Introduction
SABIC is the acronym for Saudi Basic Industries Corporation. SABIC is among the world largest petrochemical manufacturers. It began its working in 1976 by a Royal decree and since then its popularity is a miracle (SABIC, 2015a). It is one of the leading manufacturers of chemicals fertilizers, metals, and plastics. They know that when to do business and how to reduce the cost to sustain the group in sustaining growth (SABIC, 2015a). SABIC is a public company whose headquarters are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. SABIC has many affiliated businesses in Europe, America, Africa and Middle East (SABIC, 2015a). At SABIC, both traditional and technological means of attracting and hiring the employees from all over the world is used. The human resource department (HR) of the firm emphasizes on the training, development and growth of its global employees and local employees.
Shares of the company are not been issued to the public because 70% of the share amount is with government and rest 30% is with the private investors of Saudi Arabia and other countries of Gulf Cooperation council (GCC) (SABIC, 2006). Nowadays it has a wide spread of operations in the 40 countries with the manpower of 40,000 people (SABIC, 2015a). There are six different strategic business units (SBU) which are supported by shared services organizations and corporate departments (SABIC, 2006). These six SBUs consist of 18 affiliates that produce basic chemicals, intermediaries, PVC and polyester, fertilizers and metals.
Analysis of Recruitment, Selection, and Placement Practices and Process of SABIC:
The report is been written in accounting the process of recruitment and selection inside SABIC. It hires those kinds of people who can make a difference in the firm through brilliance, ingenuity and the ability to turn ideas into the reality. They consider it as the part of their culture and are very happy with it; because first of all they find the people with an open mind who can change the dream into reality.
After that, they give them such conditions in which the candidates’ talents flourish with state-of-the-art technology. They had vacancies for such people in every field of life. The recruitment and selection process is divided into seven steps (SABIC, n.d.). These seven steps are as follows:
In the first step of the process, the company searches for the positions to be open for receiving the application for the job. These positions are from different fields of life such as engineering, health sciences, marketing, supply chain, legal, finance, human resource, etc.
In the second step, the candidate applies for the job that fits his/ her career path through online application process. The candidate has to make sure of that, he/she had sent the most recent copy of the document.
In the third step, the application submitted by the applicants is processed by the recruiters. They short list the resumes with respect to job requirements and salary expectations. When the short listing of the candidates is done, then their profiles are shared by the hiring manager of the respected department. Hiring manager then calls for the interview and the candidates who are not shortlisted are informed with the help of email. This process takes the duration of 2 working weeks.
After the short listing selection of the candidate, an on a phone orientation interview with the recruiter is conducted. In that specific interview, the recruiter explains the terms and conditions of the cultural do’s and don’ts of the organization. After having consensus, the hiring manager invites some selected members for the face to face interview. This step of the process also takes the time duration of 2 weeks.
The details of the in-person interview are then dispatched to the selected candidates by courier. In that letter, the details of office location and the time and type of interview is written. This step is done in the time duration of 4 weeks.
When all the interviews had taken place, the interview team decides whether to call the candidate for job opening or not. After deciding to whom they want to call, they dispatch a letter to the selected candidate. The letter contains the information about the role he/she will perform in the company along with the compensation and benefits awarded. This step is done in the time duration of three weeks.
After dispatching the offer letter to the candidate, the recruiters requires the validation of the information submitted through the resume. When these are confirmed by a valid authority, then the candidate is notified of the date and time of starting his job.
After these all seven steps are followed and completed, the candidate is then welcomed in the SABIC for the starting their interesting journey. A starter guide is explained to the new worker before and after joining the company.
The company takes pride in hiring the employees from all around the world. Along with global hiring, it has the spirit of hiring the Saudi nationals who are eligible for the jobs offered. At the moment of this report been written, SABIC and its affiliates hold the high ratios of Saudi nationals employed with 100% employment of Saudi nationals in safety and security, 99% in management field, 79% in administrative field, 78% in finance field, 77% in technical field, 72% in IT field, and 63% in engineering (Alzoman, 2012).
SABIC is fulfilling all the needs of the future recruitment and selection process, i.e. it is offering jobs and conducting the first level assessments with the help of its website. HR Department of SABIC has successfully implemented the enterprise resource planning (ERP) for making any sort if changes done in management with the help of effective employee communication.
Being a global company, SABIC has a diversified workforce with respect to study level, cultural values, and ethnic contributions. They also allow diversity of employment on the basis of the education of the applicant. That is, they offer job opportunities to the people with different set of academic background. They had established certain boundaries for the applications to be submitted online or in person. They consider graduates with experience and fresh graduates with CGPA of 2.5/4 or 3.5/5. They also offer jobs to secondary school graduates who have scored marks above 75 – 80% in their respected stream of education (SABIC, 2015b).
In the year of 2013, SABIC began to expand the employment criteria by including women in the workforce. After the expansion thought, gender diversity becomes the point of interest on a global basis. Women hired for work will be professionally supportive through the help of initiative taken in 2013 with the name of SABIC Women Network (SWN) (SABIC, 2015c). This helps the firm in creating and keeps on working with the more diverse workforce for the attainment of goals in future.
However, there are several legislative issues in doing business in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). These legislations are with the hiring of global employees i.e. the employer of production firm in KSA must be marked with a label of color green, yellow, or red for the percentage of Saudi nationals hiring under the implementation of new law implemented by Ministry of labor in June 2011 (Saudi Legal, 2015). For a petrochemical business to be fallen under the green color label of work, like SABIC, at least 45% of the total workforce must be Saudi nationals.
All the global employees before they start doing their jobs are needed to get a medical certificate for identifying any sort of physical disorder or disease that will react to the chemicals used inside the production department of the company. All the medical reports are sent to the prime minister of KSA. Other standards of working are measured by the Saudi Arabian standards organization (SASO) (ITA, n.d.).
Regarding technology, there was no legislation passed until the year 2001. There was no safety for any electronic data safety in the KSA as the companies were dealing their legal issues. They were run by the laws mentioned in the Shariah. In the year 2007, the cyber-crime law was regulated inside the manufacturing firms so that their data can be safe from theft and defamation (Financier Worldwide, 2015). In that law, the cyber-crime was as punishable by the local crime law of KSA.
The legality of the social media networks is held as a question mark for the security of company’s data because a lot is happening at the head of cyber-crime through the social media websites. SABIC strives for more technological innovation, as the innovation in working patterns is the core of everything they do. That is the reason they are converting the manufacturing and testing department in technological advanced departments for allowing the product to be of more quality and sustainability for the consumers (SABIC, 2015d). Moreover, they are foreseeing the growth in their technology and innovation division, and they will be in need of a strong cyber-crime law that will secure their information of manufacturing from being leak out.
The RSP of SABIC Company was developed under the guidelines of international RSP. In international RSP, the process also starts with the search of the opening inside the company so that it can be filled up internally by an intern or it can be posted in the local paper or electronic media. After that they receive applications for the specified post, the selection process starts with notifying the shortlisted candidate for the first level interview. Moreover, then the complete international process of selection is followed. There is room for mental healthy people whether they physically disabled or not. SABIC is the equal employer and keeps no discrimination. The technological innovation in the part RSP will make the work easier for the recruiters and HR. Technology will help in retaining the resumes that are sent to them by the job hunters on a daily basis for future reference.
Use of technology has changed the process of recruiting the desired candidates for the opening in an organization. That is, the organization can now recruit through social media websites; online job portals, etc. In online recruiting, there is no need to develop a silo of resumes received from the candidates (SABIC, 2015d). The company will just make a connection in the content of resume with the specifications of the job and then will give a chance to the selected candidate for showing his talent in the first and second interview. After that, the selection and the required files for the selections can be generated electronically.
The future needs of the SABIC are aligned with technology and innovation practices in the petrochemical manufacturing. As per say of SABIC Vice Chairman and CEO on 28th November 2012, the use of new technology in production process and innovations in the design of product will help the company in meeting the global demand level (SABIC, 2012). He further says that to remain competitive the use of technology and innovation is necessary for future as the reduction in waste requires the technological innovations.
Conclusion:
In the end of the report, it can be said that, the recruitment and selection process (RSP) plays an important role in developing a competitive a workforce that will lead the organization towards achieving its goals successfully. It will only be done successfully when the officers of the human resource department understand the core business of the company and help the company’s department by providing them the competitive workforce.
The report discusses the RSP of a Middle East Petrochemical manufacturing firm with the analysis of difficulties faced by them in legal and technological terms of doing business. The report also elaborates that an online RSP is becoming the backbone of every successful manufacturing business of the world. The report also discusses the point of diversity inside the RSP of the firm that leads to a diversity of workforce at different levels of the organization work. It was further elaborated that legislation can put a negative impact on the RSP of the firm. It was also discussed that the use of technology has increased the easiness of doing business as technology and innovation were core of the company doing business. However, on the other hand, it raises the question about the increase in cyber-crime with the increase in the use of technology.
References
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Financier Worldwide. (2015). Cyber security and data privacy law in Saudi Arabia. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from http://www.financierworldwide.com/cyber-security-and-data-privacy-law-in-saudi-arabia/#.VYuVJBuqqko
ITA. (n.d.). Saudi Arabia. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from http://ita.doc.gov/td/standards/Markets/Africa,%20Near-East%20and%20South%20Asia/Saudi%20Arabia/Saudi%20Arabia.pdf
SABIC. (2006). Recruitment Online. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://recruitment.sabic.com/default.htm
SABIC. (2012). SABIC Sees Technology and Innovation as Key To Future Success Of Gulf Petrochemical Industry. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://www.sabic.com/corporate/en/newsandmediarelations/news/2012/20121128--SABIC-sees-technology-and-innovation-as-key-to-future-success-of-Gulf-petrochemical-indus
SABIC. (2015a). Our Company. https://www.sabic.com/corporate/en/ourcompany/ Retrieved June 25, 2015, from
SABIC. (2015b). Enterprise Recruitment System. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://recruitment.sabic.com/app_pages/UserRegistration/agreement.aspx
SABIC. (2015c). UNGC Principles. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://www.sabic.com/corporate/en/sustainability/ungc-principles
SABIC. (2015d). Technology And Innovation (T&I): Always Innovating For A Sustainable Future. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://www.sabic.com/corporate/en/technology-innovation/
SABIC. (n.d.). SABIC Recruitment Process. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://www.sabic.com/corporate/en/images/SABIC%20Recruitment%20Process%20EN_tcm12-5874.pdf
Saudi Legal. (2015). Employment Law. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from http://www.saudilegal.com/saudilaw/17_law.html
