Identify and briefly describe the key stages, which must be carried out in order to ensure an effective recruitment and selection process for the aforementioned four new posts, placing emphasis on those stages that you believe to be most significant. Having completed the first part of question one, in addition please provide a critical insight into one of the aforementioned stages of R&S process. Recruitment and selections are both essential processes within an organisation as employees are usually seen as fundamental tool in a successful business.
The cost of the process is expensive; therefore most firms try to get it right first time round. If company’s fail, they may encounter problems dismissing wrongly selected applicants as well as facing vast costs of going through the whole process again. The key objective of recruitment is to attract an adequate field of candidates with appropriate level of qualifications and skills and then select the most suitable available person for the vacant position, despite gender, race or nationality.
Recruitment is defined as the process of identifying the need for a new employee, defining the job as well as the appropriate person for it and attracting a number of suitable candidates. There are many methods of recruitment namely advertising on internet, job centres, newspapers, and radio and employee agencies. It’s important to advertise vacancies to a broad market to ensure there are a substantial number of applicants from which the company can use a variety of selection tools to swiftly divide the suitable candidates from the unsuitable ones.
David Lines ,et al (2000) Selection can be defined as a process by which individuals in the pool are assessed, using one or a variety of methods, according to their suitability to join the organisation in the stated capacity. There are numerous ways of selecting candidates, which are presentations, psychometric testing, group exercises, interviews and assessment centres. The choice of selection method is determined by a number of factors; cost, time available, length of contract, seniority of post, level of expertise in human resources and the amount of similar vacancies.
Before an organisation start to recruit employees, the Human Resources (HR) officer of the organisation should draw up a job analysis. This means an investigation into the demands of a job to identify the overall objectives, defining reported relationship, main tasks carried out and the specific skills and qualities needed for that position for there to be high performance within the organisation. Dave Hall et al (2004) Referring to the case study, AFF organisation is looking to recruit a position for a sales accountant.
John Lee, the HR officer is responsible for recruiting and selecting a suitable candidate for this position. He has examined the company’s staff file but has failed to find any job description for the exiting department staff. Therefore he has to carry out a job analysis before drawing up a job description. There are various methods of carrying out a job analysis such as, the HR officer could describe the job, ask job holder, ask the head of HR, use previous job description but make sure its updated or could observe and follow job holder around making notes.
. John Lee could get his information to draw up his analysis by interviewing the sales administrator and the seven assistants, who are currently managing the department and other staff that had contact with the past sales accountant. However it is likely the staff associated with the sales accountant will have different views, which may be bias, about what is involved in the job. After collecting the information he should analyse it by putting it in to five categories; task, activity, skills, role and performance analysis.
Bratton and Gold ( 2003) Once the organisation has analysed what a job entails, it is important to draw up a job description. This is defined as a detailed statement of the nature of the job, identifying the precise tasks, skill, qualities and responsibilities involved. The job description has a number of uses. It allows the organisation to tell candidates looking for a job what is expected of them. Therfore it is very important for John Lee to draw up a clear job description using the job analysis he’s formed.
Job description will state the job title, the department worked in, responsible to, relationships, purpose of the job and objectives, specific duties and responsibilities and physical and economical conditions of the job. He has to write a detailed description of the job so that it will help him to decide on the qualities that successful candidates must have as well as making sure that candidates interested in applying for the sales accountant position have a clear understanding of the job. Bratton and Gold (2003)
Once the skills and knowledge is acknowledged about the performance of a sale accountant position, has been outlined in job description, John Lee then has to reword this into a person specification. This shows a profile of the ideal person to fill the job. It is a framework that will be used by John Lee to assess the candidates against. A common format for a personal specification is the seven point plan, based on the work of Roger (1970). His format states: Physical characteristics, Attainment, Gerenal intelligences, Specific aptitudes, Interests, Disposition and Circumstances.
Using this format John Lee will find a suitable candidate for his organisation. The format may vary according to essential requirements of a job. It’s important that the person specification fits the culture of the business. Both job description and personal specification have been the key elements in the traditional repertoire of personal mangers. Dave Hall et al (2004) After John Lee has drawn up a job analysis, job description and personal specification he has to recruit to fill the vacancies of sales accountants.
Two methods of recruitment internal or external. He could offer the job internal within the business, to the temporary accounting staff or could offer the job as a promotion to the staff that have been doing overtime or could advise the job internally. The advantages to this method are; quick, less costly, employees have chance to develop their career and reduce the risk of employing wrong staff. However the disadvantages are it limits numbers of applicants and external candidates may be of better quality.
There are many methods of attracting external candidate, which are stated above. He should put an advert in the local paper and job centre to ensure a substantial number of candidates apply for the job. After John Lee has recruited the job, he has to shortlist the candidates in two to, suitable applicants and non suitable and the entire suitable one go through to the next stage which is the selection stage. Selection is the final and most critical stage of the process. There are various methods stated above which are used to select the most suitable candidates.
The two methods that John Lee should use are interviews and assessment centre. These two methods will show candidate’s leadership skills, behaviour in a group, specific skills and qualities required to be a sales accountant. John Lee will assess the candidates against each other, against the personal specification and job descriptions to see if they are suitable for the job. John Lee has to go through this process to ensure of an effective recruitment and selection is carried out to find suitable candidates for the job with the right skills and qualities.
I will provide a critical insight into interviews, as a selection tool. An interview can be described as the process of obtaining information through questioning conducted either face to face or over the telephone. There are a number of different types of interviews namely structured, panel and telephone. The purpose of an interview is to determine candidate’s suitability and provide him/her an accurate description of what the job entails. Ian Marcouse (1999)
Firstly, a structured interview is the most popular; usually the interviewer has a fixed set of questions for each candidate, with the aim of finding out individual’s skills and the suitability of the applicant. The questions are the same so that they employer can compare the different answers of candidates against each other to select the most suitable applicant. Disadvantage with this type of interview is that judgment is being based on one individual’s opinion.
A panel interview is similar to a structured one however, more people are present. In this interview you are likely to be asked similar questions to the structured but the questions are likely to be asked by a team of interviewers. Each member of the panel will ask questions about different aspects of the job and company. The advantage in this type of interview is, usually three interviewers to make the decision rather than just one. To a certain risk this eliminates the risk of interviewers being bias as each member has equal input.
