Recruitment and Selection Process

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INTRODUCTION

The human resources are the most important assets of an organization. The success or failure of an organization is largely dependent on the caliber of the people working therein. Without positive and creative contributions from people, organizations cannot progress and prosper. In order to achieve the goals or the activities of an organization, therefore, they need to recruit people with requisite skills, qualifications and experience. While doing so, they have to keep the present as well as the future requirements of the organization in mind.

Recruitment is distinct from Employment and Selection. Once the required number and kind of human resources are determined, the management has to find the places where the required human resources are/will be available and also find the means of attracting them towards the organization before selecting suitable candidates for jobs. All this process is generally known as recruitment. Some people use the term “Recruitment” for employment. These two are not one and the same. Recruitment is only one of the steps in the entire employment process. Some others use the term recruitment for selection. These are not the same either. Technically speaking, the function of recruitment precedes the selection function and it includes only finding, developing the sources of prospective employees and attracting them to apply for jobs in an organization, whereas the selection is the process of finding out the most suitable candidate to the job out of the candidates attracted (i.e., recruited).Formal definition of recruitment would give clear cut idea about the function of recruitment.

DEFINITIONS

Recruitment is defined as, “a process to discover the sources of manpower to meet the requirements of the staffing schedule and to employ effective measures for attracting that manpower in adequate numbers to facilitate effective selection of an efficient workforce.” Edwin B. Flippo defined recruitment as “the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organization




PURPOSES AND IMPORTANCE

The general purpose of recruitment is to provide a pool of potentially qualified job candidates. Specifically, the purposes are to:

• Determine the present and future requirements of the organization in conjunction with its personnel-planning and job-analysis activities.
• Increase the pool of job candidates at minimum cost.
• Help increase the success rate of the selection process by reducing the number of visibly, under qualified or overqualified job applicants.
• Help reduce the probability that job applicants, once recruited and selected, will leave the organization only after a short period of time.
• Begin identifying and preparing potential job applicants who will be appropriate candidates.
• Induct outsiders with a new perspective to lead the company.
• Infuse fresh blood at all levels of the organization.
• Develop an organizational culture that attracts competent people to the company.
• Search or head hunt/head pouch people whose skills fit the company’s values.
• Devise methodologies for assessing psychological traits.
• Search for talent globally and not just within the company.
• Design entry pay that competes on quality but not on quantum.
• Anticipate and find people for positions that do not exist yet.
• Increase organizational and individual effectiveness in the short term and long term.