Methods of Employee Recruitment and Selection

Employee Recruitment and Selection are two distinct aspects of the new employee acquisition process where recruitment refers to the process of initiating the hiring of new employees by calling for applications, validating, and processing them whereas selection refers to the filtering of the recruitment pool and determining which of the applicants are fit to join the organisation. Effective recruitment and selection strategies can help an organisation manage their human resources very effectively whereas inefficient or lacklustre procedures are likely to cast doubt on the human resources strength of an organisation. Recruitment methods generally comprise of various sources of recruitment whereas selection methods usually assess the employee under consideration for the criteria that make them suitable or unsuitable for a certain job. This can be done by subjecting them to various tests such as answering selection criteria questions directly or more subtle approaches that assess several aspects of their application simultaneously. This article describes several methods of carrying out both recruitment and selection.

Recruitment

Recruitment, as mentioned previously, refers to the acquisition of new employees by advertising the need for applicants for a specific job and determining a strategy to fill the vacancies. Recruitment sources are where the organisation expects to recruit employees from and can be broadly divided into external and internal sources. Prior to beginning the recruitment process, it is necessary to first determine a strategy for recruitment starting with the number of new employees required and a plan to bridge the gap between the number present and the number required.

Internal sources are those already within the organisation such as employees in another department whereas external sources include job banks, recruitment agencies or traditional recruitment by calling applications. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, especially considering the company culture, which internal employees are already familiar with, although internal recruitment can stagnate the talent pool of a company and cannibalise existing departments.

Selection

After the recruitment process, it is necessary to filter the list of applicants and select those that the company wishes to incorporate into their ranks by conducting a comprehensive selection process. The selection process will test for both suitability for the relevant job as well as the suitability with the company culture. An effective selection process will result in only the most suitable applicants being selected for the required job, and its effectiveness can be measured quantitatively by monitoring the resultant hires of the selection process.

The most common method of selection involves calling applications and filtering them based on the qualifications required for the job. This aspect of the selection process is done to filter out those unqualified for the job, followed by an interview process designed to filter out those incompatible with the company or job specifics. The exact nature of interviews and questions differ but they can be broadly categorised as structured interviews, where each candidate is asked the same questions, and scenario interviews where each candidate is judged based on their performance in the past or response to a hypothetical scenario.

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