Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the process of generating a pool of capable people to apply for employment to an organization. Selection is the process by which managers and others use specific instruments to choose from a pool of applicants a person or persons most likely to succeed in the job(s), given management goals and legal requirements.

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment and Attraction

The main approaches to attracting applicants can be summarized as follows:

Walk-ins

Employee referrals
Advertising Websites

Professional associations
Educational associations Professional agencies E-recruitment (general recruitment agents/ companies own sites) Word-of-mouth

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment and selection are vital to the formation of a positive psychological contract, which provides the basis of organizational commitment and motivation. The attraction and retention of employees is part of the evolving employment relationship, based on a mutual and reciprocal understanding of expectations. There are wide variations in recruitment and selection practices, reflecting an organizations strategy and its philosophy towards the management of people. Progressive HR practices are crucial to a positive psychological contract this includes attention to effective recruitment and selection practices.

Recruitment and Attraction

A key role for HR is to align performance within roles with the strategy, so recruiting for the right people for a role depends on how it is defined in terms relating to performance to achieve the strategy. Criterion-related behaviours or standards of performance are referred to as competencies. Competencies can be used to provide the behaviours needed at work to achieve the business strategy, and enable organizations to form a model of the kinds of employee it wishes to attract through recruitment.

Recruitment and Attraction

Selection: Principles
Underlying the process of selection and the choice of techniques are two key principles: 1. Individual differences: Attracting a wide choice of applicants will be of little use unless there is a way of measuring how people differ, i.e. intelligence, attitudes, social skills, psychological and physical characteristics, experience etc. Prediction: A recognition of the way in which people differ must be extended to a prediction of performance in the workplace.

2.

Selection
Reliability and Validity Issues
Reliability refers to the extent to which a selection technique achieves consistency in what it is measuring over repeated use. Validity refers to the extent to which a selection technique actually measures what it sets out to measure.

Selection Interviews

Information elicited interviews have a specific focus, i.e. facts, subjective information, underlying attitudes. Structure ranging from the completely structured to the unstructured. A compromise between the two enables the interviewer to maintain control yet allowing the interviewee free expression. Order and involvement the need to obtain different kinds of information may mean the involvement of more than one interviewer. Applicants may be interviewed serially or in a panel.

Psychometric Testing
Personality research has lent support to the use of sophisticated selection techniques such as psychometric tests that have a good record of reliability and validity.

Ability tests: these focus on mental abilities (verbal/numerical) and physical skills testing. Right/wrong answers allow applicants to be placed in ranked order. Inventories: self-report questionnaires indicating traits, intelligence, values, interests, attitudes and preferences. No right/wrong answers but a range of choices between possible answers.

E-assessment
On-line testing, or e-assessment, is also used for selection and other HR purposes. Benefits: Online testing enables organizations to test at any time and anywhere in the world. It enables the quick processing of applicants. Drawback: Loss of control over the administration of the tests anyone can be called on to help

Assessment Centres

Assessment centres are designed to yield information that can be used to make decisions concerning suitability for a job. They provide a fuller picture by combining a range of techniques.

General methods used include group discussions, role plays and simulations, interviews and tests.
Candidates attending an assessment centre will be observed by assessors who should be trained to judge candidates performance against criteria contained within the competency framework.

Realistic Job Previews

Applicants have expectations about how the organization will treat them. Recruitment and selection represent an opportunity to clarify these. Realistic job previews (RJPs) provide a means of achieving this.

RJPs can take the form of case studies, shadowing, job sampling and videos this enables the expectations of applicants to become more realistic.
RJPs: lower initial expectations, cause some applicants to deselect themselves, increase levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction, performance and job survival.