HRM 502

Lecture-4
Selection and Recruitment
Selection and Recruitment
A selection process starts with employment or personal planning. This
is the process of deciding what positions the firm will have to fill and
how to fill them. Personal planning embraces all future positions, for
maintenance clerk to CEO. However, most firms call the process of
deciding how to fill executive jobs succession planning.
The steps in Recruitment and Selection
Job analysis identifies the duties and human requirements for each of the
company s jobs. The next step is to decide which of these jobs you need to
fill, and to recruit and select employees for them. The traditional way to
envision recruitment and selection is as a series of hurdles.
1. Decide what positions to fill, through workforce/personnel planning and
forecasting.
2. Build a pool of candidates for these jobs, by recruiting internal or external
candidates.
3. Have candidates complete application forms and perhaps undergo initial
screening interviews.
4. Use selection tools like tests, background investigations, and physical exams to
identify viable candidates.
5. Decide who to make an offer to, by having the supervisor and perhaps others
interview the candidates.
Recruitment and Selection
• Recruitment: The set of activities an organization uses to attract job
candidates who have the abilities and attitudes needed to help the
organization achieve its objectives.

• Selection: The process by which an organization chooses from a list of

applicants the person or people who best meet the selection criteria
for the position available, considering current environmental
conditions.
Types of Recruitment
Recruitment may be divided into two categories:
1. Recruitment workers
2. Recruitment of executive and supervisors

Recruitment may be done in two ways:

3. Internal recruitment
4. External recruitment
Advantages of Internal Recruitment
In general, relying on internal sources offers a company several advantages. First, it
generates a sample of applicants who are well known to the firm. Second, these
applicants are relatively knowledgeable about the company’s vacancies, which
minimizes the possibility of inflated expectations about the job. Third, it is generally
cheaper and faster to fill vacancies internally.
With all these advantages, you might ask why any organization would ever employ
external recruiting methods. There are several good reasons why organizations
might decide to recruit externally. First, for entry-level positions and perhaps even
for some specialized upper-level positions, there may not be any internal recruits
from which to draw. Second, bringing in outsiders may expose the organization to
new ideas or new ways of doing business. Using only internal recruitment can result
in a workforce whose members all think alike and who therefore may be poorly
suited to innovation. For example, for most of its 100-year history, retailer JCPenney
followed a practice of strictly promoting from within. This led to a very strong
culture that in many ways was still closely related to the one first established by
JCPenney himself in the late 1800s.
Advantages of External Recruitment
Recruiting from outside sources is a good way to strengthen one’s own
company and weaken one’s competitors at the same time. This strategy
seems to be particularly effective during bad economic times, where
“counter cyclical hiring” policies create once-in-a-lifetime opportunities
for acquiring talent. For example, during the most recent recession,
many firms that were top performers—and hence able to weather the
storm better than their lower-performing competitors—viewed this as
an excellent opportunity to poach the highest-performing individuals
within struggling companies. Thus, for many organizations, times of
crisis and turbulence are actually the best time for them to shine by
leveraging their current talent and success to bring in more talent and
achieve even greater success over the long term.
Methods of Recruitment
1. Direct Applicants and Referrals
Direct applicants are people who apply for a vacancy without prompting from the
organization. Referrals are people who are prompted to apply by someone within the
organization. These two sources of recruits share some characteristics that make them
excellent sources from which to draw.
First, many direct applicants are to some extent already “sold” on the organization. Most of
them have done some homework and concluded that there is enough fit between
themselves and the vacancy to warrant their submitting an application. This process is called
self-selection. A form of aided self-selection occurs with referrals. Many job seekers look to
friends, relatives, and acquaintances to help find employment, and evoking these social
networks can greatly aid the job search process for both the job seeker and the
organization.
In the war for talent, some employers who try to entice one new employee from a
competitor will often try to leverage that one person to try to entice even more people
away. The term “liftout” has been coined for this practice of trying to recruit a whole team
of people.
2. Advertisements in Newspapers and Periodicals
Advertisements to recruit personnel are ubiquitous, even though they
typically generate less desirable recruits than direct applications or
referrals—and do so at greater expense. However, because few
employers can fill all their vacancies with direct applications and
referrals, some form of advertising is usually needed. Moreover, an
employer can take many steps to increase the effectiveness of this
recruitment method.
The two most important questions to ask in designing a job
advertisement are, What do we need to say? and To whom do we need
to say it?
3. Electronic Recruiting
The growth of the information superhighway has opened up new vistas for organizations trying to
recruit talent. There are many ways to employ the Internet, and increasingly organizations are
refining their use of this medium. Obviously, one of the easiest ways to get into “e-cruiting” is to
simply use the organization’s own web page to solicit applications. By using their own web page,
organizations can highly tune their recruitment message and focus in on specific people.
A second way for organizations to use the web is to interact with the large, well-known job sites
such as Monster.com, HotJobs.com, or CareerBuilder.com.
The growing use of iPods and iPads has also opened up a new and rich avenue to get information
from employer to applicant via podcasts. A podcast is an audio or audio/visual program that can be
placed on the web by an employer and then downloaded for subsequent viewing. Podcasts are like
e-mails in the sense that they can be used to reach out to a large number of people; however, the
rich nature of the media—which employs color, sound, and video—is much more powerful than a
simple text-only e-mail. “Podcasts really make the job description comes alive,” notes Dan Finnigan,
a general manager at HotJobs.com, and the ability to describe the organization’s culture is so much
more emotionally charged with this media relative to mere words on a page.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.com are yet another avenue for employers
to reach out to younger workers in their own environments. Neither Facebook nor MySpace allow
employers to create pages as members, but it does allow them to purchase pages in order to create
what is called a “sponsored group.”
4. Public and Private Employment Agencies
Employers can register their job vacancies with their local state employment office,
and the agency will attempt to find someone suitable using its computerized
inventory of local unemployed individuals. The agency makes referrals to the
organization at no charge, and these individuals can be interviewed or tested by the
employer for potential vacancies.
Public employment agencies serve primarily the blue-collar labor market; private
employment agencies perform much the same service for the white-collar labor
market. Unlike public agencies, however, private employment agencies charge the
organization for the referrals. Another difference between private and public
employment agencies is that one doesn’t have to be unemployed to use a private
employment agency. One special type of private employment agency is the
so-called executive search firm (ESF). These agencies are often referred to as
headhunters because, unlike the other sources we have examined, they operate
almost exclusively with people who are currently employed. Dealing with executive
search firms is sometimes a sensitive process because executives may not want to
advertise their availability for fear of their current employer’s reaction.
Public and Private Employment Agencies Continued

Many organizations have shifted away from private employment agencies in the last
few years and focused more on using their own internal recruiters to staff openings.
For example, Time Warner filled thousands of senior positions during the last seven
years, but used an outside agency only once. Instead, like roughly 25% of the
Fortune 500 companies, Times Warner has created a head of executive recruitment
to do the work formerly done by private agencies. At Time Warner, this person
oversees a 30-person team where each person handles 10–15 placements at a time.
This unit saved Time Warner over $100 million in search firm fees and filled each job
in roughly 100 days, compared to 170 days associated with a private agency.
Similarly, GE built an internal recruiting staff of around 500 people, and in 2012,
helped by LinkedIn and other social networking sites, filled most of GE’s 25,000
openings. There is a general belief within these and other companies that internal
recruiters have a better feel for the organization’s culture and thus, in addition to
filling positions faster and cheaper, those recruited are also a better fit for the
company. Many have questioned whether the ESFs have a viable business model,
given the recent changes in the economy and in technology.
5. Colleges and Universities
Most colleges and universities have placement services that seek to
help their graduates obtain employment. Indeed, on-campus
interviewing is the most important source of recruits for entry-level
professional and managerial vacancies. Organizations tend to focus
especially on colleges that have strong reputations in areas for which
they have critical needs (chemical engineering, public accounting, or
the like).
Another way of increasing one’s presence on campus is to participate in
university job fairs.
The Basics of Testing and Selecting
Employees
In this chapter, we’ll discuss several popular selection tools, starting
with tests. A test is basically a sample of a person’s behavior. Any test or
screening tool has two important characteristics, reliability and
validity.
Reliability
Reliability is a test's first requirement and refers to its consistency: “A reliable test is
one that yields consistent scores when a person takes two alternate forms of the
test or when he or she takes the same test on two or more different occasions.“
Reliability is very important. If a person scores 90 on an intelligence test on a
Monday and 130 when retested on Tuesday, you probably wouldn't have much
faith in the test.
There are several ways to estimate consistency or reliability. You could administer
the same test to the same people at two different points in time, comparing their
test scores at time two with their scores at time one; this would be a retest
estimate. Or you could administer a test and then administer what experts believe
to be an equivalent test later; this would be an equivalent form estimate. The
Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is an example of the latter.
Reliability Continued
A test's internal consistency is another reliability measure. For example, a
psychologist includes 10 items on a test of vocational interests, believing that
they all measure, in various ways, the test taker's interest in working
outdoors. You administer the test and then statistically analyze the degree to
which responses to these 10 items vary together. This would provide a
measure of the internal reliability of the test. Psychologists refer to this as an
internal comparison estimate. Internal consistency is one reason that you
find apparently repetitive questions on some test questionnaires.
Many things could cause a test to be unreliable. For example, the questions
may do a poor job of sampling the material; test one focuses more on
Chapters 1,3,5, and 7, while test two focuses more on Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 8.
Or there might be errors due to changes in the testing conditions; for
instance, the room the test is in next month may be noisy.
Validity
Reliability, while indispensable, only tells you that the test is measuring
something consistently. It does not prove that you are measuring what
you intend to measure. A mismanufactured 33-inch yardstick will
consistently tell you that 33-inch boards are 33 inches long.
Unfortunately, if what you're looking for is a board that is one full yard
long, then your 33-inch yardstick, though reliable, is misleading you by
3 inches.
What you need is a valid yardstick. Validity tells you whether the test
(or yardstick) is measuring what you think it's supposed to be
measuring.
Test validity
Test validity answers the question “Does this test measure what it’s
supposed to measure?” Put another way, it refers to the correctness of
the inferences that we can make based on the test. For example, if
Jane’s scores on mechanical comprehension tests are higher than Jim’s,
can we be sure that Jane possesses more mechanical comprehension
than Jim? With employee selection tests, validity often refers to
evidence that the test is job related—in other words, that performance
on the test accurately predicts job performance.
Criterion Validity
Criterion validity involves demonstrating statistically a relationship
between scores on a selection procedure and job performance of a
sample of workers. For example, it means demonstrating that those
who do well on the test also do well on the job, and that those who do
poorly on the test do poorly on the job. The test has validity to the
extent that the people with higher test scores perform better on the
job. In psychological measurement, a predictor is the measurement (in
this case, the test score) that you are trying to relate to a criterion, such
as performance on the job. The term criterion validity reflects that
terminology.
Content Validity
Employers demonstrate the content validity of a test by showing that
the test constitutes a fair sample of the content of the job. The basic
procedure here is to identify job tasks that are critical to performance,
and then randomly select a sample of those tasks to be tested.
How to Validate a Test
Validation process consists of five steps:
1. Analyze the Job
2. Choose the tests
3. Administer the test
4. Relate your test scores and criteria
5. Cross-validate and revalidate
Personality Inventories
While ability tests attempt to categorize individuals relative to what they can do,
personality measures tend to categorize individuals by what they are like. The
number of firms employing personality tests as screens has ballooned over the
years, from just 26% in 2000 to just under 60% in 2014. Research suggests that
there are five major dimensions of personality, known as “the Big Five”: (1)
extroversion, (2) adjustment, (3) agreeableness, (4) conscientiousness, and (5)
openness to experience. The following table lists each of these with a
corresponding list of adjectives that fit each dimension.
The Big Five
Work Samples
Work-sample tests attempt to simulate the job in a prehiring context to
observe how the applicant performs in the simulated job. The degree
of fidelity in work samples can vary greatly. In some cases, applicants
respond to a set of standardized hypothetical case studies and role play
how they would react to certain situations. Often these standardized
role plays employ interactive video technology to create “virtual job
auditions.”
Honesty Tests and Drug Tests and Polygraph
Tests
Many problems that confront society also exist within organizations,
which has led to two new kinds of tests: honesty tests and drug-use
tests. Many companies formerly employed polygraph tests, or lie
detectors, to evaluate job applicants, but this changed with the passage
of the Polygraph Act in 1988. This act banned the use of polygraphs in
employment screening for most organizations. However, it did not
eliminate the problem of theft by employees. As a result, the
paper-and-pencil honesty testing industry was born.
Basic Features of Interviews
An interview is a procedure designed to obtain information from a
person through oral responses to oral inquiries; a selection interview,
which we'll focus on in this chapter, is "a selection procedure designed
to predict future job performance on the basis of applicants’ oral
responses to oral inquiries.
Basic Types of Interviews
Managers use several interviews at work, such as performance appraisal
interviews and exit interviews. A selection interview (the focus of this
chapter) is a selection procedure designed to predict future job performance
based on applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries. Many techniques in this
chapter also apply to appraisal and exit interviews. However, we’ll postpone
discussions of those two interviews until later chapters.
There are several ways to conduct selection interviews. For example, we can
classify selection interviews according to
1. How structured they are
2. Their “content”—the types of questions they contain
3. How the firm administers the interviews (for instance, one-on-one or via a
committee)
Structured Versus Unstructured Interviews
First, most interviews vary in the degree to which the interviewer structures the interview
process. In unstructured (or nondirective) interviews, the manager follows no set format. A
few questions might be specified in advance, but they’re usually not, and there is seldom a
formal guide for scoring “right” or “wrong” answers. Typical questions here might include,
for instance, “Tell me about yourself,” “Why do you think you’d do a good job here?” and
“What would you say are your main strengths and weaknesses?” Some describe this type of
interview as little more than a general conversation.
At the other extreme, in structured (or directive) interviews, the employer lists questions
ahead of time, and may even weight possible alternative answers for appropriateness.
McMurray’s Patterned Interview was one early example. The interviewer followed a printed
form to ask a series of questions, such as “How was the person’s present job obtained?”
Comments printed beneath the questions (such as “Has he/she shown self-reliance in
getting his/her jobs?”) then guide the interviewer in evaluating the answers. Some experts
still restrict the term structured interview to interviews like these, which are based on
carefully selected job-related questions with predetermined answers.
Interview Content (What Types of Questions
to Ask)
In a situational interview, you ask the candidate what his or her behavior would be
in a given situation.
Whereas situational interviews ask applicants to describe how they would react to a
hypothetical situation today or tomorrow, behavioral interviews ask applicants to
describe how they reacted to actual situations in the past.
In a job-related interview, the interviewer asks applicants questions about
job-relevant past experiences.
In a stress interview, the interviewer seeks to make the applicant uncomfortable
occasionally rude questions. The aim is supposedly to spot sensitive applicants and
with low (or high) stress tolerance. The interviewer might first probe for weaknesses
in the applicant's background, such as a job that the applicant left under
questionable circum- stances. The interviewer the zeroes in on these weaknesses,
hoping to get the candidate to lose his or her composure.
Puzzle questions are popular. Recruiters see how candidates think under pressure.
Types of Interviews
1. Unstructured sequential interview: An interview in which each
interviewer forms an independent opinion after asking different
questions.
2. Structured sequential interview: An interview in which the
applicant is interviewed sequentially by several persons; each rates
the applicant on a standard form.
3. Panel interview: An interview in which a group of interviewers
questions the applicant.
Usefulness of Interview
Keep three things in mind—use structured interviews, know
what to ask, and avoid the common interviewing errors.
• First, structure the interview. Structured interviews (particularly
structured interviews using situational questions) are more valid
than unstructured interviews for predicting job performance.
• Second, interviews are better at revealing some things than
others, so know what to focus on.
• Third, whether the interview is in person or online, effective
employment interviewers understand and avoid the following
common interview errors.
Factors that Can Undermine an Interview
1. Snap judgments
2. Candidate-Order error
3. An error or judgement on the part of the interview due to
interviewing one very good or very bad candidate just before the
interview in question
4. Nonverbal behavior: An impression judgement
5. Effects of personal characteristics, attractiveness, gender
background
6. Interviewer behavior
Selection of Managers
The particular types of employment tests that are used in an organization vary with the
type of employee being hired. Many of the techniques that have been discussed in this
chapter (the interview, for example) are common to most occupations. Others, such as
cognitive ability testing, are used with a wide assortment of jobs and occupations ranging
from blue-collar to managerial positions. However, because of the costs associated with a
bad decision and the complexities of managerial work, organizations frequently expend
more time, effort, and money hiring middle- to upper-level executives than they spend
hiring for positions lower on the organizational chart. One of the best-known multiple
selection methods used for these purposes is the assessment center. The assessment
center was first used by the German military in World War II. The Office of Strategic
Services (OSS) in the United States began to use it in the mid-1940s. American Telephone
and Telegraph Company (AT&T) introduced the assessment center to the world of business
in the 1950s. Since 1956, AT&T has used assessment centers to evaluate more than
200,000 prospective and current employees.
Selection of Managers
An assessment center uses a wide array of methods, including several interviews,
work samples and simulations, and many kinds of paper-and-pencil tests of abilities
and attitudes. Most assessment centers are similar in a number of areas:
1. Groups of approximately 12 individuals are evaluated. Individual and group
activities are observed and evaluated.
2. Multiple methods of assessment are used—interviewing, objective testing,
projective testing, games, role-playing, and other methods.
3. Assessors are usually a panel of line managers from the organization. They
can, however, be consultants or outsiders trained to conduct assessments.
4. Assessment centers are relevant to the job, and thus have high appeal
because of this relevance.
Selection of Managers
Managers are recruited in two types of posts:
1. Position classification structure
2. Cadre system
1. Position Classification Structure
A position is the work consisting of duties and responsibilities assigned by
competent authority for designation of work to perform a function within an
organization and to ensure performance by an employee. Classification means the
analysis and identification of a position and placing it in a class under the position
classification plan established by law. Position classification is the first step in
designing an organization. It facilitates the recruitment of necessary expertise to
perform a work and setting up of performance standards. It also ensures equal pay
for substantially equal work. Position classification structure is very often described
as "American system" where recruitment is made on the suitability of a particular
candidate for a particular position. Positions which are sufficiently equivalent as to
level of responsibility and difficulty and level of qualification recruitments (although
different with respect to kind of work) are lumped in grades. This is why position
classification is also known as unified grading structure. Appointments to unified
grading system in the USA are usually made for fixed terms.
2. Cadre System
The cadre system is defined as “a group of trained or otherwise
qualified personnel capable of forming, training or leading an expanded
organization as a religious or political faction, or a skilled work force.”
The essential elements of a cadre service are as follows:
• The key posts are reserved for the members of the cadre.
• The cadre structure facilitate smooth mobility for its members both
horizontally and vertically.
• Legitimate career expectation of promotions of entrance have to be
met.
Selection Method of Managers
Managers in position based recruitment are usually specialist. They
require specialized knowledge in certain areas. Recruitment to cadre
based management selects generalists who are specialist in
administration only and can be moved from one place to another place
easily. The main differences in these two recruitments are as follows:
 Position Based Recruitment
1. Age Usually people with experience are
recruited. Age is not a factor.
2. Degree Subject must be relevant and
quality must be high.
Cadre Based Recruitment
Recruitment at a young age. Old
recruits can not be trained.
Subject is not relevant. Personality
is relevant.
Methods of Selection
a. Job Fair at Universities:
1. Low cost of selection
2. Quickness of selection
3. Minimum standard met
4. Recruitment meets the needs but the best candidates may not be
recruited.
 b. Using Public Agencies:
1. Cost may be low
2. Difficult to find suitable cadre service candidates

c. Using Private Recruitment Agencies:

1. Costs money
2. Right recruit may be found
d. Advertisement:
1. Appropriate when the number of recruit is high
2. The costs of selection too high if recruitment is limited to a few (say
20 or 30)

e. Written Exam:
1. Written exam is necessary when the quality of degree cannot be
assessed
2. It takes time and the costs are high
f. Interview:
In the advanced countries most managers are recruited through
interviews. Interviews must be done by experts however, the
candidates for interview will have to be selected through caution.