Personnel Selection Process
Background
In human resource management, recruitment is one of the most critical activities for an organization. Especially, proper selection of candidates in managerial roles often determines the success and failure of a company as managers are the main decision makers (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). Acme Manufacturing is not different. Recruitment of managers in a manufacturing company requires special screening as the environment in manufacturing locations is susceptible to hostility than other parts of the organization. A robust selection and recruitment process should have multiple well defined stages.
Internal Environment
Promotion has a significant impact on the recruitment process. When any vacancy is created in the managerial cadre, first the recruitment team tries to find out suitable candidates from within the company (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). When employees see their co-workers getting promoted to managerial positions, they become optimistic and aware of their own career growth opportunities (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). Therefore, the first step in the recruitment process in Acme Manufacturing starts with internal job posting and selection of suitable candidates from within the organization. This adds to the employee morale.
Labor Market Condition
If no suitable candidate is found from internal postings, then the process of recruiting external candidates sets into motion. The first step of external recruitment is to understand the labor market conditions. Labor market conditions significantly affect the ability to attract and retain top talents, especially, in the managerial level. In a strong and high growth economy, Acme manufacturing needs to take additional measures to attract talent. Providing higher salary to new recruits will demotivate the existing employees (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). Therefore, temporary incentives, such as joining bonus and skill based bonus, can be used to attract top talents. In a slow economy, as a good number of qualified workers are available, the challenge is to find out the right candidates from a huge number of applicants (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). Therefore, it is important to understand the economy and labor market before deciding on the selection strategy.
Legal Issues
It is important to understand the laws affecting the hiring process of managers. The anti-discrimination laws prohibit discrimination of any kind based on color, sex, race, national origin and religion in the recruitment process. Age Discrimination Act prevents discrimination based on age to people aged over 40 years (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015). Additional labor laws related to pregnancy discrimination and Australians with disabilities act also need to be followed while recruiting for a candidate. Any violation of these laws may result in severe legal action against Acme Manufacturing, which may incur severe financial penalty. State laws, which may be different from central government laws in relation to work hours and wage distribution, should also be considered in the recruitment process.
Job Posting
Job posting is an important step in the whole recruitment process. This step ensures that the company is actually able to reach out to the potential candidates for filling in vacancies. The following job posting techniques should be used by Acme Manufacturing:
Employee Referral: Existing managers are aware of the job requirements. Therefore, they are the right people to identify suitable candidate for the jobs. Managers with several years of work experience have good internal and external network, which helps them identify and refer suitable candidates for the job.
Private Agencies: For managerial employees, taking help from private agencies and executive search firms provides better result than advertising a job in the open market.
Open Advertising: Apart from employee referral and job posting through executive search firms, open forums should also be used to attract candidates from the labor market. Advertisement should be posted in local newspapers and magazines. Additionally, Acme Manufacturing should also post its jobs in online job forums such as Monster, LinkedIn, Indeed and so on (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015).
Diversity
Apart from upholding the equal employment opportunity legislation, Acme Manufacturing recruitment process will also actively try to improve diversity in the managerial cadre. To do that, Acme Manufacturing will develop a recruitment method that will generate application from a variety of individuals.
Application
Once the job posting is published, candidates need to fill in an application form created by Acme Manufacturing. This application form will be available online and also in paper format. This form will enquire detailed information about the potential candidates regarding their experience and skill. However, at this stage, inappropriate information, such as race, skill, gender, disability, social security number, past salary level, and nationality, will not be gathered, because such information may create discrimination against the candidates during the recruitment process (Visa, Einolander and Vanharanta, 2015).
Interview
Interview is the most important process in the whole recruitment process. For managerial candidates, Acme Manufacturing will first conduct an over the phone screening interview to reduce the number of suitable applicants. Once suitable applicants are identified, they will have to appear for a group interview in which more than one interviewer will interview the candidates. Once the group interviewing the candidates recommends further recruitment processing, interviewees will meet the human resource manager to finalize on the salary expected and job responsibilities.
Background Check
Once the whole interview process gets completed, Acme Manufacturing will conduct a background check of the selected candidates through the assistance of a third party. However, in case of urgent requirement of candidates, managers will be recruited immediately, but will be in probation till their background check is completed.
Final Offer
Once the background check is complete, selected candidates will be provided with a joining letter and if the candidates decide to accept the job offer, then they need to sign a job contract before joining the company.
Overall Suggested Recruitment Process
Figure 1: The overall suggested Recruitment Process steps for managers at Acme manufacturing
Job Design for Management Positions
Although job design is an integral part of the recruitment and selection process, it is often executed as a separate process. Job design consists of three steps; 1) Job Analysis, 2) Job Design, and 3) Job Evaluation (Pavur, 2010). Acme Manufacturing can attract best of the talents from the labor market, but if the job is not well-designed, the recruited employees may soon leave the company.
Job Analysis
Job analysis requires job descriptions and job specifications. At this stage, the job is identified, job duties and responsibilities are determined, and job hierarchy and reporting structure are finalized. Additional parameters, such as working condition, social environment, and supervision requirements, are also defined at this stage. In the managerial cadre, it is important to analyze parameters such as autonomy of work required, industry best practices in similar roles and competitor practices (Pavur, 2010). Additionally, analysis needs to be done on the level of qualification required, the number of years of required industry experience and the physical, social and psychological characteristics required for the job. In Acme, these parameters will be analyzed through observation, questionnaire and interview (Pavur, 2010). Proper analysis of the job will ensure proper publicity, purposeful interview, appropriate medical examination and design of scientific promotion and transfer procedure.
Job Design
Job design is affected by organizational, environmental and behavioral factors. Properly designed jobs lead to greater job satisfaction, increased performance, reduced turnover, and greater profitability. For managerial jobs, job design should consider the below parameters:
1) Job Enlargement: Managers do not like a well-defined fixed role (Pavur, 2010). Therefore, job should be designed in a way that it has scope for horizontal enlargement through the addition of more responsibility and tasks.
2) Job Enrichment: Managers feel demotivated with mechanical job structure Therefore, it is important to add additional responsibilities and meaningful changes to the current job responsibilities from time to time to keep managers engaged and motivated.
3) Job Rotation: It is not always possible to enrich a job. In such cases, job rotation technique should be employed so that employees do not feel stagnant and demotivated about their job responsibilities (Pavur, 2010).
4) Autonomy: Autonomy is extremely important while defining managerial jobs. Although managerial jobs should have a well-defined hierarchy, managers should be provided with enough autonomy in terms of operational and tactical decision making (Pavur, 2010). Narrowly designed job position and limited autonomy are the two most frequent reasons for attrition at managerial level.
5) Group Dynamics: For managers, it is also important to identify the need for work teams as part of the jobs. Most of the managerial jobs require managing small and large groups. Therefore, it is important to clearly define the work teams of the job.
Job Evaluation
Job analysis and job design are dynamic processes. As the market need changes, those may require updates. The requirement of a job design update or a fresh job analysis is part of a job evaluation process. Job evaluation is an integral part of job design process. Job evaluation tries to find out if the salary offered, work-life balance, internal equity and external competitiveness related to the job design are at par or better than that of the competitors or not (Pavur, 2010).
Acme manufacturing will create a job evaluation committee that will be responsible for periodic evaluation of the jobs. They will be responsible for getting benchmark date, compensable factors and grading the jobs. Based on the job evaluation, the committee will provide suggestions.
Overall Suggested Job Process
Figure 2: Overall suggested Job Design and Evaluation Process at Acme Manufacturing
Compensation at Managerial Jobs
Managers are one of the most important groups of employees. Managers are responsible for day to day operational decisions, periodic tactical decision and even long term strategic decision for an organization. In other words, managers with their decisions can make and break a company’s future. Therefore, recruiting best mangers is of utmost importance. However, managers are the most well-informed among all worker groups and retention of managers requires more than just high salary.
Direct Compensation
Direct compensation is the first step in attracting managers. Higher salary often helps attract the best talents in the industry. However, higher salary often cannot retain employees. Direct compensation will have two parts; 1) fixed compensation and 2) variable compensation
Fixed pays satisfies just the basic needs of the managers. For mangers, fixed compensation should be around 60-80% of the salary, depending on the level. The higher the level, the lower the fixed compensation (Rosenbloom, 2001). Managers will get performance bonus as variable part based on their performance, which should be tagged to the departmental performance. Additionally, managers should be provided with special bonuses for their other contributions. Variable pay should have many small and large components such as performance bonus, one-time bonus, strategic initiative bonus and employee stock options (Rosenbloom, 2001). Variables pay helps keep the motivation level of high performing managers high, whereas other managers see an opportunity to increase their remuneration through better performance. It creates an environment of healthy competition and managers remain motivated.
Indirect Compensation
Managers often stretch their normal working hours for the benefit of the company and expects that the company will see their effort and compensate accordingly. They not necessarily always expect monetary compensation. However, often it is found that at managerial level, recognition of effort is more valued than monetary compensation. Therefore, it is important to introduce initiatives such as lunch with the CEO and company paid vacation for a week with family, which will surely motivate the employees (Rosenbloom, 2001).
Additionally, it is also important to ensure that managers are able to balance between their work and personal life. Work life balance is seen as big motivator for any employee to stick to a company (Rosenbloom, 2001). Acme Manufacturing should also introduce other intangible compensation components such as flexible work schedule, training and development programs and educational opportunities for future growth (Rosenbloom, 2001).
Final Compensation Design Process
Figure 3: Final Compensation Process
Conclusion
Acme Manufacturing is at a nascent stage of designing its recruitment, job design and compensation process for managers. Therefore, it is important for the company to fist establish the basic structure around recruitment, compensation and job design before introducing industry best practices. The first step will be to introduce a standardized structure for managers as discussed in the previous sections and then improve the individual process in the coming days.
References
Rosenbloom, J. (2001). The handbook of employee benefits. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pavur, E. (2010). Use job descriptions to support leadership. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 13(2), 119-122. Retrieved on 7th February 2016 from < http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10887151003776596?journalCode=hpmj20#preview>
Visa, A., Einolander, J., & Vanharanta, H. (2015). New Tools to Help in the Recruitment Process. Procedia Manufacturing, 3, 653-659. Retrieved on 7th February 2016 from <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235197891500298X>
