Recruitment Process of Employees — Super Business Manager

Recruitment process focuses on identifying the need for new employees, defining the jobs to be filled and the types of people needed to fill it, attracting suitable candidates for the job and selecting the best ones.

Recruitment and selection will be necessary when:

Filling new position. The business is expanding, so needs a bigger workforce.
Filling existing position. The business has labor turnover, so employees who leave need to be replaced.

Securing human resources entails planning, recruiting and selecting. Retaining human resources entails compensation and benefits, training and development, appraising performance and scheduling employees.

Who carries out the recruitment process?

Resources (HR) Department is responsible for recruiting and appointing the right people to ensure that a business organization can function effectively.

Human Resource (HR) Manager must ensure an effective process for recruitment and selection is in place because it is time consuming and expensive. Human

In fact, all functional managers involved in the recruitment process will have input in selecting the candidate.

Why is recruitment of new employees important?

Business organizations need to obtain the best workforce available to effectively meet their business objectives and compete successfully against rival businesses on the market.

Recruitment and selection of employees is vital to the running of a business organization with labor being an essential factor of production needed for the provision of goods or services.

In order to recruit the best person, the business must be clear about the components of each job: tasks required of the position, personal qualities needed to do the job and what rewards will be given when the job is accomplished.

Businesses need to recruit workers and train them when they first begin their job. Also, it is important to offer training to existing workers as the needs of the job constantly change. It is the managers’ job to verify the skills, qualifications and personal qualities required to do the job as well as training needs in order appropriately recruit and retain the post holder.

The workers to be chosen must meet the job requirements as close as possible, so that they meet exactly the needs of the organization in order to reduce the risk of conflict between their personal objectives and those of the business.

Steps in the employee recruitment process

The recruitment and selection process starts when a job becomes available within the organization, perhaps due to expansion of the business, or to replace staff who have decided to leave the organization. People might leave a job for all sorts of reasons, such as to start a new job, to go into higher education, to spend more time with their children or being fired for misconduct.

Finding new employees requires a business to go through a recruitment and selection process. Let’s take a look at all of those steps in the recruitment process in details.

Before any recruitment of new workers takes place in a business organization, job analysis is carried out by the Human Resource (HR) department along with the manager of the department where the vacancy is to determine the vacancy.

STEP 1: JOB ANALYSIS

Conduct a thorough job analysis to determine the firm’s needs to hire new employees.

Job analysis determines what a job entails – scrutinizing different components of a job such as main responsibilities and routine tasks of the post holder, identifying the content of a job in terms of the activities involved and the skills, experience and other qualities needed to perform the work. If it is an existing job, then the job can just be studied and a list made. If it is a new job, then more thought has to go into it and it may have to be adjusted later on.

The process of carrying out job analysis starts with sourcing of information from employees, supervisors, job analyst, current documentation, etc. Information can be collected through records (review existing documents), interviews (critical incidents), questionnaires (repertory grid), observations (focus groups) or research (look at familiar roles). Data should be analyzed in job context (attributes required), tasks (qualifications required), duties (experience needed), knowledge required (equipment used) and skills required (performance standards).

There are five different categories of job analysis such as:

Activity analysis. Study of activities which make up a task – either physical or mental. A job duty means a single specific task. Tasks are collections of activities.
Task analysis. Study of tasks carried out when doing a job. Knowledge is a body of information applied directly to the performance of a task.
Skills analysis. Study of the skills needed to do a job. Ability is present competence to perform an observable behavior or a behavior that results in an observable product. A skill is present, observable competence to perform a learned activity. Skills are internal for a person.
Role analysis. Study of finding a person’s role. A role must be agreed between everyone such as the employees, superiors and colleagues.
Performance analysis. Study of setting criteria when evaluating a job. Standards and expectations are often a target of performance.

Job analysis can be extremely helpful in many ways, e.g. selecting suitable employees, setting pay schemes, promoting employees, job appraisals, training requirements, etc. In addition to verifying the skills and training required to do the job properly, the qualifications and personal qualities needed to carry out the job, managers might also want to consider the rewards needed to recruit and retain the post holder.

Job analysis is a prerequisite for creating two important documents needed for purpose of recruitment and selection of staff including job description and person specification.

STEP 2: JOB DESCRIPTION & PERSON SPECIFICATION

Produce a detailed job description and person specification.

Once the job analysis has been drawn up then the second step can take place. The job analysis helps to create the two important documents needed for the recruitment and selection of staff which are usually produced before writing a job advertisement:

Job description. It mainly includes duties, tasks, responsibilities and performance indicators, etc.
Person specification. It mainly includes skill requirements, attributes required and abilities needed.

These two documents are used to objectively assess the suitability of applicants, link with the following steps in the recruitment process such as: recruitment & selection, performance management, compensation, retention strategies, training and development and succession management, as well as can be used for conducting job appraisals.

📝 DOCUMENT 1: Drawing up a JOB DESCRIPTION. Job description is a document that outlines the details of a particular job. It refers to the job post rather than a person. We talk about the job itself, we do not talk about who we are looking for. It focuses on establishing the exact nature of the job – stating in details all key tasks and responsibilities that the job involves. Or, shows the job as a word picture.

It is usually prepared by the Human Resource Department based on input from the manager of the department which has the vacancy. It will be read by anyone interested in applying for the job and aims to attract the best applicants. It will also show if the chosen candidate is carrying out the job effectively.

Job description includes detailed formal explanation of roles, duties and responsibilities of the job vacancy advertised to be carried out by someone employed to do this specific job. While there are no proper rules about how a job description should be drawn, it usually starts with the job title and ends with informational about working conditions, salary and benefits.

A typical job description provides a complete picture of the job and will include:

Job title. Role that the job plays within an organization.
Department. Type of business function where the belongs to.
Main purpose. Purpose of the post or why does the job exist.
Main duties. What is involved in the job overall? Main activities to be undertaken and what the job holder is expected to achieve.
Accountability (Reporting responsibilities). Place in the hierarchical structure. Who the job holder reports to? Or, who is the immediate boss of the job holder?
Supervising responsibilities. Who the job holder is responsible for supervising and any subordinates are those who report directly to the job holder.
Location.
Working conditions. Working hours, basis of payment, holiday entitlement, period of notice, disciplinary issues)
Appraisals. How the job will be assessed and performance measured?
Salary & Benefits.

Good job descriptions tend to have an element of flexibility in order to exploit the skills of employees. It is because a rigid job description can limit the number potential of workers, especially as businesses constantly experience organizational change. A typical statement in a job description that allows flexibility sounds like ‘and any other reasonable job assigned by the employer’.

Example 1: Sample job description for a secretary.

Title: Secretary
Report To: Office Manager

Job Summary: Schedules appointments, gives information to callers, takes dictation, and otherwise relieves officials of clerical work and minor administrative and business detail.

Duties and Responsibilities:
- Opens, date stamps, sorts, and distributes mail.
- Answers telephone and provides information/assistance or routes caller to appropriate staff member.
- Takes phone or visitor messages and delivers to appropriate individual.
- Greets visitors to the office and directs them to appropriate individual.
- Composes and types routine correspondence and memoranda using word processing software.
- Compiles and types statistical reports including tables and text using spreadsheet software.
- Assists Office Manager with monitoring office supplies.
- Operates and maintains fax machine.
- Makes copies, collates, and staples materials as requested.
- Establishes and maintains permanent files; files and retrieves files as requested.
- Performs other related duties as required

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (established by supervisor):
- Knowledge of modern business communication, including style and format of letters, memoranda, minutes, and reports.
- Skill to use a personal computer and various software packages.
- Skill to type 50 words per minute.
- Ability to establish priorities, work independently, and proceed with objectives without supervision.
- Ability to handle and resolve recurring problems.

Credentials and Experience (established by supervisor):
- Associates degree with courses in secretarial/office administration.
- Two years related experience or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Special Requirements (established by supervisor):
- Willing to work overtime, holidays, and weekends as requested by Office

The main advantage of job description is that it helps to attract the right type of people to apply for the job because potential recruits have an idea of whether they wish apply for the position or not. Job description is given to prospective candidates so they know exactly what the job entails, and if not, most of the job applicants will ask for this anyway before applying for job.

📝 DOCUMENT 2: Drawing up a PERSON SPECIFICATION. Person specification is a document, drawn based on the job description, that shows a profile of a person that would fit the job, both essential requirements as well as desired ones. It refers to the person rather than a job post. We talk about who we are looking for, we do not talk about the job itself. It focuses on the type of qualities and skills being looked for in suitable applicants. Or, shows the person profile.

It is usually prepared by the Human Resource Department with input from the manager of the department which has the vacancy. It will be provided to job applicants to help them understand the type of person that the company is looking for and hopefully attract only those suitable applicants with the right level of skills, experience and personal qualities.

Person specification includes the profile of an ideal candidate – detailed list of the right level of experience, qualifications, skills, personal qualities and physical attributes that the business is seeking in applicants. This might include the ability to lead a team, work in a team or think creatively.

A typical person specification provides a complete picture of the ideal candidate and will include. There are no proper rules about how a job specification should be drawn, but it usually contains:

Experience. Amount of experience and type of experience required.
Education. Minimum and desirable level of education necessary for employment.
Qualifications. Any formal qualifications or certificates to be allowed to carry out a specific job.
Skills. Special hard skills, interpersonal skills, language skills, IT skills, or minimum acceptable level of knowledge or particular aptitude.
Personality. Mental attributes employees must have in order to perform job duties.
Physical characteristics. Physical attributes required in the role such as height.
Other characteristics. Duties, knowledge, skills and abilities that do not have a logical place in the job description.

The main advantage of person specification is that it plays a vital tool in assessing suitability of job applicants for the job because potential recruits have an idea of whether they are the right person to apply for the position or not. It helps in the selection process by eliminating applicants who do not match up to the necessary requirements.

Example 2: Sample person specification for a sales and marketing executive.

Person Specification: Sales and marketing executive

Personality: Self-driven, results-oriented with a clear focus on high quality and business profit. Reliable, tolerant and determined. Able to get on well with others and be a team-player.

Specific Job Skills: Excellent written communication skills. Understands the principles of marketing and advertising cost-effectiveness. Experience of managing marketing agency activities desirable but not essential. Must be an excellent face-to-face and telephone communicator

Computer Skills: Must be adept in use of MS Office 2007 or later, particularly Excel and Word, and ideally Access or similar database to basic level, Internet and email

Management Ability: Some people-management skills, experience and natural ability will be useful.

Qualifications: Must be educated to ‘A’ Level standard.

Once the initial job analysis has been done, and the job description and the person specification documents drawn up, the Human Resource (HR) department will produce a job advertisement in order to get as many suitable people as possible to apply for the job.

STEP 3: JOB ADVERTISEMENT

Prepare an attractive job advert to advertise the vacant post. Recruitment channels can include both internal and external.

TASK 1: Preparing a job advertisement. The job advertisement needs to reflect the requirements of the job as specified in the job description and the personal qualities needed as specified in the person specification. It must include important information such as the contact’s name and address for the business as well as the deadline date for receiving applications. Special, care must be taken to ensure that there is no element of discrimination implied based on gender, race or marital status.

A business will always need to decide the following about their job advertisements:

What should be included in the advertisement?
Where should the advertisement should be placed?
How much will the advertising cost and can the marketing budget cover it?

The advert must be designed, so that one hand it provides all the necessary information about the vacancy to the potential candidates about a vacancy (contact details for the business and a deadline date for receiving applications), and on the other hand it attracts the right applicants to apply for the post (e.g. minimum qualifications and experience, hours of work, the rate of pay and fringe benefits).

What makes a good job advertisement?

Accurate. Describes the job and its requirements accurately.
Precise. Not too long, covers just the important ground.
Honest. Does not make claims about the job or the business that will later prove false to applicants.
Positive. Gives the potential applicant a positive feel of joining the business.

Example 3: Human Resource (HR) Managers consider the 5 ‘TRAPS’© in designing effective job advertisements:
(T) Truthful. The advertisement should not make exaggerated or misleading claims about the job, the pay or the organization. Exaggeration and dishonesty might attract more applicants, but is unethical and can create many problems for the business in the long term.
(R) Relevant. Job advertisements need to be succinct in order to attract people’s attention and interest.
(A) Accurate. To minimize the number of unsuitable applicants for a job, the person specification and job description must be precise.
(P) Positive. An encouraging and upbeat job advertisement helps to attract people to apply for the job.
(S) Short. Given that advertising space is expensive, only appropriate and necessary information should go in a job advertisement.

A good job advertisement will ultimately attract suitable applicants who have the potential to do the advertised job at the firm.

TASK 2: Advertising a job. Once the job advertisement has been produced (aligned with the job description and person specification) the business needs to advertise the job vacancy. But, where to find the employee? There are two possibilities when publishing recruitment adverts such as internally and externally:

INTERNALLY. If the job is to be filled using internal recruitment, then the advertisement could be places inside the business premises such as the employee notice board, newsletter, Intranet, Email, etc.
EXTERNALLY. If the job is to be filled using external recruitment, then the advertisement could be places outside the business premises such local newspapers, national newspapers, specialist magazines, in government job centers, company websites, recruitment agencies, online recruitment service providers, etc.

The choice of whether to advertise the job internally or externally will often depend on the nature of the job, the advertising budget and urgency. Unskilled and semi-skilled job vacancies can be filled from the local population while middle and senior management jobs or jobs requiring a specialist skill are typically advertised nationally. Additionally, advertising externally and nationally is always much more expensive while it is possible to advertise job vacancies for free in many government-run job centers. When time is of the matter, business can use specialist recruitment agencies such as Manpower which provide a complete recruitment service to save the time. Advertising job vacancies on the corporate website is also effective, but it may take a long time to find suitable workers.

It is quite usual to advertise a job both internally (within the organization) and externally (outside the organization). Once the job has been successfully advertised, then the business will need to send out further job details and application forms to people who are interested in applying.

STEP 4: GOING THROUGH APPLICATIONS

Check all the incoming applications to identify suitable candidates.

Now, it is time to go through the application documents – the documents used to collect required information about the candidates. Business can use a standard set of documents following the company’s guidelines or ask the job candidates to prepare their own application. Traditionally, a business organization would use printed application forms, but these days it is more common to use online documents in electronic format which speeds up the recruitment process. Applicants for a job usually apply using a combination of three application documents:

Application Form. This standardized form makes candidates answer the questions that the business sees as relevant for selecting appropriate applicants for a job. Application forms require candidates to answer the same questions in a consistent format allowing employers make comparisons like-with-like easier. Although the format often restricts candidates from including non-standard information or from developing particular areas of strength, it can be customized to include necessary details for the specific job post.
Curriculum Vitae (CV). This personal document is the candidate’s story of professional life to date. CVs outline a job applicant’s personal details such as address, nationality and gender as well as education, employment history, skills, professional qualifications, publications, etc. They allow the employer to see what the candidate has achieved and judge whether the candidates’ past professional achievements meet the requirements of the new job.
Cover Letter (Letter of Application). This is another personal document where the job candidate can introduce himself/herself and state the reason for having an interest in the particular job position. Cover Letters includes the position being applied for and why the applicant should be considered for the job. They allow the employer to browse through potential applications without having to first read all the CVs or application forms.

Once applications have been received, then the selection process can start.

STEP 5: SHORTLISTING APPLICANTS

Confirm the interview method (single, group, multiple, etc.), choose selection procedure and assessment center.

Shortlisting is the process of sifting through applications to identify candidates who are most suitable for the job. Recruiters will usually compare the application forms, CVs and Cover Letters of candidates against the job description and person specification.

After Human Resource managers finish going through all of the job applications, then the short-list of the best candidates will be selected. A small number of applicants, usually around 2-5, will be chosen based on their application information details. References may have been obtained in order to check on the character and previous work performance of the applicants. In the end, a shortlist of applicants will be finalized.

STEP 6: SELECTING APPLICANTS

To select applicants, interview the shortlisted candidates, perform various kinds of testing and check references.

Selecting between the applicants is the last step of the recruitment process.This can be achieved by using a range of different selection techniques.The suitable job applicant is usually selected using a combination of major three selection methods:

Interviews. Job candidates are asked questions on their skills, experience and personality to see, if they have potential to both perform well and fit into the business culture. Job interviews come in the form of in person interview, telephone interview or video interview as well as one on one interview, panel interview and multiple interviews.
Testing. Job candidates are mainly assessed according to aptitude tests which test their skills and abilities in a specific task as well as psychometric tests which test their character, attitudes and personality by using a series of role plays, questions and problem-solving situations.
References. Job candidates are asked to provide contact details to a few independent referees such as previous employers or past supervisors who might be asked to confirm the strength and weaknesses of an applicant. This serves as the final security check to ensure the information given by candidates in their application forms and CVs are both truthful and accurate.

After selection of applicants is finished, it is time to send a job offer to the best candidate. Once the job has been accepted, then the contract of employment needs to be signed. After the new recruit shows up to work, the induction training will be carried out.

In summary, the recruitment process is a series of activities starting from identifying that the business needs to employ someone up to the point at which new employees have arrived at the business. When workers start a new job, they will surely need some training so that they produce work that is up to the standard required.