Effective Procedures for the Recruitment and Selection of Staff - Essay Example

Why it is important for an organisation to have effective procedures for the Recruitment and selection of staff BY YOU YOUR ACADEMIC ORGANISATION HERE DATE HERE Recruitment and selection Introduction Recruitment is generally described, under most human resource models, as the process of creating a pool of applicants who are qualified for organisational careers (Mathis & Jackson, 2006). Selection is choosing candidates from the aforementioned pool who maintain characteristics which are highly important to success at the organisation. The importance of staff is often an under-valued resource within the business. However, recruitment and selection processes are vitally important as, in the long-term, the company can witness significant improvements in terms of cost, total business performance, culture and even corporate image if the organisation maintains effective recruitment and selection procedures. This paper describes the many advantages for contemporary organisations in maintaining quality human resources systems related to hiring employees. Issues of business performance There are tremendous pressures being placed on the modern organisation in terms of maintaining competitive advantage and sustaining strategic superiority over competing firms in the business environment. Total business performance and the management of internal quality are two primary objectives of most members of the management hierarchy (Williams, McHugh & McHugh, 2005). The total quality management focus involves aligning all aspects of the organisation, for instance from manufacturing (if relevant) to finance, all employees are expected to conform to a well-identified model of expected business performance. Ahmad & Schroeder (2003) offer that many organisations fail to recognise the importance of total quality management (TQM) in their recruitment and selection practices, thus providing the organisation with opportunities for failure. The authors propose that in recruitment, the human resource division in today’s organisations focus strongly on prospective employee technical skills but focus very little on the soft skills of employees such as personality-based and behaviour-based competencies. It is suggested that soft skills are most crucial to total quality management as it is these talents which determine levels of individual motivation or whether the candidate will evolve successfully to adopt the prevailing culture and attitude in the business (Ahmad & Schroder, 2003: 542). Under a less TQM-focused organisation, technically-skilled candidates can be selected for their individual, mechanical talents and perform to job role expectations efficiently. However, today’s businesses require leaders who must adapt to project team coordination, work with a variety of internal and external stakeholders as well as build a sense of belonging and camaraderie within the organisation. Less-developed HR models which focus on technical skills while negating the soft aspect of human behaviour will likely produce a less-efficient employee without the skills to conform to the cultural or social principles within the business. In this scenario, the company has utilised inferior recruitment models and selected individuals who are not measured on their behavioural competencies, potentially leading to long-term troubles with total job performance. Similar to the TQM approach to human resources is talent management, a total organisational process utilised in recruitment which not only aligns staff to roles, it aligns staff to people. One particular author suggests a “systemic interaction” between aligning people to both roles and others within the organisation, suggesting that talent issues cannot be solved until the organisation realises it must focus on both dimensions of total staff performance (Cunningham, 2007: 4). This interaction suggests that during the recruitment process, a clearly defined job description or job role expectation survey must be conducted to determine whether an individual with technical skills alone could perform the role and then construct the appropriate testing instruments necessary to uncover whether the expected behaviours and performance indicators exist for each organisational role. Without a performance-based approach to the HR function of recruitment and selection, it is likely the business is setting itself up for human resources failures internally. There reverse scenario might be suggested, referring to the soft and technical skills for new recruits, in which more personality-based candidates clearly display the image of the organisational environment but lack the necessary technical aptitudes for job role success. In this situation, the business has utilised a personality-based template in the selection process, undermining the importance of technical aptitude for successful job performance. It is relatively easy to determine that performance issues are a significant reality in today’s organisations and without a more diversified approach to measuring potential employee behaviours versus technical talents, the organisation will not be identifying the talent necessary to bring long-term competitive advantage. Wickramasignhe (2007) supports this notion by suggesting that profitability and even the longevity of an organisation depends largely upon the efficiency and sophistication of the workforce and without a solid HR model customised to fit the business’ needs it can lead to years of ineffective staffing practices and inferior business performance. In relation to business performance, Bentley (2007) provides that many companies simply do not have the adequate management capability to handle recruitment processes internally and must outsource this function to the recruitment process outsourcing system (RPO) to locate recruits for generalist internal roles. The reduction of costs and the efficiency provided by external consultants are the main reasons why outsourcing is considered (Bentley). RPO recruitment scenarios tend to reduce the cycle of recruitment and selection by as much as 10 days in high-volume business environments by removing the responsibility of external environmental scanning from internal HR professionals (Bentley). The RPO, generally, is most likely to have broader information of the external labour market and can provide support to develop an HR recruitment and selection model which links internal competency requirements to external candidate capabilities in a more efficient method. When companies today are concerned that their selected candidates lack the necessary skills to manage job responsibilities after the hiring process is complete, the recruitment process outsourcing function should be considered as a means of bringing in better talent in a shorter period of time so as to sustain competitive advantage in terms of staffing costs. McGovern (2002) supports this idea by suggesting that it is often cheaper to recruit externally than to promote from within the organisation, supporting further value to an RPO model of external staffing. Issues of culture and image The internal culture of a business is measured by the company’s mission, the attitudes and beliefs of staff and management as well as the elements of day-to-day organisational function. Culture appears to be a significant element of the recruitment and selection process as it serves as the symbolic value which the organisation wishes to portray. Segalla, Sauquet & Turati (2002) offer that many organisational HR leaders recruit other managers who represent an attitude-based value for the business while denying the more instrumental/fundamental HR recruitment strategy. Similar to the aforementioned soft and technical skill template, the failure to identify a more diverse group of management professionals in the selection process could be akin to organisational failure. For instance, a major retail organisation, Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), recruits and selects employees who fit the marketing image of youth, beauty, fitness and exclusivity. The company’s senior management officials have positioned the business as one of high quality and youth-focused beauty, creating an HR model where recruitment is based on whether the individual candidate is attractive, somewhat politically incorrect and thrives on the attitude of superiority through superior products and service. Under the A&F model of recruitment and selection, a wide variety of external attacks have begun to erode the business’ market share as disgruntled candidates argue against beauty-focused recruitment and other special interest groups calling for A&F product boycotts for its exclusive positioning tactics (A&F Case Study, 2007). In this scenario, the entire process of recruiting and selecting talent is based solely on marketing advantages, allowing the company to hire individuals who are not equipped to handle diverse job roles but can only portray the image demanded of senior management officials. It is vital to understand how marketing principles can greatly influence human resources activities and deny the more traditional models of HR selection and recruitment processes. Though Abercrombie & Fitch is a unique HR case study, it does serve to illustrate how failure to create diverse hiring policies can lead to potential long-term situations of reduced competitive advantage, loss of market share in competitive environments and an inability to sustain strategic advantage by having a pool of employees ill-equipped to offer support or innovation. Satisfying the candidate Benefits further appear to be of significant value to potential employees in the recruitment process, reinforcing the need for HR managers to structure benefits into this process to ensure short-term job satisfaction. A 2006 survey targeting a large sampling of workers uncovered that 80 percent of workers thought that flexible benefits worked as motivation to fulfill company needs whilst 61 percent cited that flexible benefit structures work to improve a company’s image (Employee Benefits, 2006: 45). Flexible benefits allow employees to determine the method by which additional benefit compensation is distributed, such as cafeteria allowances or exchanging pre-tax remuneration for a company car as a benefit (Thompson, 2008). It is important to discuss flexible benefits packages outlined in the recruitment process as Mathis & Jackson (2005) offer that qualified candidates for a variety of industries are becoming accustomed to more flexible benefits structures, especially in management positions. This is a construct of personal motivation and becoming accustomed to more diverse benefits schemes when looking for potential employers. Utilising a more rigid approach to benefit allowance in the HR function will likely only create the external perception that the business is not progressive enough or flexible enough in benefits compensation for the candidate to apply. In this hypothetical scenario, without a flexible benefits scheme incorporated into recruitment literature, the company could be facing short- or even long-term problems with turnover as employees take the training they have been provided and exit for a more progressive HR company. This represents a significant cost to the organisation when turnover ratios are high. Research, training and criteria “The inflow and outflow of people in an organisation is a dynamic process and needs to match the requirements of the organisation within the operating environment” (Wilson, 2005: 39). This reinforces the necessity of training in the recruitment and selection process to ensure that potential talent can meet the operational and attitude-based components of the organisation. Some might argue that training is an element of the process once selection has occurred, however training the HR professional to determine what actually creates value for the business as a form of criteria is just as crucial to establishing a workable recruitment and selection model. Pinnington & Edwards (2006) offer that HR managers must consider the realities of enterprise, customer service, loyalty, stability, caution (within a business context) and even sobriety in more docile operating environments. The HR manager must consider the following questions: Can recruitment tools identify business-minded candidates or customer-focused prospective employees and how can the organisation incorporate these? Do we need a person of dynamic calibre with an aptitude for teamworking in any given role or does the organisation require a more thrifty representative? These questions (and more) determine the basic linkage between job role expectations and long-term business image, which only reinforces the importance for HR professionals to consider these aspects of the external (or internal) labour market in order to locate competent staff members. This would point toward defects in establishing the right criteria necessary to find qualified candidates, emphasising an importance of training not just for the selected candidate, but for the HR manager responsible for recruiting them. In this scenario, the organisation’s future successes may rest within the hands of human resources, strongly emphasising that an appropriate model of recruitment cannot be established without a competent HR professional who works toward diversity of character rather than generic aptitudes in the hiring process. In this situation, the job audit considers the needs of the individual and the job itself and writes an appropriate, well-documented job description designed to meet the needs of a diverse candidate pool (Luszcz & Kleiner, 2003). Further, many companies today are utilising a new model of internal improvements and process measuring known as knowledge management, involving the linkages of information and communicating this information across the entire organisation. Haesli & Boxall (2005) suggest that HRM and knowledge management are inter-connected, requiring an HR professional to maintain an understanding of the whole of the business and all of its processes to facilitate organisational learning. When businesses become more knowledge driven, there is a push for utilising information to build innovation and cross-divisional technical skills. Under this premise, knowledge becomes the foundation by which success is built and the HR manager must consider methodology for incorporating knowledge into the recruitment and selection process. The situational interview, measuring how employees might handle detailed, hypothetical business scenarios, might be an efficient method for linking knowledge to the candidate to determine whether the individual candidate maintains an understanding of corporate political function and cross-divisional communications. Without a proper tool designed around knowledge-management principles, as with many aforementioned defects in HR design, it is likely that the candidate’s true talents cannot be measured. Conclusion Clearly, cost issues and business performance expectations are at the forefront of organisational strategy which link employee performance to organisational performance directly. This creates a definitive link between HR expectations and the recruitment and selection processes. Can the business maintain cost control and efficient internal competency without some adequate measure of candidate efficiency? Can the HR manager even design an appropriate series of instruments to measure these aptitudes? These questions, it would appear, are the fundamental aspects of recruitment and selection if the business hopes to maintain strategic advantage and reduce turnover ratios. Image and culture are integrated components of the human resources process also, identifying the importance of HR managers to understand the difference between organisational attitude and the individual personalities of potential candidates necessary for positive job role performance. Whether the business is more conservative or progressive in its approach to managing people and operations, it would seem that the majority of future job role successes are directly attributed to knowledgeable HR professionals and their individual ability to measure candidates accurately. A technically-minded candidate, for instance, in an organisation where high levels of teamwork and casual business relationships is required will likely not conform to the social aspects of work and leave a significant gap in future performance in that role. The outcomes could be an inability to keep existing customers who are frustrated by rigid personalities in the business or any number of negative situations. The failure in this scenario is on behalf of the HR manager for failing to develop appropriate tools necessary to link culture with competency. This is something that no organisation can afford to experience, strongly reinforcing why it is important to today’s organisations to have effective procedures for recruiting and selecting new employees. Bibliography A&F Case Study. (2007). “Stage 3 Case Study Evaluation – Abercrombie & Fitch”. The London College of Fashion. Retrieved 16 Aug 2008 from http://fashionforward.com/article/ Abercromb/506789. Ahmad, S. & Schroder, R.G. (2003). “The importance of recruitment and selection processes for sustainability of total quality management”. The International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Bradford. 19(5): 540-551. Bentley, Ross. (2007). “Perfect partners…picking the right mix”. Personnel Today, Sutton. 10 Jul 2007: 20-24. Cunningham, Ian. (2007). “Talent management: Making it real”. Development and Learning In Organisations, Bradford. 21(2): 4. Employee Benefits. (2006). “Flexible Benefits: Flex stops moping?”. London. 12 Jul 2006: 45. Haesli, A. & Boxall, P. (2005). “When knowledge management meets HR strategy: An exploration of personalization-retention and codification-recruitment configurations”. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, London. 16(11): 1955. Luszcz, M.A. & Kleiner, B.H. (2003). “How to hire employees effectively”. Management Research News, Patrington. 23(1): 19-25. Mathis, R. & Jackson, J. (2005). Human Resource Management. 10th ed. Thomson South- Western, United Kingdom: 202. McGovern, Patrick. (2002). HRM, Technical Workers and the Multinational Corporation. Routledge Advances in Management and Business Studies. Routledge, London. Pinnington, A. & Edwards, T. (2006). Introduction to Human Resource Management. Kogan Page, London: 118-122. Segalla, M., Sauquet, A. & Turati, C. (2002). “Symbolic vs functional recruitment: Cultural influences on employee recruitment policy”. European Management Journal, London. 19(1): 32. Thompson, Aguela. (2008). “Employee Rewards Watch 2008”. HR Zone. Retrieved 27 Oct 2008 from http://hrzone.com/benefits-and-administration.php Wickramasignhe, Vathsala. (2007). “Staffing practices in the private sector in Sri Lanka”. Career Development International, Bradford. 12(2): 108. Williams, W., McHugh, J. & McHugh, S. (2005). Understanding Business. 7th ed. Thomson South-Western, United Kingdom: 303-304. Wilson, John P. (2005). Human Resource Development: Learning & Training for Individuals & Organisations. CCH Incorporated, Chicago. Read More