CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 OVERVIEW OF RECRUITMENT PROCESS

According to Nadler Ed, (1984), recruitment is the premier major step in the selection

process in the organization. It has been explained as an activity directed towards

obtaining appropriate human resources whose qualification and skills match functions

of the relevant posts in the organization. Its importance cannot be over emphasized

and can be best described as the “heart” of the organization.

Elwood F, etal (1996), said that the process of recruiting new staff is a critical. To

large extent, the success of an organization depends on it. This so because, when the

right crop of manpower is enrolled, it makes for a better work output. On the other

hand, employing the wrong candidate will mar the future of that organization.

Odiagba E, (2004), said that in many organization, enough and quality time is

allocated to this exercise, in order to ensure a successful outing.

The following are some processes and stages by some companies, which may also be

termed as standard.

2.1.1 The induction timetable

From the journal of vocational and technical education vol 12, induction often begins

before the person has actually started, in that the organization will supply material as

part of an initial 'information pack', or with the invitation to interview, or with the

letter of job offer. This may be particularly important in jobs of a technical nature,

where it is helpful for the new starter to be as well informed as possible about that

side of the work. Clearly, learning the particular projects and initiatives will have to

be done in the workplace but much 'mental preparedness' can be undertaken in

advance. The Company Handbook, and the Written Statement of Employment

Particulars, can also provide essential information about the organization and the job.

According to Kelly D, (2001), a good reception, with the line or personnel manager

spending time with the new employee, is important on the first day. There may be

further documentation to complete, perhaps a preliminary discussion about training

either immediately or in the future, an explanation of the development opportunities

that are available, and of course enough information to give the new starter a good

grasp of the working practices of the organization.

According to Elwood F, etal (1996), any particular health and safety requirements

should be made known, together with details of whom to go to for help and advice

during the course of their employment. Many companies use a 'buddy' system, where

an experienced worker is nominated to assist the new recruit in all the day-to-day

questions that may arise.

According to McDonald I, (1995), it is useful to have a written checklist of the items

that need to be covered in the induction programme; Not only does this give some

structure to the induction but it also ensures that both the new starter and the manager

know what has or has not been covered at any given time. Such a checklist is

normally drawn up by the personnel section in consultation with other involved staff,

such as safety officers, line manager/supervisors, employee representatives (if

appropriate), and training officers.

Kelly D, (2001), said that the induction programme may be spread over several days

or weeks, and may incorporate specific job training, but the following points should

be borne in mind:

 All employees need to be able to work in a safe and healthy manner.

Recruitment and placement procedures should ensure that employees

(including managers) have the necessary physical and mental abilities to do

their jobs, or can acquire them through training and experience. Employers

should have systems in place to identify health and safety training needs

arising from recruitment.

 People can take in only so much information at any given time, and should not

be overloaded. It is important that health and safety is introduced in a

structured way.
  If there are special health and safety requirements, make sure the new starter

fully understands their importance - otherwise there is the risk of being

exposed to unnecessary danger or endangering their co-workers. All employees

must know what to do in the event of a fire or other emergency.

Omenyi A. S, (1997), added that the following which should be considerer during

induction:

 Setting out the plan of induction at the beginning avoids the problems that can

arise in trying to arrange time in the future, when the employee is established

in the job.

Odiagba E, (2004), also added that the following should not be forgotten;

 Don’t forget induction needs for shift workers or night workers. They may

need some time on days, or modified shifts, to cover the induction period

 Even if the induction period covers job training, try to let new starters do some

practical work, as this will assist their learning and enable them to relate what

they are being taught to what they will be doing.

Popoola S.O, (2000), said that the outcome of induction timetable is that the new

starter should have a good feel for the organization, and should continue to feel that

they made the right decision in joining the firm.

2.1.2 The induction process

According to Nadler Ed, (1984), induction need not be a very formal process but it

needs to be properly managed. In many organizations it will be carried out informally

by the new starter's manager or supervisor on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless,

having a structured checklist to follow is useful for both parties. Most induction will

consist of meeting and talking with new colleagues, watching activities and asking

questions. It may be appropriate to provide certain information in written form; and if

the organization has a company handbook, this can often act as an aide memoire

covering important aspects of the company organization and how it functions.

From journal of vocational and technical education vol 12, if a group of new

employees is recruited at the same time, it may make sense to hold group induction

sessions on the common topics to be covered - discussion, videos, slide presentations

can all add to the effectiveness of the programme.

McDonald I, (1995), said that even the people transferring from one part of the

organization to another need induction into their new area. Don't assume that they

will know the relevant people or the skills they will need in the new job. However,

they may need a more individually tailored induction programme to meet their

particular needs.

2.2 IMPLICATIONS OF POOR RECRUITMENT BY LINE MANAGERS

According to Kelly D. (2001), the absence of planning leads to chastise recruitment

that leads to a bumper harvest of unqualified applicants resulting in more unnecessary

work for staff in recruitment. Starting the process without systematic approach, can

rush decision and can end up with a mismatch person who will not be suited to in the

organization.

McLean G.N, etal (2002), said that there is need to have a system that assists to

access candidates throughout. This reduces the odds that will have to repeat this

extensive, time consuming process.

To terminate a poorly employee especially at managerial level, is a costly failure to

the organization considering the cost involved in the recruitment, selection, training,

etc. Wrong placement at officers level can lead to stagnation within the system. This

may also affect production at one point or during the time of change.

2.3 OVERVIEW OF WEB PORTAL

According to Maedche A etal (2002), a web portal, also known as a links page,

presents information from diverse sources in a unified way. They go beyond static

web pages and require a sign-on which links to some knowledge the organization has

collected about the visitor. That knowledge allows portals to be tailored to meet

individuals need.

From portal business dictionary (2009), portals go beyond the delivery of static

information and often provide access to services offered by the organization. A portal

makes network resources (application, databases, etc) available to end users. The user
can access the portal via a web browser, WAP phone, pager and other devices. Portals

include network enabling services such as e-mail, chart rooms and calendars that

interact seamlessly with other applications. Most web portals allows for adding

personal links as portal providers realize that user may have other interest beyond the

organizational boundaries. Personalization will make the portal more appealing to the

user or make it sticker.

A portal allows me to enter my own data space, a space where I can view and do what

I want to do and not what someone else think that I want or should do. Examples of

web portals are Thrashbarg, AOL, iGoogle, MSNBC, Netvibes, and Yahoo!.

2.4 HISTORY OF WEB PORTAL

Maedche A etal (2003), said that in the late 1990's the web portal was a hot

commodity. After the proliferation of web browsers in the late-1990s many

companies tried to build or acquire a portal, to have a piece of the Internet market.

The web portal gained special attention because it was, for many users, the starting

point of their web browser. Netscape became a part of America Online, the Walt

Disney Company launched Go.com, and Excite and @Home became a part of AT&T

during the late 1990s. Lycos was said to be a good target for other media companies

such as CBS.

The portal craze, with "old media" companies racing to outbid each other for Internet

properties, died down with the dot-com flameout in 2000 and 2001. Disney pulled the

plug on Go.com, Excite went bankrupt and its remains were sold to iWon.com. Some
portal sites such as Yahoo! and those others first listed in this article remain

successful.

2.5 TYPES OF WEB PORTALS

According to portal business dictionary, the following are the types of portal.

2.5.1 Personal portals

A personal portal is a site on the World Wide Web that typically provides

personalized capabilities to its visitors, providing a pathway to other content. It is

designed to use distributed applications, different numbers and types of middleware

and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources. In addition,

business portals are designed to share collaboration in workplaces. A further

business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be able to work on multiple

platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell

phones/mobile phones. Information, news, and updates are examples of content that

would be delivered through such a portal. Personal portals can be related to any

specific topic such as providing friend information on a social network or providing

links to outside content that may help others beyond your reach of services. Portals

are not limited to simply providing links. Information or content that you are putting

on the internet creates a portal, or a path to new knowledge and/or capabilities.

2.5.2 Vertical Portal

A vertical portal focus on a specific industry, and the channels offered are industry

specific. For example, an educational portal will have channels that provide

educational information and services from many resourses.

2.5.3 Regional web portals

Along with the development and success of international personal portals such as

Yahoo!, regional variants have also sprung up. Some regional portals contain local

information such as weather forecasts, street maps and local business information.

Another notable expansion over the past couple of years is the move into formerly

unthinkable markets.

"Local content - global reach" portals have emerged not only from countries like

Korea (Naver), India (Rediff), China (Sina.com), Romania, Greece (in.gr) and Italy,

but in countries like Vietnam where they are very important for learning how to apply

e-commerce, e-government, etc. Such portals reach out to the widespread diasporas

across the world.

2.5.4 Vertical Information Portal

VIP is a specialized entry point to a specific market place and/or industry niche. It

provides news, editorial content, digital publications and e-commerce capabilities. It

provides dynamic multi-media including social networking, video posting and

blogging.

2.5.5 Search Portal

The search portal aggregate results from several engines into one page.
Maedche A, and etal (2002), added the following types of portal:

2.5.6 Government web portals

At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already

committed to creating portal sites for their citizens. In the United States the main

portal is USA.gov in English and GobiernoUSA.gov in Spanish in addition to portals

developed for specific audiences such as Disability.gov; in the United Kingdom the

main portals are Directgov (for citizens) and businesslink.gov.uk (for businesses).

The official web portal of the European Union is Europa (web portal). Europa links to

all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases and audiovisual content

from press conferences.

All relevant health topics from across Europe are gathered in the Health-EU portal.

2.4.7 Corporate web portals

Corporate intranets became common during the 1990s. As intranets grew in size and

complexity, webmasters were faced with increasing content and user management

challenges. A consolidated view of company information was judged insufficient;

users wanted personalization and customization. Webmasters, if skilled enough, were

able to offer some capabilities, but for the most part ended up driving users away

from using the intranet.

Many companies began to offer tools to help webmasters manage their data,

applications and information more easily, and through personalized views. Portal

solutions can also include workflow management, collaboration between work

groups, and policy-managed content publication. Most can allow internal and
external access to specific corporate information using secure authentication or single

sign-on.

JSR168 Standards emerged around 2001. Java Specification Request (JSR) 168

standards allow the interoperability of portlets across different portal platforms.

These standards allow portal developers, administrators and consumers to integrate

standards-based portals and portlets across a variety of vendor solutions.

The concept of content aggregation seems to still gain momentum and portal solution

will likely continue to evolve significantly over the next few years. The Gartner

Group predicts generation 8 portals to expand on the Business Mashups concept of

delivering a variety of information, tools, applications and access points through a

single mechanism.

With the increase in user generated content, disparate data silos, and file formats,

information architects and taxonomist will be required to allow users the ability to tag

(classify) the data. This will ultimately cause a ripple effect where users will also be

generating ad hoc navigation and information flows.

Corporate Portals also offer customers & employees self-service opportunities.

2.5.8 Stock Portals

Also known as Stock-share Portals, Stock market portals or Stock exchange portals

are Web-based applications that facilitates the process of informing the share-holders

with substantial online data such as the latest price, ask/bids, the latest News, reports

and announcements. Some stock portals use online gateways through a central
depository system (CDS) for the visitors to buy or sell their shares or manage their

portfolio (finance).

2.5.9 Tender's Portals

It stands for a gate way to achieve data on tenders and professional processing of

continuous online tenders. With a tender portal the complete tendering process–

submitting of proposals, assessment, administration – will be done on the web.

Electronic or Online Tendering is just carrying out the same traditional tendering

process in an electronic form, using the Internet.

Using Online Tendering, the Bidders can :

• Receive notification of the tenders

• Receive tender documents online

• Fill out the forms online

• Submit proposals and documents

• Submit Bids Online

2.5.10 Hosted web portals

As corporate portals gained popularity a number of companies began offering them as

a hosted service. The hosted portal market fundamentally changed the composition of

portals. In many ways they served simply as a tool for publishing information instead

of the loftier goals of integrating legacy applications or presenting correlated data

from distributed databases. The early hosted portal companies such as

Hyperoffice.com or the now defunct InternetPortal.com focused on collaboration and

scheduling in addition to the distribution of corporate data. As hosted web portals

have risen in popularity their feature set has grown to include hosted databases,

document management, email, discussion forums and more. Hosted portals

automatically personalize the content generated from their modules to provide a

personalized experience to their users. In this regard they have remained true to the

original goals of the earlier corporate web portals. Emerging new classes of internet

portals called Cloud Portals are showcasing the power of API (Application

Programming Ineterface) rich software systems leveraging SOA (service oriented

architecture, web services, and custom data exchange) to accommodate machine to

machine interaction creating a more fluid user experience for connecting users

spanning multiple domains during a given "session". eg: Nubifer.com's Cloud Portal.

2.5.11 Domain-specific portals

A number of portals have come about that are specific to the particular domain,

offering access to related companies and services, a prime example of this trend

would be the growth in property portals that give access to services such as estate

agents, removal firm, and solicitors that offer conveyance. Along the same lines,

industry-specific news and information portals have appeared, such as the clinical

trials specific portal: IFPMA Clinical Trials Portal

2.5.12 Engineering Aspects

The "portal" concept is to present the user with a single web page that brings together

or aggregates content from a number of other systems or servers. For portals that
present application functionality to the user, the portal server is in reality the front

piece of a server configuration that includes some connectivity to the application

server. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one example of how a portal can be

used to deliver application server content and functionality. The application server or

architecture performs the actual functions of the application. This application server

is in turn connected to database servers, and may be part of a clustered server

environment. High-capacity portal configurations may include load balancing

equipment. SOAP, an xml-based protocol, may be used for servers to communicate

within this architecture.

The server hosting the portal may only be a "pass through" for the user. By use of

portlets, application functionality can be presented in any number of portal pages. For

the most part, this architecture is transparent to the user.

In such a scheme, security and capacity can be important features, and administrators

need to ensure that only an authorized visitor or user can generate requests to the

application server. If administration does not ensure this aspect, then the portal may

inadvertently present vulnerabilities to various types of attacks. [see also articles on

SOAP and SOA]

2.6 HOW PORTAL FUNCTIONS AND COMPONENTS

A portal is not a single technology, but it brings together a wild range of technologies

and enables them to work together for the benefit of the individual. To present users

with information and services that are appropriate at any particular time, portals need

to be modular and dynamic. At best, organizations can guess appropriate structures

and features for various constituents and then leave it up to each individual to

“personalize” his/her portal.

In order to achieve that goal a portal has to provide, Maedche A, and etal (2002) gave

the following components which helps the portal function effectively via;

2.6.1 Channels

These are the portals’ building blocks. They are modules that link to or contain

snippets of information or services. User’s should be given a library of channels from

which they can choose an not to defeat their own interest, though organizations will

make certain channels mandatory. Different constituent groups or roles will have

different default selection of channels with the understanding that many channels are

universal (eg mail, calendar, weather) and will be available to aa groups.

2.6.2 Directory Services

In order to customize the information for the entering individual, the organization

needs to know whom the visiting person is. What role does he/she represent vis-à-vis

the organization and what are his/her preferences and requirements? The more an

organization knows about the portal visitor the better it is positioned to present a

portal that best meet the individuals need. Individual information is maintained in the

organization directory that also facilitates the sign-on and the person’s authentication.

2.6.3 Roles
As a starting point, organizations will need to develop default portals for different

types of customers such as students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, future students.

These default portals contains information and services that organization deem to be

most attractive to each customer group or role. In addition to providing different

channels, the portal design may differ for different roles. Eg students prefer other

layouts and graphics compared to alumni. Roles determine how the portal looks for

different audiences. Information about which role a person has, is stored in the

organization directory.

2.6.4 Customization Backend Integration

In addition to linking to the organization’s directory, portals become even more

powerful where they can draw on the wealth of information and logic stored in the

organization’s ERP system. Through the logic and data embedded in the ERP system,

it does not only know who is entering the portal but also what that person has to do or

can do. The organization’s ERP system has accumulated in it’s database valuable

information and the ERP system itself contains the logic on how that information

should be acted upon. This can be used to deliver information at appropriate intervals

or when critical content change.