Recruitment and Selection - Essay Example

Heavy reliance on internal sources is thought to perpetuate the racial, gender, and age composition of the workforce. Thus, a balance between promoting current employees and hiring outside applicants is needed. Newspaper ads. Running ads in periodicals such as local newspapers or professional journals is a common method of recruiting employees. In fact, in a survey of 188 organisations, personnel executives claimed newspaper advertising to be one of the most effective avenues of applicant recruitment (N.A. Mason & Belt, 1986).

Although little research is available, there is plenty of expert advice on the best way for an employer to write recruitment advertisements. Kaplan, Aamodt, and Wilk (1991) tested some of this expert advice by first determining the characteristics of help-wanted ads and then comparing the design of actual help-wanted ads in 10 newspapers with the quantity and quality of applicants who responded After examining thousands of ads, Kaplan et al (1991) found 23 advertising characteristics, as follows: Ad Design: company emblem included, creative illustrations used, creative wording, white space around ad, job title enlarged or in bold face.

Legal Information: affirmative action statement, EEO statement. Information about the Job: Benefit package listed, job title mentioned, salary description, multiple jobs listed in the same ad. Information about the Company: company address listed, company description included, company name mentioned, phone number listed. Applicant qualifications: education requirements, personality traits desired, pervious experience requirements, skills needed by applicants, salary history requested. After comparing the presence or absence of the 23 characteristics with the presence or absence who responded to the ad, the researchers found that ads displaying the company