HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT

Recruitment and Selection

 Concept of Recruitment

□ Important part of the acquisition component of HRM

□ Related to both HRP and selection

□ Represents the first contact between organizations &

prospective employees

□ Process of finding right people for right positions at the

right time

□ Process by which a job vacancy is identified and

potential employees are notified

□ The nature of the recruitment process is regulated and

subject to employment law

□ Main forms of recruitment through advertising in

newspapers, magazines, trade papers and internal
vacancy lists.
2
 Definition

Recruitment is the process of

discovering potential candidates for
actual or anticipated organizational
vacancies.
Robbins/Decenzo

The process of locating, identifying, and

attracting capable applicants
Robbins/Decenzo 3
Core versus contingency
personnel

Core personnel
■ Employees hired in the “traditional” manner

■ Considered permanent employees

■ Included in the organization’s payroll

Contingency personnel
■ Employed by a supplier agency, and are “loaned”
to the organization

■ Not included in the organization’s payroll

■ Workers’ salaries and benefits are paid by the

supplier 4
Factors Affecting Recruitment
Practices

External Environmental Internal Environmental

Influences Influences

□ Government requirements, □ Strategy

laws
□ The union
□ Economic conditions/
domestic and international
□ Labor market conditions
□ Competitiveness
□ Location of the organization
□ Goals
□ Job Design (skill
requirements)
□ Organizational culture
□ Nature of the task
□ Work group
□ Leader’s style and
experience
□ Time/cost constraints

5
Methods of External Recruitment
□ Referrals ("You've got friends, we
want to meet them")

□ Walk-ins/ Unsolicited applicants

(Supply of stockpiled applicants)

□ Advertising: (Radio, TV,

newspapers and journals, internet
both want ads and blind adverts)

□ Employment Agencies

□ Executive Recruiters/
professional organizations like
Labour Unions

□ Schools, colleges and universities

□ Internet

□ Labor Unions

□ Immigrants
6

□ Job Fairs
Advantages of External
Recruitment

□ Large pool of qualified HR

□ Organizational revamp (new ideas,

skills etc.)

□ Balanced HR mix

□ Fairness in recruitment
7
Disadvantages of External
Recruitment

□ High cost

□ Poor employee morale

□ Adaptability problems

□ Wrong selection

8
Method of Internal Candidates

□ Job Posting
(Publicizing an open job to employees and listing it's attributes
like qualifications, pay rate etc.)

□ Personnel Records

□ Skills banks
(List of current employees with specific skills)

□ Hiring Employees - the Second Time Around

(Rehiring former employees who'd left voluntarily for better
jobs)

□ Succession Planning

□ Data Banks/Skill Inventories /Replacement Charts

□ Supervisor Recommendations
9
Advantages of Internal
Recruitment

□ Knows a candidate's strengths and weaknesses

□ Good public relations
□ Boosts morale when employees see promotions as
rewards for loyalty
□ Encourages ambitious workers
□ Lesser error as performance already a witness
□ Lesser costing
□ Not much orientation or training required
□ Good training device for developing middle & top level
managers
□ More commitment to the company

10
Disadvantages of Internal
Recruitment

□ Can be dysfunctional if internal workers are inferior

compared to outside
□ Tiring & not much change to workers
□ Could fail to bring in "new blood“
□ Infighting among rival candidates, decrease in morale
□ Vacancy information itself could be hidden if
information flow is traditional
□ Limited choices, opportunities
□ Promotes favouritism
□ Discontent unsuccessful applicants
□ "One of the gang" insider attitude

11
Alternative to Recruitment

□ Overtime

□ Employee leasing (outsourcing)

(individuals hired by one firm and sent to work in
another for a specific time)

□ Temporary employment
(meets short-term HRM fluctuation needs)

□ Independent contractors
(consultants to do specific work at a location on or
off the company's premises) 12
□ Overtime
■ Organizations avoid the cost of
recruiting and having additional
employees
■ Employees earn additional income
■ Potential problems include fatigue,
higher accident rates, and increased
absenteeism
■ Continuous overtime often results in
higher labor costs and reduced
productivity
13
□ Outsourcing
■ Sometimes called “staff sourcing”
■ Involves paying a fee to a leasing company or
professional employer organization (PEO) that handles
payroll, benefits, and routine HRM functions
■ Especially attractive to small and midsize firms that
can’t afford a full-service HR department
■ Can save 15 to 30 percent of benefit costs
■ Exercise care when choosing a leasing company;
many are financially unstable

14
□ Temporary Employment
■ One of the most noticeable effects of the downsizing
epidemic and labor shortages of the past two decades

■ “Just-in-time” employees staff all types of jobs

(professional, technical, and executive positions)

■ Nearly 7,000 temporary employment agencies in the U.

S. have been in business for more than one year

15
□ Major advantages of using temporary workers:
■ Relatively low labor costs
■ Easily accessible source of experience labor
■ Flexibility

□ The cost advantage stems from the fact that

temporary workers do not receive:
■ Fringe benefits
■ Training
■ A compensation and career plan

□ Temp workers do not know the culture or work flow

of the firm

16
 Selection - Concept

• Process of gathering information about job

applicants in order
– to determine who should be hired &
– who should be rejected

• Applicants short listed –

most suitable candidates selected

• Selection process –
varies according to organisation

• Should be impartial & undertaken in an objective

way
– there should not be any mistake in selecting the
right person to fit the right job
17
 Definition

• Process of gathering information for the purposes

of evaluating and deciding who should be hired,
under legal guidelines, for the short and long-term
interests of the individual and the organization
Schmitt & Schneider

• Selection is the process of choosing among people

who apply for work with an organization.
Wendell French

• Selection activities predict which job applicant will

be successful if hired.
Decenzo and Robbins
18
Selection Process

Step 1
Preliminary screening: application blank &
interview
``

Step 2
Employment
interview

Step 3 Step 4
Employment tests Background & reference checks

Step 5
Selection decision

Step 6 19
Physical Examination
The Selection Process
Step 1
Preliminary screening: application blank & interview

Initial Screening
• Screening interview:
– Describe the job in detail so the
candidates can consider if they are really
serious about applying

• Sharing job description

information frequently
– encourages the unqualified or marginally
qualified to voluntarily withdraw
20
 The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 1
Preliminary screening: application blank & interview

Completing the Application Form

• Company-specific employment form used to generate
specific information the company wants

• May require only the applicant’s name, address,

telephone number etc.

• Reduces the number of applicants that need to be

interviewed

• Weighted Application Forms:

– Uses relevant applicant information to determine the
likelihood of job success

– Individual form items such as years of schooling, months

on the last job, salary data for previous jobs, etc.

– Helps recruiters to differentiate between potentially

successful and unsuccessful job performers
21
The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 2
Employment interview

Employment Interviews
• A selection device used to obtain in-depth information about
a candidate
• Designed to probe areas not easily addressed by the
application form
• Applicant may be interviewed by HRM interviewers, senior
managers, potential supervisors, etc.
• Impression Management:
– Influencing performance evaluations by portraying an image
desired by the appraiser
• Behavior Interview:
– Observing job candidates not only for what they say but for how
they behave
• Realistic Job Preview (RJP):
– A selection device that allows job candidates to learn negative as
well as positive information about the job and organization…
– e.g. brochures, films, plant tours, work sampling, etc .
22
 The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 3
Employment Tests

Employment Tests
• Since the mid-1980s, employment
tests have been used

• Hundreds of test can serve as

selections

• E.g. intelligence test, spatial ability,

perception skills, motor ability,
personality traits etc.

23
 The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 4
Background & Reference Checks
Background Investigation/Reference Checks
• The process of verifying information job candidates
provide

• Obtaining needed information may be difficult, especially

when there may be a question about invading privacy

• Internal investigation:
– Task of questioning former employers, personal references,
etc.

• External investigation:
– Involves using a reference-checking firm

• Qualified privilege:
– The ability for organizations to speak candidly to one another
about employees 24
The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 5
Selection Decision

• Individuals who perform

successfully in the preceding steps
are now considered eligible to
receive the employment offer

• Who makes the final employment

depends on several factors

• A tentative job offer that becomes

permanent after certain conditions
are met 25
The Selection Process (…Cont’d)
Step 6
Physical Examination

Medical/Physical Examination
• An examination to determine an
applicant’s physical fitness for
essential job performance

26
 The Selection Process (…Cont’d)

Now it’s up to the Candidate

• Individuals appear to move
toward matching their work with
their personality

• An individual’s perception of the

company’s attractiveness

27
Employment tests
□ An objective and standardized measure of
a sample of behavior that is used to gauge
a person’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and
other characteristics (KSAOs) in relation to
other individuals.
□ Obtaining Reliable and Valid
Information
■ Reliability
□ The degree to which interviews, tests, and
other selection procedures yield
comparable data over time and alternative
measures.
■ Validity
□ Degree to which a test or selection
procedure measures a person’s attributes.
Sources of Information about
candidate

□ Application Forms □ Integrity and

Honesty Tests
□ Online Applications
□ Medical Examinations
□ Background
Investigations □ Employment Tests
□ Polygraph Tests □ Interviews
Types of tests
□ Tests of Cognitive Abilities
□ Intelligence Tests
- Tests of general intellectual abilities
- Test range of abilities including memory,
vocabulary, verbal fluency,numerical ability
□ Tests of Motor and Physical Abilities
- Measures motor abilities such as finger dexterity,
manual dexterity and reaction time
- These include static strength(lifting weights),
dynamic strength(like pull-ups),body co-
ordination(jumping rope),and stamina
□ Specific Cognitive Abilities
- Tests measuring specific mental abilities such
as inductive and deductive reasoning, verbal
comprehension, memory and numerical ability
- Measures of a person’s capacity to learn or
acquire skills
- Can detect peculiarity or defects in a person's
sensory or intellectual capacity
- E.g. GMAT, Mechanical Aptitude Test, etc.
- Measures the potential of individuals to
perform given the responsibility
□ Measuring Personality and Interests
- Measures basic aspects of applicant’s personality
such as introversion, stability and motivation
- Tests might either be projective or self reported
- Provides clues to an individual's value system,
Emotional Intelligence, motivation other personal
characteristics
- These tests help to find prospect of job success or
failure of the candidate in the future
- Predicts inter-personal capacity & success for
supervisory or managerial jobs
□ The Big Five
- Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
neuroticism/emotional stability, openness to
experience
□ Achievement Tests
- Measures what someone has learned and past
achievement & performance
- Measures job knowledge in areas like economics,
marketing or human resources
- Used to predict what an individual can perform
based on his/her current knowledge or past
experience
□ Work samples and Simulations
- Require the applicant to perform tasks that are
actually a part of the work required on the job
- Measures actual job tasks, doesn’t delve into the
applicant’s personality, exhibit better validity
□ Management Assessment Center
- A simulation in which management candidates are
asked to perform realistic tasks in hypothetical
situations and are scored on their performance
- It usually also involves testing and the use of
management games and presentations
- Effective for selecting management candidates
- Expensive to develop, take much longer than
conventional tests, requires managers as
assessors and often requires psychologists
□ Background Investigation
- Used to verify applicant’s information and to
uncover damaging information
- Checking References
■ Mail and telephone checks
■ Letters of reference
■ Online computerized databases
Interview
□ A selection interview is a selection procedure
designed to predict future job performance on
the basis of applicants’ oral responses to oral
inquiries
□ Why the interview is so popular:
■ It is especially practical when there are only a
small number of applicants.
■ It serves other purposes, such as public
relations
Types of Employment Interviews
□ Nondirective Interview
■ The applicant determines the course of the
discussion, while the interviewer refrains from
influencing the applicant’s remarks
□ Structured Interview
■ An interview in which a set of standardized
questions having an established set of answers
is used
□ Situational Interview
■ An interview in which an applicant is given a
hypothetical incident and asked how he or she
would respond to it.
□ Behavioral Description Interview (BDI)
■ An interview in which an applicant is asked
questions about what he or she actually did in a
given situation.
□ Panel Interview
■ An interview in which a board of interviewers
questions and observes a single candidate.
□ Computer Interview
■ Using a computer program that requires
candidates to answer a series of questions
tailored to the job.
 ■ Answers are compared either with an ideal
profile or with profiles developed on the basis of
other candidates’ responses
□ Video interviews
■ Using video conference technologies to evaluate
job candidates’ technical abilities, energy level,
appearance, and the like before incurring the
costs of a face-to-face meeting .
Limitations of Interview

□ Snap judgment by the interviewer

□ Contrast effects
□ Halo effects
□ Impression management
□ Lack of training to interview
□ Prior knowledge about the applicant will bias the interviewer’s
evaluation
□ Stereotype of what represents a good applicant
□ The interviewer tends to favor applicants who share his or her own
attitudes
□ The interviewer may forget much of the interview’s content within
minutes after its conclusion
□ Often are expensive, inefficient, and not job-related

41