EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
When attempting to fill a position in any business, the recruitment process is integral. In order to find the best person for the job, you have to find someone who is qualified, educated, and possesses the necessary job skills and temperament to survive in that environment. Recruitment methodologies are the means by which companies and businesses perform this recruitment process, and can mean the difference between getting the right or wrong person for the job. In this paper, various recruitment methodologies are overviewed, and their effectiveness in sourcing a qualified job candidate is evaluated.
EVALUATING THE ROLE OF RECRUITMENT
Before a recruitment process can begin, there are several questions that the employer must ask about the position to determine its importance or effectiveness. The role itself must be evaluated first, including how important the position is and how quickly it needs to be filled. Evaluating people is next, determining the kind of person that would be best suited to this position. Positioning recruitment at a certain level of importance in your business can dictate the amount of resources and importance allotted to it. It is also important to staff a recruiting department with people who are passionate and focused on the job at hand, and nothing else (Brown, 2011).
Assessing the type of potential candidates is also a very important step to make before beginning recruitment. The sort of people a company is looking for needs to be assessed; questions must be raised as to the best way to determine those factors. The requirements of the candidate are also important to consider during this process, especially as they pertain to how important the position is to the business. Equal opportunity needs to also be considered heavily, as candidates must not be consciously or subconsciously excluded due to ethnicity. When assessing candidates, it is necessary to provide trained psychological assessments that will offer useful results and accurate appraisals of a candidate’s preparedness (Brown, 2011).
RECRUITMENT
The steps to recruitment include notifying the public regarding the job opening(s) that you are attempting to fill. This is an attempt to provide yourself with as wide a talent pool as possible, giving employers a greater chance of finding the candidates with the best and most appropriate knowledge and skills. Next, information should be provided, but just enough to attract those who are actually qualified to the job, disqualifying undesirable candidates. This can save an incredible amount of time and money when recruiting (Gia, 2009).
Quite a few factors exist that can affect one’s efforts to recruit, including the organization’s image, how attractive the job is, the cost of recruitment and influence from the government. Finding qualified personnel would be difficult if the company hiring is known for being disrespectful to its employees, or engaging in unsavory or unethical behavior. The more reputable the organization is, and the more coveted the job, the more applicants will be likely to apply to it. Furthermore, fewer applicants will apply to a job they feel they cannot advance in; the company must have a reasonable rate of outside employment instead of inside promotion (Gia, 2009).
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL RECRUITMENT
Before beginning an external recruitment process, it is often common practice to engage in an internal recruitment process. This is often advantageous due to the quick and efficient appraisal of the employee’s skills and temperament, given their existing employment within the company. They know the company better, and are already well entrenched in the corporate culture. What’s more, it provides the morale-boosting image of promoting within the company and providing opportunity, thus creating better public relations, despite the mild danger of infighting among employees for the position. It also saves quite a bit of time and money compared to external recruitment. This type of recruitment can be done through internal job postings, on a bulletin board or company intranet, through transfers or promotions, etc. A temporary in-house employment agency can also be consulted to fish out the proper candidates inside the company for this job (Gia, 2009).
Various recruiting methods are employed in this process. First, there are active recruiting methods, wherein companies send representatives to presentations, open door events, recruiting days and job fairs in order to give potential candidates more face time with the company, learning more about them and showing the company more about them in turn. First impressions are made with this tactic, and interviews can be conducted on-site if needed. Headhunting is an active recruiting method; this is when specific human resources personnel actively seek out candidates to fill the position, regardless of whether or not they had applied (UK Directory, p. 194). This is often done when the position needs to be filled immediately, and time is a factor. Joint ventures and acquisitions are an active way to recruit employees, as they are carried over in the buyout or the joint venture itself (Gia, 2009).
When implementing passive recruiting methods, the process is much slower and much less efficient, though cheaper and less time consuming to perform. Advertisements for jobs are sent out in various media, from print to digital; while it is very fast and easy in this day and age to advertise job openings with the help of the Internet, it leaves an incredible amount of initiative to the candidate. It is possible for the quality of the results to be lackluster, and a great deal of time can pass before qualified candidates can be found. (Gia, 2009).
CONSIDERING RECRUITMENT METHODOLOGY
When implementing a recruitment methodology, an employer must consider the inherent systemic discrimination that might occur as a result of the process or some aspect of it, however inadvertent. Different recruitment methodologies must be employed from time to time, or there is the possibility of leaving out members of protected groups, who are not able to access that source as readily as others can. There are four factors to take in considering a recruitment methodology: Amount of money available, the speed at which the opening must be filled, the size of the audience reached, and its exemption level (Arthur, 2011).
The recruitment budget is an insanely large factor in what options human resources has to bear. If one has a large budget, they can try to put it into display ads and search firms, but those have a very dicey level of success when fishing out candidates. However, there may be some effective methods that do not cost anything at all (Arthur, 2011).
Secondly, there may be the likelihood of even a valued and long-standing employee leaving the company for whatever reason, necessitating a fast and swift filling of that position to keep the machine running smoothly. Particularly if an employee leaves without notice, it becomes especially vital to locate a new worker in a short period of time. The recruitment sources that are most likely to get results immediately should be emphasized in these instances; there is no time to waste attending job fairs, running open houses and the like. However, you may experience more success going through the pool of past applicants that have gone through assessment, as they may still be available, they may still be interested in working for you, and they have already been evaluated in the past and determined to be fit for working there (Arthur, 2011).
Next, the level of specialization of the job can determine just how wide a swath of the population needs to be reached for recruitment. Obviously, reaching as wide a job pool as possible gives a greater likelihood of finding those qualified individuals. What’s more, interviewing as many applicants as you can makes it possible to determine what kind of person you are looking for, if you are unsure. Newspaper ads, journals, search firms and employment agencies can help provide a wider berth for recruitment needed in these instances (Arthur, 2011).
Finally, recruiters must consider the exemption level of the position when finding candidates. If you need to fill a position with a nonexempt candidate, you may need to find other methods of working than you are used to. Employee referrals, guidance counselors, classified ads and employment agencies are commonly very effective ways to find these candidates. Walk-in candidates often want nonexempt employment, so bear that in mind when considering them (Arthur, 2011).
Among these factors, there are recruitment sources that can match your criteria and others that will not. Considering the above factors is entirely crucial to locating the recruitment methodology that will work for the position being filled and the circumstances of the recruitment. In the case of newspaper ads, they can cost a lot of money, but they are more likely to produce immediate candidates for consideration – therefore, if you do not have a lot of time to fill a position, but a larger than usual recruitment budget, it would be a good idea to implement. The aggressiveness of finding a job opening is another factor – active recruitment sources will work with you to seek out employees, instead of passive sources which wait for employees to come to you if they feel like it. The latter option also leaves finding a qualified candidate all the more up to chance (Arthur, 2011).
TRADITIONAL VS. E-RECRUITING
In today’s information age, recruiting is a more comprehensive practice than ever. In the past, newspapers and classified ads were the primary way to advertise a job; the only people who heard of the job opening were those who saw that ad in the paper that day. Today, digitalized classified ads create a more thorough, searchable database of open jobs that virtually anyone can access. Job seekers also are given the ability to put their resume and information on the Internet for companies to find for themselves, or easily access when contacted. Digital applications have replaced physical applications, and people can fill out a form online in order to send it to human resources. This is known as e-recruiting, and it is a much more efficient and expedient way to recruit than traditional recruiting (Gia, 2009).
E-recruiting has done more to change recruitment methodologies than simply change applications to digital forms. Skill tables allow for the definition of specific job requirements; when an applicant cannot match those requirements, they are removed from the pool automatically, saving a lot of time (Gia, 2009). Nearly 95% of employers in the United States recruit online (Arthur, p. 93).
Traditional recruiting, on the other hand, works mostly with old-fashioned physical media and standard methods of recruitment – employee referrals and newspaper ads number among these sources. Hiring an employment agency provides a skilled base of people to help find candidates for the positions sought, but agency representatives must be educated in the various aspects of one’s company and the job opening itself, as that will better equip them to find qualified candidates that will meet the needs of the company quickly and efficiently (Arthur, 2011).
Recruiting firms are often compensated in unique ways, such as gain sharing or stock options; this provides them with a vested interest in finding skilled staff for the company, as the equity they are given as payment could depend on the efficiency of the workers they hire. Therefore, finding a skilled and qualified candidate benefits both employer and recruiting firm alike (Arthur, 2011). This can also prevent them from referring candidates in order to just fill out quotas (Abeysekera, 2011).
OTHER RECRUITMENT SOURCES
In addition to the traditional and electronic methods of recruiting, there are several different recruitment methodologies that could be utilized that are somewhat outside the box. First of all, clients and customers can refer employees, providing personal recommendations to the employer regarding their work ethic, ability to satisfy customers, and work efficiency. Often, hiring an employee based on a client recommendation can work out, and the client is then further invested in the company; refusing the recommendation, however, can lead to a more tentative business relationship. At the same time, it is a mistake to hire a potentially troublesome employee merely for the sake of appeasing a client (Arthur, 2011).
Direct mail can be an effective, if risky, way to field individuals who match the job requirements. Finding mailing lists through business directories, magazine subscription data et al. and sending job applications and offers to these candidates through snail mail often yields a .5 to 2% response rate. In order to perform this, you need to create a comprehensive brochure of the company and the position, and get a mailing house to perform the actual mailing of the materials, provided the job is too large to be handled in house. However, this often leads to disaster and very low rates of return, as many people simply throw it away as spam without even looking at it. There is the possibility of including a teaser to grab their attention, but that can make them even more reticent to open it or consider it a legitimate offer. In the end, it is best to avoid going through the trouble of engaging in a direct mail recruitment campaign (Arthur, 2011).
SMALL BUSINESS RECRUITING
As opposed to larger corporations, small businesses have a much different approach to make regarding recruitment methodologies. A greater emphasis on strategy must be placed, as small business have a smaller pool of resources to bear, and so must use what limited resources they have more effectively. Internal recruitment is often a much more common practice in small businesses, as it is much easier for employers to have a closer understanding of their employees, due to the smaller talent pool from which to work. Recruitment personnel also have a more intimate understanding and relationship with existing employees, and so would understand which candidates would be best for new or vacant positions. When selecting these candidates, multiple recruitment and selection methods must be utilized in order to find the most appropriate candidates – this is true regardless of the size of the business (Stewart and Beaver, 2004).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, discovering the right recruitment methodology can mean the difference between success and failure in a business – employees are the lifeblood of a company, and not hiring the right people can ensure its continued prosperity. When picking a recruitment methodology, the available budget, the job position needed, the speed at which it needs to be filled, and other factors have to be taken into consideration. Locating the types of candidates who would be ideal for the position involves proper research and broad advertisement of the job to the appropriate markets, so as to get a bigger pool of potentially qualified candidates. From there, recruitment personnel can whittle down the options until the ideal candidate is found to fill the position.
References
Abeysekera, I., 2011. Reputation building, website disclosure and the case of intellectual capital . Bingley [England: Emerald.
Arthur, D., 2001. The employee recruitment and retention handbook . New York: AMACOM.
Brown, J., 2011. The complete guide to recruitment a step-by-step approach to selecting, assessing and hiring the right people. London: Kogan Page.
Charvat, J., 2003. Project management methodologies: selecting, implementing, and supporting methodologies, and processes for projects. New York: Wiley.
Gia, K., 2009. Talent Management: Recruitment Methodologies - an Overview. München: GRIN Verlag GmbH.
Stewart, J., & Beaver, G., 2004. HRD in small organisations: research and practice. London: Routledge.
Uk directory of executive recruitment consultants, 2002. S.l.: Executive Grapevine Inter.
