Recruitment and Selection

Introduction

This section examines current practices and decision-making in recruitment and

selection. (...) they are critical elements of effective human resource
management. (...) We cannot discuss how recruitment and selection take place
without asking why certain techniques are used in preference to others. Within
the HRM paradigm, they are not simply mechanisms for filling vacancies.
Recruitment and redundancy can be viewed as key 'push' and 'pull' levers for
organizational change.

Recruitment and selection allow management to determine and gradually modify

the behavioural characteristics and competences of the workforce. The fashion
for teamworking, for example, has focused on people with a preference for
working with others as opposed to the individualist 'stars' preferred by recruiters
in the 1980's. Attention has switched from rigid lists of skills and abilities to
broader-based competences. In general - as we noted in the previous section -
there is greater regard for personal flexibility and adaptability - a reorientation
from present to future stability.

Recruitment: marketing jobs

Potential candidates may come from an internal trawl of the organization, or

from the external job market. The latter are reached through channels such as
recruitment advertising, employment agencies, professional asociations or word
of mouth. The approach differs according to the organization's resourcing
philosophy:

- Organizations with a strong culture are likely to seek malleable new employees
at school-leaving or graduate levels. More senior jobs are filled from the internal
job market.
- Companies looking for the 'right' (best fit for the job) person however may rule
out internal applicants because they do not match the personnel specification
prepared for the job.

Informal recruiting

Word-of-mouth applicants are likely to stay longer and may be more suitable
than recruits obtained by advertising. But word-of-mouth is discriminatory, since
it restricts applications to established communities and excludes recently arrived
minority groups who have not had time to become part of informal networks. (...)

At senior levels the informal method known as 'headhunting' or executive search

has become common. Specialist consultancies aim to find 'outstanding' people to
fill higher-paying jobs. Whether they really are 'outstanding' is questionable.
 Formal recruiting

Equal opportunity demands equal access. This can only be achieved through
public and open recruitment. (...) The likelihood of attracting 'suitable' applicants
depends on the detail and specificity of the recruitment advertisement or
literature. Key factors such as salary, job title, career and travel opportunities
obviously influence response rates. But remember that employers do not want
to be swamped with large numbers of applications from unsuitable people. This
section of Human Resource Management in a Business Context goes into further
detail such as: quality of agency recruiters, comparison of different media
channels, cultural variation in recruitment practice.

The Internet has become a major channel for recruitment. The best known
Internet job site is at Monster.com

The For the range of jobs available see also WorkTree.com - The
LARGEST Job Search Portal In The World! for examples of job postings.

But sometimes people search for some unusual jobs: Any jobs going for
astronauts? at HRMGuide.co.uk.

Targeting

Competition for the 'best' graduates requires employers to have a clear idea of
what they mean by 'best'. Recruitment needs to send a strong, distinctive
message to these people. Check out one of the internet providers on this page to
see how jobs are described and marketed.

The recruitment practices and tactics for retaining employees that have the
best organizational "fit" in a number of top companies:
Recruitment and Succession Planning: Finding and Keeping Those Who
'Fit' on the HRM Guide USA site.

Use of corporate websites varies from country to country:

Online recruiting best practice on the HRM Guide Canada site.

More and more of Australia’s largest employers are moving to online

graduate recruitment and away from slow and costly 'traditional' methods:
Switch to online graduate recruitment on the HRM Guide Australia site.

Researching Candidates
 This section looks at the early stages of the selection process - often called
pre-selection. The recruitment campaign should have attracted a pool of
applicants from which selectors can make their choice. If a job analysis has been
conducted, the criteria or competences which are deemed necessary have been
identified. These may be well defined and focused on experience and skills, as in
the 'right person' approach; or general and related to education, intellect and
personality for the 'cultural fit' and 'flexible person' models. (...)

Manpower Introduces Web-Based Employment Prescreening Tool:

Efficiently prescreen thousands of job candidates can significantly reducing the
amount of time hiring managers need to spend reviewing resumes and
identifying the most suitable candidates.

Application letters and CVs/resumes

These are typically used for initial or speculative applications. There are
significant cultural differences between different cultures in the way these are
prepared. Applicants should be careful to use the style expected in the recruiters'
country. For example, recruiters in France typically expect short, factual
education and career histories. They tend not to want the hobbies or sports
interests which also feature in applications from job-seekers in the UK, USA and
other countries influenced by the British tradition. Some countries use
photographs at this stage, others are concerned about the equal opportunity
implications and discourage this practice.

The first stage in your application will require a resume (North America) or a CV
(elsewhere and also for professional jobs).

Read 12 steps to writing the perfect resume

More experienced people should see Executive resumes

What style of resume is best? Functional vs Chronological

Professionals and people outside North America would use curriculum

vitae (CVs)
 Telltale signs that your job search may be in jeopardy and the quick fixes you
can incorporate to increase the chances your job search will be successful.
When Well-written Resumes Don't Work

There's No Need to Pad Your Resume: It seems like a good idea,

harmless in fact. Your friends assure you that everybody does it and that
employers rarely check resume facts. Going on blind faith and convinced the
truth hasn't been helpful so far, you seriously consider fabricating information on
your resume.

The "Interviewable" Resume: The challenge is, How does one create an
"interviewable" resume, one that isn't boring or sterile?

Make your resume/CV interesting. Here are some great power verbs to use at
the beginning of your sentences Power Verb List

Application forms (blanks)

Both letters and CV/resumes present a problem for a large recruitment

programme: applicants may not provide all the relevant information and what
there is will be presented in different ways. Comparison of applicants is easier if
data is presented in a standard application form (blank).
(...) Candidates face a paradox. Because information is regimented into a
particular order and restricted space, job-seekers may present very similar
applications. (...) if candidates do not include details which distinguish them from
the (sometimes hundreds of ) others they stand little chance of being shortlisted.
Conversely, if their responses are too unortodox the form immediately becomes
a test of conventionality.

A quarter of British employers withdrew one or more job offers in the last
year because of lies or misrepresentations on applications, according to the
CIPD's annual Recruitment and Retention Survey. See Check your applications.

The initial stages of employee resourcing are being revolutionised by the

use of computers and the internet. Packages are avilable to deal with responses
from large-scale recruitment campaigns

In the USA, questions about the following could be regarded as

discriminatory:
* Ethnicity, national origin or religion.

* Age or date of birth - instead applicants should be asked if they are above the
minimum legal working age.

* Marital status.

* Education - only acceptable if required by the job.

* Record of arrests - because ethnic minority group members are more likely to
be arrested than the general population.

* Credit rating - because ethnic minority group members are more likely to
have poorer credit ratings than the general population.

* Photograph - because they identify gender, ethnic or national origin.

* Height and weight - because there are significant differences between the
sexes and between different racial groups.

* Specific disability - instead applicants should be asked to confirm they can do

the job.

Qualifications

...educational qualifications are of major importance in some cultures, for

example France and Japan. In other countries their value varies, depending on
the level and nature of the vacancy. One study found that UK graduate recruiters
used qualifications as a shortlisting criterion, and then sought skills and
competences in the later stages of selection.

Biodata

With an increase in coaching, applications have become more and more

similar. Sometimes applicants may seem much the same on paper, but some
have greater initiative or people skills than others. Biodata (biographical data)
forms have been developed to identify non-academic activities such as these.
Biodata consists of systematic information about hobbies, interests and life
history. (...) The main use of biodata is in the pre-selection of basic-level jobs
such as apprentices or graduate trainees. The logic is that if candidates are
matched with existing staff, people with similar interests can be found who are
likely to be suitable for the job. The greatest value of the techniques is its ability
to reduce staff turnover.

References
 Virtually all employers request references as a matter of course, usually
without any thought as to their purpose or value. Where a purpose is expressed,
they tend to serve one or both of the following functions:

* To provide a factual check to maximise the probability of a truthful application

* To provide evidence of character or ability

There is a growing and welcome trend for references to be simple factual checks
rather than a source of 'evidence' for the selection process. There is also an issue
regarding a referee's liability for the consequences of their comments. This
varies from country to country

Psychometric Testing

Psychometric tests.

Psychometric means measurement of the mind. Psychometric tests purport to

measure psychological characteristics, including personality, motivation, career
interests, competences and intellectual abilities. Traditionally they take the form
of pen and paper multiple-choice questionnaires but modern forms can also be
presented on computer screens. Most tests require applicants to work through a
large number of items in a given amount of time.

(...) Users argue that they provide valuable evidence which is not revealed by
other methods. There is a widespread belief that they are somehow objective,
contrasting strongly with the subjectivity of interviewing.

Managers involved in recruiting have more possibilities for assessment

available now than ever before, says Robert Edenborough of KPMG in What test
should I use today? Pros and cons for recruiting managers.

Brainbench roll out assessment tools designed to predict employee success

more accurately by measuring the specific mix of personality, skills, abilities and
past employment behavior for over 150 jobs. See: 'Whole Person' Hiring
Assessments

Criticism of psychological testing

Increasing use of tests has caused some disquiet amongst psychologists,

particularly the proliferation of personality assessments. There are many
available on the market which are promoted by people without adequate training
and which make extravagant claims about their value and effectiveness. Many
employers, including those with human resource specialists, do not have the
ability to identify good and bad products. (...)
Pages 414-415 (pages 236-237 in the first edition) of Human Resource
Management in a Business Context go into: issues of low validity for personality
tests; the problem of lying; impact on ethnic minority groups; a test of language
ability or personality(?) and so on.

Interviewing

Interviewing

The interview is a social ritual which is expected by all participants, including

applicants. It is such a 'normal' feature of filling vacancies that candidates for a
job would be extremely surprised not to be interviewed at least once.

Informal Interviews

Many employers invite applicants for informal interviews prior to the main
selection procedure. These interviews are useful for information exchange,
particularly in the case of professionals. They provide an opportunity to discuss
the full nature of the job, the working environment, prospects for further
development and promotion.

(...)There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether informal interviews should

be used as part of the pre-selection process by the employer rather than self-
selection by the candidate. The crux of the issue depends on what interviewees
have been told. If they have been led to believe that it is a truly informal
information session they will not consider the process to be fair if they are
subsequently told that they have not been shortlisted as a result.

Formal Interviews

Despite the existence of alternative methods of selection most employers regard

the formal selection interview as the most important source of evidence in
making the final decision. A selection interview can be neatly defined as a
conversation with a purpose, but not infrequently the purpose is obscure to the
point of invisibility. More often than not, pointless chat would be nearer the mark.
(...) the interview has attracted severe criticism for a very long time - being
attacked on the grounds of its subjective nature, questionable validity and
unreliability.

Types of interview on the JobSkills.info site looks at a wide range of

interview types and how to deal with them.

Standard questions on the JobSkills.info site suggests the most effective

ways of answering the most common interview questions.
 Difficult questions on the JobSkills.info site. Everything is going well and
then the interviewer lifts her head from her notes and, pen in hand, asks: what
are your weaknesses?

What not to do at interview. 150 executives and human resource managers

were surveyed about the strangest things they have ever heard of happening in
a job interview. No doughnuts, dogs or dates on the HRM Guide Canada site

Candidates Who Perform Last Finish First: Participants appearing

towards the end of juried competitions seem to do better than those performing
at the beginning - and this finding has implications for recruitment and selection.

What Is Your Greatest Weakness?: The fastest way to make a good

interview go bad is to avoid questions posed by the hiring manager.

When Bad Interviews Happen to Good Candidates: Going through the

motions of a bad interview is like peeling back the layers of an onion.

More about interviewing

Evaluating methods

How do we judge the value or effectiveness of interviewing - or any other

method of selection? Practicality and cost-effectiveness are important and partly
explain why the interview is such a common technique. But there are other
factors. Reliability is a measure of the consistency of results. Validity is about
whether or not the method achieves its purpose in distinguishing the most
suitable applicants from the others. Until the 1980s research seemed to show
that interviews had a low degree of validity.

In Canada, for example, if a test which has not been validated rejects a
disproportionate number of people from an ethnic group, race, sex, religion, or
national origin, it violates the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Interviews revisited

There has been a major revision in opinion on the value of interviews since the
1980s. Structured interviews, in particular, have been shown to have as high a
degree of validity as any other selection method. This section of Human
Resource Management in a Business Context goes into ways of improving the
validity of interviews.

Preparation for interviews

Training for interviewers stresses the need to put the candidate at ease, have a
comfortable environment, etc. The interviewer should ensure that relevant
information (e.g. application forms) is read beforehand - it is surprising how
many interviewers are found reading such material for the first time during the
interview.

A major change in recent years has been the improvement in applicants'

interview techniques. Learn from advice given in the following articles:

When Bad Interviews Happen to Good Candidates by Linda Matias

So, why don't you tell me about yourself? by Linda Matias

Interviewing Like a Pro in Five Easy Steps by Linda Matias

Interview techniques

Other selection methods

Work samples

Interviews suffer from a basic problem: (...) When asked what they would do in a
particular situation ... candidates give the answer which they feel the interviewer
wants to hear. (...)

The work sample technique attempts to overcome this problem by asking

candidates to take on mini-jobs in a selection situation. ... properly designed
work samples capture key elements of a real job. (...) Work samples have shown
some of the highest validity scores compared to other selection methods. (...)
even the smallest companies could employ the simpler forms, such as the
following:

* a typing test for keyboard skills

* role-playing
* group decisions
* presentations
* reports
The most sophisticated of work-sample procedures include 'in-basket tests',
sometimes called 'in-tray exercises'. (...) Candidates are given a typical in-tray
containing a selection of material such as letters to be answered, reports to be
analysed, items to be prioritized, etc. They are given instructions on what to do
and a time limit. Standard scoring methods are available.

Assessment centres

(...) Assessment centres are procedures and not necessarily places. They
function on the principle that no individual method of selection is particularly
good and no individual assessor is infallible. ... they use multiple methods and
several assessors in structured programmes which attempt to minimize the
inadequacies of each method and cancel out the prejudices of individual
selectors. Inevitably, assessment centres are a very expensive method of
selection. (...) ... they are focused on potential. (...)

The history and basic methodology are described on pages 424-427 (pages 247-
248 in the first edition) of Human Resource Management in a Business Context

Problems with assessment centres

... the impact on management time is considerable. Managers may appreciate

the value of high-quality selection procedures, but will be reluctant to devote so
much time. Additionally, the traditional process is group-based and is unusable in
situations where only one or two candidates are being considered.

The effectiveness of an assessment centre depends upon its design and the
anticipation of problems.

Pages 426-427 (page 249 in the first edition) of Human Resource Management in
a Business Context details these

Dulewicz (1991) considered that there were three broad phases which accounted
for most of these difficulties:

* programme design
* selection and training of assessors
* effective follow-up action

He attributed many of the difficulties to inexperience. Assessment centres are

involved and complex. Good design is dependent on the knowledge and skills to
design and develop what is a 'highly precise and sophisticated tool'.

Graphology

Graphology or handwriting analysis has a long history on the mainland of Europe.

It originated in Italy in the early seventeenth century and was further refined in
France and Germany, where it is used widely. The essence of graphology is that
analysts claim to be able to describe an individual's personality from a sample of
their handwriting. Their theoretical basis is that of trait psychology, which holds
that personality has a number of fixed dimensions which are relatively
unchangeable and do not depend on the situation.

In the UK there has been a marked resistance to its use, especially among
psychologists.

Resourcing decisions

This section of Human Resource Management in a Business Context goes into

the decision-making processes in selection. (...) Poor selection decisions are
frequently the result of confusing essential competences with trivial
characteristics associated with good performance. These associations arise from
past-focused rather than forward-looking resourcing criteria. This is the essence
of cloning, a key issue in our next section on the management of diversity.

Only around 10 per cent of HR professionals in the UK within large

organisations use applicant tracking systems, as opposed to approximately 90
per cent in the US. Read: USA 90% vs. UK 10%

Webhire Workforce Intelligence: 'Webhire Workforce Intelligence enables

corporate executives, hiring managers, recruiters and other talent stakeholders
to fine-tune hiring practices and talent management programs by analyzing
critical talent management metrics and trends against internal and external
benchmarks.'

As organizations, one of the biggest investments we will ever make is in

recruitment, says Ed Hurst in Recruitment: What is the return on your
investment?

What Hiring Managers Want: Hiring managers value teamwork even

higher than other personal qualities such as ambition and the ability to think on
their feet.

Is it racism or something else?: Looking for a white-collar technical job

on the web? Make sure your name sounds Japanese, Jewish or "white." That
increases the likelihood of an interview by a factor of seven to eight times
compared to names that sound African-American, Greek, Hispanic or Italian