Recruitment

Recruitment is a set of activities designed to attract a qualified pool of job applicants to an organization. Emphasis on qualified is important. Effective recruitment brings employment opportunities to the attention of persons with abilities and skills appropriate to job specifications. Then and only then will recruiting facilitate the accomplishment of organizational objectives and fulfill its function as an essential ingredient in the total staffing process. In this process, human-resource planning leads to recruiting, which sets the stage for selection.

The three steps in the recruitment process are: 1) advertisement of a job vacancy, 2) preliminary contact with potential job candidates, and 3) initial screening to create a pool of qualified applicants. You may know the process best in your response as an applicant to newspaper ads or word-of-mouth advertisements of job openings. Most probably you will become involved with the recruiting process when interviewing representatives of organizations visiting your campus in search of new employees.

Project yourself into this situation. You are near graduation and want a full-time job that relates to your major field of study. What will the three steps in recruiting process look like from your side of things? Probably the following.

1. Job advertisement. The organization advertises its job vacancies by posting short job descriptions at the campus placement center and/or in the campus newspaper.

2. Preliminary contact. You sign up for an interview with a recruiter on campus; during a short (20-30 minute) interview you present a written resume of your background and explain your qualifications.

3. Initial screening. The recruiter discusses interview results and your resume with appropriate line managers; based on their knowledge of job specifications, you are among the candidates selected for a formal visit to the organization.

This is the recruitment process through the applicant’s eyes. What are these aspects of recruiting from the perspectives of line managers and of recruiting specialists from a personnel department?

External and internal recruitment. There are two basic categories of job candidates toward whom recruited efforts can be directed - qualified employees ready for promotion or transfer from within the organization, and persons from the outside. Internal recruitment involves making employees aware of job vacancies through job posting and personal recommendations. Internal recruitment demonstrates internal opportunities to advance in one’s career by working hard and achieving high performance at each point of responsibility.

External recruitment involves the attraction of job candidates from sources external to the organization. Newspapers, employment agencies, technical training centers, personal contacts, referrals and even persons in competing organizations are among the sources of external recruits.

Each of these recruitment strategies offers potential advantages and disadvantages to the organization. Internal recruitment is usually the least expensive, deals with persons of known performance records, encourages hard work among those desiring such opportunities. External recruiting, on the other hand, brings in outsiders with fresh perspectives. It also represents a source of specialized expertise or work experience that is not otherwise available from insiders. Overall, a good strategy is to maintain a mixture of external and internal recruiting. This allows the manager and organization to gain the best advantage of each as circumstances allow.

1. In the process of recruitment emphasis on the word qualified is important.

2. In this process human-resource planning doesn’t always lead to recruiting.

3.There are five steps in the recruiting process through the applicant’s eyes.

4.Internal recruitment involves employees aware of job vacancies inside an organization.

5. External recruitment involves the attraction of job candidates from sources external to

the organization.

6.Internal recruitment is usually the most expensive.

7. External recruitment brings the outsiders with fresh perspectives.

8. A good recruitment strategy is to choose only one of the two categories.

9. A mixture of external and internal recruiting allows the manager to gain the best

advantage of each.

Scan the text once again and speak in details on external and internal recruiting.

Text 6

Read the following text and answer the questions that follow it.