HR Management Assignment help on : Formal & Systematic Approach for Recruitment and Selection Process
Formal & Systematic Approach for Recruitment and Selection Process
A formal and systematic approach for recruitment and selection process is very important from an organization’s point of view. A systematic approach always provides a strong foundation and brings stability to an organization’s essential operations. As we all know that recruitment and selection process are an integral part of a company’s HRM operations and demands a lot of time and attention of senior management. Nowadays many new practices have made their way into recruitment kernel such as e-recruitment, job portals, headhunting etc. which have made the job of an HR Manager more challenging. Recruitment and selection practices always hold the key for an organization success in a tough competitive world as these practices are responsible for the selection of key personnel. And since employees are the ones who work tirelessly for an organization’s success, they hold the fate of the firm in their hands. Talented employees could be a source of competitive advantage for a company in the marketplace which further increases their demand and value. Manpower, as many companies claim, is the most important and valuable asset a company possess and this statement couldn’t be more appropriate in today’s throat-cut competitive environment (David Ingram 2012).
Recruitment and selection process are often presented as a combined set of practices which are closely linked and follow a sequence. Recruitment is the process of inviting applications for vacant posts in an organization, so creating a talent pool of candidates and making them apply for the vacancies of the organization. On the other hand, selection process involves several activities which ultimately lead to the final selection of the most deserving candidate among a pool of candidates (Bratton and Gold 2007).
Recruitment and selection practices can best be catered with a proactive approach. Hiring at a last minute for an important position could prove fatal for an organization’s prospects. Instead, companies should take time to build a talent pool for the vacancies that could arise in upcoming future so that they could reach to talented candidates at a proper time when a vacancy actually occurs (David Ingram 2012).
(Figure-Recruitment and Selection Process)
Factors Influencing the Recruitment Process-
1. Internal Factors
- Recruitment policy of the organization
- Size of the organization & the number of employees employed
- Cost involved in recruitment
- Growth & expansion plans of the organization
2. External Factors
- Supply & demand of specific skills in the market
- Political & legal considerations such as reservations of jobs for reserved categories
- Company’s image perception by the job seekers.
Sources of Recruitment
Present Employees (in-house recruiting)
Unsolicited Applicants
Educational and Professional Institutions
Public Employment Offices
Private employment Agencies (Recruitment Consultancies)
Employee Referrals
Walk-Ins
Job Portals
Headhunting
Selection Process
A formal selection process involves following steps-
a) Preliminary Interview – Preliminary interviews are carried out to have informal knowledge about candidates regarding their upbringing, education, current employment status etc. Nowadays this process is taken care of by the interviewers via telephones, thus giving the process a new name- telephonic interview.
b) Selection Tests – Candidates who successfully clear the telephonic round of interview goes for the selection tests. Generally these tests are designed to check the aptitude skills of the candidates and their decision making power. These tests primarily contain sections on Reasoning and Mathematics to test the analytical skills of candidates.
c) Employment Interview – Candidates after clearing the second round of recruitment process now goes through their first face-to-face interview with the HR Manager of the organization. It has become a trend nowadays that candidates have to go through two round of face-to-face interview-one with the HR Manager and second with the head of the department under whose order candidates have to work (J.P. Jacobson 2010).
d) Reference and Background Analysis – If a candidate clears all these rounds, then a thorough check-up is conducted by the HR Manager of candidates’ references from the places where he has previously worked in order to validate and authenticate their identities. Reference check has gained a lot of popularity in recent times as it gives the recruiter the first-hand knowledge about a candidate’s behavior, work-ethics and skills. So a candidate always needs to build a good rapport and relationships with his peers, superiors and subordinates.
e) Physical Examination – A physical check-up of the candidate is done to ensure that he/she is free from any illness and he/she is suffering from any illness, whether it will prevent him/her or not to carry out his/her duties effectively.
f) Offer Letter – After checking out on all the aspects of selection process, finally the offer letter is prepared for the employee detailing his compensation, reporting timing, designation etc.
g) Job Contract – In some cases, company demands commitment from the newly hired candidates for some time period, say for example, 6 months, 1year or 2 years depending on the nature of the industry company is operating in. The companies work on this premise simply on the rationale that they are spending vital time and resources on the employee in order to train him and thus he needs to pay it back to organization in terms of a minimum guaranteed period of service (J.P. Jacobson 2010).
A systematic hiring process involves following steps –
a) Job Descriptions and Specifications – The start of a formal recruitment process is always marked with the designing of a proper job description format which gives us details about job responsibilities, reporting directions, pay structure and supervisory authority. Job descriptions help the prospective candidates to apply for those jobs where their interests could be met in best possible ways. Creating job descriptions is always perceived as a difficult task failing which leads to a lot of ambiguity where an employee most likely crosses his limits and starts interfering with another’s job duties. Especially new start-up businesses find this task very hard to complete. Similarly Job specification details us about the proper skills set an employee requires in order to comply with his job. A good format of job specification enables an employee to focus on some specified skills, not all of them which he has, to finish his duties more satisfactorily (The Times 100 2012).
b) Skills Inventory – To find appropriate candidates for specific jobs is a very tough task and creating an inventory of skills can be treated as a solution of this problem as this inventory will provide a recruiter with a list of candidates specialized in a particular set of skills. In this way, a recruiter can screen-out most suitable candidates according to the job specifications and the selection process becomes much easier as a result of this thing.
c) Job Posting Strategy – Job posting is a strategic part of a formal and systematic recruitment process as it singles out various strategies for approaching candidates for recruitment. It involves preparing job ads and publishing them through any medium of information. It also tells a recruiter about the places where he can most easily find the right candidates. For example, if he has to fill some entry-level positions in the organization, he can approach universities’ placement offices in search of applicants (M. L. Gusdorf 2008).
d) Multi-Step Interviews – Breaking up the interview process in 2-3 levels refine the information the recruiters obtain from the candidates. According to recent trends, many companies are embracing this multi-level interview strategy in order to gain deeper insights about the candidates. Recruiters, in collaboration with other department heads carry out these interviews which first start with an informal telephonic conversation followed by a series of face-to-face conversations. Big companies find this process strategically very systematic while small companies totally discard this strategy as they believe it is a total wastage of money, time and other resources (R. French and S. Rumbles 2010).
Merits and Demerits of a Formal and Systematic Recruitment Process –
a) Merits
1. A formal recruitment process enables hassle-free selection of the most suitable candidates in the organization.
2. Since this process is covered with many layers of different mechanisms, it gives a recruiter enough scope and information about a particular task in-hand. For example, if he has to organize a written-test for applicants, he will only concentrate upon that activity and won’t think about other steps of recruitment at that time.
3. A formal recruitment process enables candidates too to check-out their progress with the company and also provides them with another chance if they do not do well in any particular phase of employment (But only in few cases where mistakes are too tiny to be ignored).
4. A systematic selection process can result in lower turnover if applicants are selected for traits that are highly correlated with their jobs ultimately leading to high longevity within the organization.
5. Such a selection process can also reveal those interpersonal traits of the candidates that may be needed for some other jobs and could be explored and utilized there.
6. A formal recruitment process can filter out most of the unnecessary applications and provide the organization with most worthy candidates as this process is comprised of a lot of screening steps (R. French and S. Rumbles 2010).
b) Demerits
1. A formal recruitment and selection process demands a lot of time, money and other resources. So it is basically practiced only by big organizations while the small organizations find it too cumbersome a process to apply at their premise.
2. Growing competitiveness at the marketplace is resulting in shortage of talent. That is why inviting a lot of quality applications for job vacancies has become a very tough task.
3. A systematic selection process occupies HR department as well as other department heads and some senior management officials too for a long time which sometimes causes distraction and the single-minded pursuit of organizational objectives gets disoriented and fragmented (The Times 100 2012).
4. A formal recruitment and selection process focuses on smallest possible details and even a slight mistake on the behalf of HR department can lead to a wrong selection, ultimately failing all the objectives of recruitment process.
Following documents hold mighty importance in creating a formal recruitment and selection process –
1. Job description
2. Job specification and person specification
3. Job advertisement
4. Interview checklist
5. Induction program
We have already discussed the importance of first three documents in detail in above paragraphs of this paper. Coming back to the last two documents, an interview checklist is a written document with questions to be asked is written on it. An interviewer while taking the interview of the candidates asks the questions from this checklist and simultaneously marks them off their list. Interview checklist is generally a part of ‘structured interviews’ where the questions are pre-conceived by the interviewer.
Induction program is carried out by the HR department on the very first day when a new employee joins the organization. It basically is prepared out to give the employee some-sort of basic but important information about the company covering its operations, employees and work-ethics. The existing employees welcome this new recruit in their organization and an informal introductory session follows the proceedings (M. L. Gusdorf 2008).
Documents to be enclosed
Job Advertisement
INTERVIEW GUIDE TEMPLATE
Marketing Manager
Mumbai, India
Company: Unilever is a multinational corporation which provides a lot of utility products like soaps, cream, beauty products, healthcare products etc. to its customers worldwide. Our company is one of the leading FMCG companies of the world and caters to billions of customers.
Job Description: Your main responsibilities will be handling the B2B sales operation s of the company. On a day-to-day basis, you will be expected to meet the clients/stockiest and try to convince them to sell our products. To achieve this, you will be working as part of a team. Your work will enable the company to launch its new product line in India.
Requirements and Qualifications: You need to be a motivated, team player, extrovert, self-starter and optimistic person to do this job. You should have an MBA degree from a reputed institute and a minimum of 3 years of experience in the field of marketing and sales. You need to be willing to travel and available on weekends if an urgent work calls for such commitment.
How to Apply: Applications may be submitted by mail, e-mail, etc. and no later than 30th Nov. 2012 to:
Mailing Address –
Unilever Ltd.
Post Box No. 377
Zygon Square
3rd Floor
Worli, Mumbai
Pin – 400018
Email – hrdept@unilever.net
Telephone Number – +91-ABCDEFGH
Website Address: www.unilever.net
Job Description
▌Detailed Job Description
Job title: Marketing Manager
Reporting to: Senior Marketing Manager
Salary: 4, 20, 000 INR/annum
Hours: Full time, 9 hrs/day, 5 days a week
Location: Mumbai, travelling required
Purpose of the position
This position will take care of all the marketing activities including branding, promotion and sales of the new Unilever products, thus cementing the place of Unilever further in the Indian Corporate Scenario.
Responsibilities & duties
▌Responsibility 1 – Employee will meet retailers and stockists every day, thus he has to travel extensively to cover his sales territory. He must have a two-wheeler for fulfilling this responsibility.
Work standard – He has to meet a pre-conceived number of employees everyday to meet his target.
▌Responsibility 2 – He has to prepare daily sales report on MS-Excel. He will also have to organize his mails.
Work standard – At the end of each working week, all catering events for the following week must be finalised.
Academic & trades qualifications
| Essential | Desirable |
| MBA in Marketing | Advanced Excel course |
Work experience & skills
| Essential | Desirable |
| Minimum three years of experience in marketing | Experience working with a FMCG company |
Personal qualities & behavioral traits
| Essential | Desirable |
| Excellent communication skills | Attention to detail, extrovert, ambitious, optimist |
Relationship
| With | Purpose |
| Senior Marketing Manager | Having guidance as well as unlimited knowledge from him about various sales methods and techniques |
Employee Signature__ XYZ
Date___30th Nov.2012
Manager Signature____ ABC
Date__30th Nov.2012
Performance review period: 6 Months
Next review date__30th April 2013
Person Specification
| Job Title |
Marketing ManagerPost No.MRGrade4DepartmentMarketingHours9DivisionSalesDirectorABCDate30th Nov. 2012Completed ByXYZ
| Attributes | Essential criteria | Desirable criteria |
| KNOWLEDGE | Working knowledge of all the sales and promotion techniques | Extra knowledge of advertisement and branding will be beneficial |
| Skills and Abilities | Ability to work in groups and teams, excellent verbal communication skills, meet the target on regular basis, time management | Leadership traits |
| Experience | Minimum 3 years with an FMCG company (preferably) | Experience in working with computer and internet extensively |
| Qualifications | MBA (Marketing) | Basic knowledge of MS-Excel, Word and Power-point |
| Personal Circumstances | Willingness to work after the regular office hours to meet the changing demands of customers | Willingness to work with other departments if need arises |
Interview Checklist Questions
- Please introduce yourself and what position you are applying for (if not clear on position, it will be covered later)
- How did you find out about us?
- What do you care about most in your life?
- How does our work relate to your care?
- What do you see yourself doing with us at Unilever?
- What are you interested in getting out of this opportunity?
- What do you think is the best use of your time?
- What are your three strongest skills that you bring to this position? Substantiate.
- What are the principles do you use as guidance?
- What are your professional accomplishments that you are most proud about?
- What are your most important resources?
- What are the qualities that are inspiring about you?
- What opportunities are you hoping to get?
- What inspires you?
- What are your outside interests?
- What are 3 of your greatest failures in your professional history?
- Illustrate your creativity.
- Would you rather create strategy, design a solution, solve a problem, or create a process? Why that?
- What did you learn in your present job or position?
- How long would it take you to make a contribution to this company?
- What can you offer that someone else does not?
- What interests you most about this position?
- What interests you least about this position?
Induction Program
| Topics | Discussion points | Were the topics understood? Is further discussion required? |
| Objectives of induction programme and induction schedule | ||
| Culture of organization | ||
| Culture of Service/Faculty | ||
| Culture of team and department | ||
| Leadership style and culture (for those in management roles) | ||
| The importance of cross team working | ||
| Line manager expectations and behavioral standards | ||
| Probationary period | ||
| Approach to development/development needs |
If you want HR Management Assignment Help study samples to help you write professional custom essay’s and essay writing help.
Receive assured help from our talented and expert writers! Did you buy assignment and assignment writing services from our experts in a very affordable price.
To get more information, please contact us or visit www.myassignmenthelp.Com
