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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In an environment of rapidly growing most competitive challenges, every company has to

invest across the value chain to achieve world-class competitive capability in each of the
businesses in its portfolio. These strategic interventions results in progressive transformation
of traditional organizations into internationally competitive organization, where the focus is
superior value for all stakeholders. Each business within portfolio is continuously engaged in
upgrading competitive capability to effectively address growth challenges in the fast
globalizing Indian market, and over time in the world markets. The vision of every company
is now apparently is the creation of unique business models that foster international
competitiveness of not only its business but also the entire value chain of which it is a part.
This has made functioning of each organization much complex than the olden days.

Human resource management is a relatively modern concept. This involves a range of ideas
and practices in managing people it is defined and described in a variety of ways. HRM is
comparatively a new discipline to most countries but in the USA the term has been used for
over fifty years as an alternative name for personnel management. For most of that time, the
terms were used interchangeably.

The success of any organization depends upon the efficient manpower working in it.
Recruitment and selection procedure plays a very important role in the present business
concept. Since the company’s functions starts with recruitment and selection, if it is not done
in a systematic and effective way, all other functions will get affected. Recruitment forms the
first stage in the process which continues with selection and betterment with the placement of
the candidates.

Recruitment process

As stated earlier, recruitment refers to the process of identifying and attracting job seekers so
as to build a pool of qualified job applicants. The process comprises of five interrelated
stages: (i) planning, (ii) strategy development, (iii) searching, (iv) screening, and (v)
Evaluation and control. The ideal recruitment program is the one that attracts a relatively
large number of qualified applicants who will survive the screening process and accept
positions with the organization when offered. Recruitment program can miss the ideal in
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many ways: by failing to attract an adequate applicant pool, by under/over selling the
organization, or by inadequately screening applicants before they enter the selection process.
(Heneman, 1986) Thus, to approach the ideal, individuals responsible for recruitment process
must know how many and what types of employees are needed, where and how to look for
individuals with the appropriate qualifications and interests, what inducements to use or
avoid for various types of applicants groups, how to distinguish applicants who are
underqualified from those who have a reasonable chance of success, and how to evaluate
their work. Personnel Planning or Human Resource Planning as it is called in recent times is
required to understand the job vacancies that are available in the organization at any given
point. Barber (1998) discussed the recruitment function more closely related to the
organizations strategic human resource planning. From the organizations perspective,
developing a recruitment strategy involves three basic decisions, determining the target
population, determining the applicant source, and deciding how to attract applicants to the
organization. Recruiting is not just a game of human numbers anymore. For HR
professionals, this means going a step further than developing a recruitment plan. It means
working closely with management on shaping organization.
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Culture and looking closely at the job attribute preferences of its current and future
employees. One liability of the HR professional is to converse the attributes of a particular
job undoubtedly. This along with job analysis leads to Recruitment Planning from which
stage the actual recruitment process will start. The job analysis identifies the tasks,
responsibilities and outcomes required of a job as well as identifying the knowledge and
skills required to perform within the position.

Selection of consultants for consultancies

The selection of candidates for consultants is divided into two parts: the selection when a
consultant is hired and a continuous selection throughout the climbing of the career ladder.
There is a common, but controversial policy of “grow or go”. This means that there is an
ongoing internal tournament which sends signals to three different recipients: clients,
candidates and employees.

Fig. 1. Selection signals sent out by consultancies.

Because effects of a consulting service are often hard to measure, the reputation of a
consulting company is a central way to acquire new clients. Through the selection of best
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candidates the consultancy signals the guarantee of high quality. Additionally, a high
percentage of rejected candidates signals to the business environment that the company
chooses carefully and rationally. This means that consultants feel themselves as members of
the intellectual elite and are proud to be a consultant – and member of a particular
consultancy. The feeling of belonging to the company implies that in the selection process
also future tiers are involved. This allows a better assessment of cultural fit to the
organization. An additional benefit of the difficult selection process is the auto selection of
potential candidates. Candidates who are not self-confident will not enter the recruiting
process.

Training and development of consultants

Training and development of consultants as a HRM process consists of several subprocesses.

These are socialization, training, career development, coaching and mentoring. Consultancies
invest into training and development of their employees to match the ever growing customer
needs and to ensure their attractiveness as an employer. The companies, though, have to
answer two questions. Do the trainings give the consultants the desired knowledge and
develop the right skills? And are the trainings more efficient when single consultants
participate or in groups? As projects are in most cases team work it is desirable to have
trainings in groups, too.

Trainings can be divided into two phases. The first is the initial training which has the aim to
socialize the new employee and familiarize him with the “consulting philosophy” and
organizational culture. The second phase consists of further trainings for experienced
consultants. Trainings in consultancies focus working techniques, methodological questions
and strategic orientation as well as professional challenges which consultancies and their
employees face. The trainings are usually interactive workshops. This allows a high practical
value and the acquired knowledge can be used quickly in real life.

Career perspectives are one of the main reasons why candidates choose the job of a
consultant. Normally one will find around four or five career levels. It takes usually around
10 years to achieve the highest level of partner.
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Fig. 3. Career path in a consultancy

In current times dynamic new consultants rarely want to wait ten years to become a partner.
Moreover, quick promotions and advancement on the career path motivate consultants and
form a dynamic and competitive working environment. But this also has downsides during
harder times. This means that consultancies have to offer an alternative to a quick career to
their employees. This often allows to retain employees of specific knowledge and skills who
are not keen on a quick career. This can be combined with an expert career path where
suitable employees concentrate on professional development in their fields of expertise
instead of advancing the career path.

Statement of the problem

Recruitment and selection are the most critical and significant human resources function,
unless the organization has the best available employees, it will not be able to grow and
flourish in the market. The drive and motivational levels of the employees need to be high to
enable the company to attain its goals. All the steps of the recruitment and selection processes
are equally important in attracting and retaining the right talent.

Recruiting staff is a very costly exercise. It also an essential part of any business and it pays
to do it properly. When organizations choose the right people for the job train them well and
treat them appropriately, these people not only produce good results but also tend to stay with
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the organization longer. In such circumstances, the organizations initial and ongoing
investment in them is well rewarded.

Before starting a recruitment and selection process, job de-scription should be defined for
each role in the organization.

Policies and procedures should be defined and adhered to for the recruiting and selection
process Once procedures are clearly defined, hiring managers and supervisors should be
trained regarding the requirements of the process.

Recruiting staff is a very costly exercise. It is also an essential part of any business and it
pays to do it properly. When organizations choose the right people for the job train them well
and treat them appropriately, these people not only produce good results but also tend to stay
with the organization longer. In such circumstances, the organization’s initial and ongoing
investment in them is well rewarded. An organization may have all of the latest technology
and the best physical resources, but if it does not have the right people it will struggle to
achieve the results it requires. This is true across the whole spectrum of business activity.

Need and relevance for the Study

This study was carried out in order to find the recruitment and selection process activity
carried out for various client companies. Analyse the satisfaction of the company on the
recruitment process and to analyse the functioning of recruitment procedures identify the area
of improvement to make recruitment procedure more effective and analyse how the human
resources consulting firms helps the client companies to select the suitable candidates for the
job.

CHAPTER 2

OBJECTIVE OF STUDY

 To understand the process of recruitment .

 To Ascertain the Impact of Size of the Firm on Recruitment on Recruitment Policies .
 To know the sources of recruitment at various levels and various jobs.
 To critically analyse the functioning of recruitment procedures.
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 To identify the probable area of improvement to make recruitment procedure more

effective.
 To search or headhunt people whose, skill fits into the company’s values.

SCOPE OF STUDY

The benefit of the study for the researcher is that it helped to gain knowledge and experience
and also provided the opportunity to study and understand the prevalent recruitment
procedures. The key points of my research study are:

 To Understand and analyse various HR factors including recruitment procedure at

consultant.

To suggest any measures/recommendations for the improvement of the recruitment

procedures.

METHODOLOGY OF STUDY

The project is a systematic presentation consisting of the enunciated problem, formulated

hypothesis, collected facts of data, analysed facts and proposed conclusions in form of
recommendations. The data has been collected from both the sources primary and secondary
sources.

DATA COLLECTION

PRIMARY DATA

Primary data was collected through survey method by distributing questionnaires to

employees. The questionnaires were carefully designed by taking into account the parameters
of my study.

SECONDARY DATA

Data was collected from web sites, going through the records of the organisation, etc. It is the
data which has been collected by individual or someone else for the purpose of other than
those of our particular research study. Or in other words we can say that secondary data is the
data used previously for the analysis and the results are undertaken for the next process.

KIND OD RESEARCH

The research done by

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EXPLORATORY RESEARCH

This kind of research has the primary objective of development of insights into the problem.
It studies the main area where the problem lies and also tries to evaluate some appropriate
courses of action.

SAMPLE DESIGN

A complete interaction and enumeration of all the employees was not possible so a sample
was chosen that consisted of 30 employees. The research was taken by necessary steps to
avoid any biased while collecting the data.