). The classic trio also fails in accuracy of selecting the best candidate, fairness in the selection process and efficiency. Therefore it is appropriate to conclude from this essay that an organization can no longer rely on the classic trio of application form, interview and reference to select which individuals would be best suited to work for that organization. References Armstrong, M., 2003. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Kogan Page Publishers, London. Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2012. Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice, Ch. 7 ( 5th ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Mahwah, New jersey. Bach, S., 2009. Managing Human Resources, 4th ed. Blackwell Publishing, Victoria Australia Beardwell, J. and Claydon, T., 2010. Human Resource Management: A Contemporary Approach, Ch. 5, (6th ed.), Harlow: Prentice Hall. England. Koster, M., 2002. Human Resource Management: Classical Selection Methods and Alternatives, Grin Verag Pub Nordestedt Germany Irving, J & Williams, D., 2001. Development: Training With Ill-Defined Objectives?, Selection Development Review, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 3-7 Niazi, A., 2009. Recruitment and Selection Process and Its Current Challenges, pp.1-6 MaCreath, C., & Bozionelos, N., 2001a. IT-Based Training: Investigating The Employees’ Perspective, Selection Development Review, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 8-11 MaCreath, C., & Bozionelos, N., 2001b. The Utilization Of ‘Sophisticated’ Selection Techniques: Results From A Case Study In A Large Organization, Selection Development Review, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 12-14 Miglic, D., 2010. Human Resources Recruitment In State Administration, Belgrade (Serbia), Mutapova Read More