Recruitment and Selection

Chapter 5 of our theory book started explaining a situation in The Espresso Hut” where they needed an assistant store manager. When the manager had to choose, she chose Anthony, a guy who had never worked as a barista but had some business knowledge and understanding of the industry. Also thinking that he could learn the barista job really easy wth the help of other baristas.

But it ended with Anthony being a misfit for the company, coworkers complained of his lack of understanding and he also made some fatal errors that lead into customers not being able to order their prefered drinks. The question is: which caracteristics should the manager had looked before hiring Anthony? Was it enough his business knowledge? Is the manager the perfect person to choose who fits in better?

Supply and Demand

Human Resources work as all markets do, there is a Supply, where there are people with different skills or experience. And Demand, companies looking for specific skills that the company might need. If the skills needed for the company are high, or really dificult to get, like for example a plane pilot, there will be fewer supply than for a job where there is less need of skill like being a cleaner or a waiter. This being reflected in salaries.

There are always imbalances between supply and demand, labour supply exceeds labor demand. When a company opens a position at their firm is more likely to get a lot of applicants rather than none. Unemployment will “always” exist and there will always be people willing to do “normal-paid” jobs. What I mean with this is that if the job had no salary people wouldn’t agree to do that job. That’s why governments set minimum wages or laws that try to avoid this situations.

Hiring Process and it’s challenges

Once companies decide their labour needs, they need to find the best employees. At this moment is when the Hiring Process starts.

Recruitment is the process of listing all qualified candidates for the job offer, and selection is the process of evaluating each application and decide if they fit for the job or not.

There are challenges when trying to find above-average employees because their salary is really way higher than average employees, making it worse if the employee doesn’t fit on the position. Also it’s important to be careful because hiring the right employee can lead into a tremendous positive effect on productivity and customer satisfaction

Recruitment

When people are starting a job they are joining an organization of people, it’s important that the things they have to ofer to the environment of the organization are legit. Sense of teamwork, oportunities, work-life value are some of the characteristics.

Recruitment is the opportunity to attract qualified people to your organization and to provide facts, skills and portfolios that will convince them to be applicant.

There are a lot of sources that recruiters can take applicants from. For example current employees, the bad thing about this is an internal promotion automatically creates another job opening that has to be filled. Also sometimes are the employees who refer their friends to some jobs. Sometimes, and not rarely, companies hire former employees, usually people who got fired, it can be for many reasons, for example seasonal reasons in the restaurant or tourism sector.

Companies sometimes hire discharged soldiers, they do this in the belief that military experience will result in better and more consistent job performance.

Customers can be convinient since they are already familiar with the organization’s products or services. Also advertising the job ofer on radio advertisements, internet advertising, career sites and social media is also the most logic and common way nowadays. People is turning online faster and faster.

Selection

It’s the moment when HR management decides, from all applicants the most suitable persons for the job. They have to consider everything, even if something happends when they choose the wrong person. This process has to be reliable, has to be consistend and be able to be measured. For example with scores, tests, or grades from diferent judges.

Usually HR looks at performance scores and predicts how the applicant will act in certain extrem situations or concurrent situations in every day work time.

There are a lot of Selection Tools as Predictors of Job Performance such as Letters of recommendation that show that the applicant has some experience and usually good one since all letters of recommendation are highly positive.

Application forms are the first formal contact a job seeker has with an organization and most of the applicants are eliminated in this stage.

Companies do Ability tests to check all skills and the range of abilities of their applicants, from verbal to qualitative skills. Also personality tests with help of psychologists can determine job-related behaviors and HR management can decide if that fits in their organization or not. Some of the trais measured are Extroversion, Agreebleness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to experience.

There are some unusual things like Handwriting analysis, graphology is the study that measures personality and other traits by the way the applicant writes. It looks at over 300 aspects of handwritting and it’s been estimated that over 3000 US Organizations use the procedure as part of their screening process.

Taking care of what to ask.

Companies should only ask for information related to the job. HR recruiters should avoid asking about sexual orientation, religious affiliation or other things. Anyways there are better ways, “acceptable” ways of asking some compromised question like Age, race, ethnicity, physical characteristics, religion, marital status or family, physical conditions or even military services, also hobbies, organizations, ideology, credit rating or arrest record.

Google uses this “shocking” strategy to hire the best employees.

When it comes to hiring, normal companies make applicants talk with an HR representative and it usually him who decides the final decision but this is not how google works.

“A hiring manager can say no to an applicant for any reason” (Lisa Stern Haynes, Senior Recruiter 2018) But on the flip side, a hiring person can’t single-handedly give a yes without reviewing it with a committee.

All managers that arrive to google and hear that they’re shocked. But their research proves that teams that have diverging opinions can make better less biased decisions, also applying this to hiring decisions”.

This review teams are made of leaders of specific organizations inside google, they only serve in that committee for a few months before being changed by other leaders.

This leads into different subjective opinions trying to be on the same path with other leaders inside the organization to find the most suitable candidate for the job at Google.

(Umoh. R 2018)

Unusual methods attract better candidates.

Companies are incorporating unconventional methods to their selection process to hire the most suitable applicant to their job. Some are taking it to the next level. Is it difficult for the applicants? Yes. It may be too much work for them? Yes. But applicants who think of themselves worth the job will do it in order to prove they are the most suitable applicant for the job.

For example google has removed some questions in their interviews and changed them to really dificult problem-solving questions and practical performance assessments.

In 2011 the British intelligence designed a challenge that invited individuals to crack a code on the internet, when individuals succeeded they could find a career opportunity in cyber security. This is such a COOL way of trying to make applicants prove they know the job they are applying to.

Some like Heineken use their recruitment campaign as a Marketing campaign too.

What this big companies show to the world is that normal interviews can lead to no conclusions at all, that’s why companies have to, wherever is possible, put their candidates to the test, or replace a group interview with a group challenge.

Darmody J, 2016

References:

Darmody J, 2016. How unusual recruitment methods attract better candidates. URL: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/unusual-recruitment-better-candidates Accesed: 29/01/2020

Umoh R, 2018. Top Google recruiter: Google uses this “shocking” stratregy to hire the best employees. URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/google-uses-this-shocking-strategy-to-hire-the-best-employees.html Accesed: 29/01/2020