MBA 331:Managing Human Resources

Assignment 1, Research Based Assignment

Name : Register Number: Submission Date:

Prateek Gupta 1827623 22/01/2019

Articles Reviewed :

1. Piotrowski, Chris; Armstrong, Terry (2006) Current Recruitment and

Selection Practices: A National Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms, North
American Journal of Psychology, 8(3) Pg. 489

2. Bartram, D. (2000) Internet recruitment and selection: Kissing frogs to find

princes, International journal of selection and assessment, 8(4) Pg. 261-274

3. Caers, R., & Castelyns, V. (2011) LinkedIn and Facebook in Belgium: The
influences and biases of social network sites in recruitment and selection
procedures, Social Science Computer Review, 29(4) Pg. 437-448.
Prateek Gupta Reg Num. 1827623

Piotrowski, Chris; Armstrong, Terry (2006) Current Recruitment and

Selection Practices: A National Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms, North
American Journal of Psychology, 8(3) Pg. 489

Recruitment and pre-employment selection methods used by human resource department have
been discussed in the research paper. The study was done on 151 companies in US, where most
of the companies prefer traditional methods for recruitment and selection (example: Resume,
Reference checks, Newspaper/Magazine ads, Job fairs, Skill testing, Online job board etc.) and
only 9.3% firms were inclined towards online methods for recruitment and pre-selection.

There has always been a constant effort by the employer of a company to find the relationship
between personality factors and personnel selection to endorse the utility of person – job fit
paradigm. Psychological test and assessment instruments have gained a lot of popularity among
the recruiters to tap employee’s personality, interpersonal style and response to stress situation
when compared to the unscientific methods that includes personality testing via. Internet
because the person job-fit online tests are not standardized, lack norms and developers don’t
present the validity data on their recruitment and selection measures.

The result of the study indicated that employers rely more on the offline mode of selection
methods over online mode. However, 21.9% companies have considered use of online pre-
employment screening as a part of their selection process in future. Some companies are
inclined towards online based selection methods because of the sole reason to narrow down a
list of final candidates. Scope of the research done is very limited as the results were based
only on the study done for 151 companies in US and in need for further research and
investigation.

In this era of Internet and AI there is a need to digitalize the process recruitment and selection.
This can be done by elimination of the drawbacks in the online approach and to make the online
method more transparent and psychometric test more credible. There is also a need to reserve
a fixed percentage of applicants’ selection through online tests in order to have an optimum
mix of both online and offline methods for selection of candidates.

PRATEEK GUPTA 1
Prateek Gupta Reg Num. 1827623

Bartram, D. (2000) Internet recruitment and selection: Kissing frogs to find

princes, International journal of selection and assessment, 8(4) Pg. 261-274

The paper discussed about the development of Internet as a recruitment and selection medium.
Internet has already been penetrated in the recruitment and in the way the selection process
being carried out. However, the need to improve in the areas like security, authenticity,
confidentiality and control over practices are discussed to have better efficiency in the
recruitment and pre-selection process.

Job applications and job seekers are increasingly moving towards the online medium to find
work. The budget on recruitment via. Internet has also been increased from 14% to 32% with
newspaper advertising dropping from 70% to 52%. In the pre-selection process the
advancement in technology has provided adaptive testing using, in particular, Item Response
Theory models. The main focus of recruiter of using Internet is limited to only attraction and
recruitment but the future lies in using Internet for several stages in selection i.e. interviews,
reference checks, assessment centre exercise and objective assessments (psychometric test for
personality etc.)

The major challenges which Internet has faced in becoming a successful medium for
conducting recruitment and selection are security (How does one ensure the security of people’s
confidential data?), confidentiality (How does one ensure that a test taker’s result are held
confidentially?), authentication (How to ensure that the person taking the test is the person
they say they are?), control over test conditions (How to ensure that there is no breakdown in
service in the middle of the test?) and equality of access (How to ensure that all the applicants
have equivalent access of the internet?)

At present most job searches are based upon demographic criteria and relevant experience. This
can be improvised by developing a standardised structured assessment that are made online by
recruiters and submitted by job seekers. This will not only ensure to get the quality of
employees but also decrease the average time duration taken by employers to recruit.

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Prateek Gupta Reg Num. 1827623

Caers, R., & Castelyns, V. (2011) LinkedIn and Facebook in Belgium: The
influences and biases of social network sites in recruitment and selection
procedures, Social Science Computer Review, 29(4) Pg. 437-448.

A total of 398 respondents from different sectors and companies responded to an online
questionnaire based on the impact of Social Network Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook on
the Recruitment and Selection process. These social networking sites acts as the source of
information (example: age, gender, sexual orientation, race, obesity and facial attractiveness)
of the applicant’s profile. This enables recruiters to effectively decide whom to call for the
interview. The employers also claimed that profile pictures play an vital role in interpreting
one’s extroversion and maturity. One down side of using SNSs is that it creates a bias for an
applicant in the recruiter’s mind before even appearing for the interview.

There is a different way people look at Facebook and LinkedIn with respect to professionalism.
Instead of the differences, LinkedIn and Facebook share a common interest regarding visibility
of individual’s network etc. Besides recruitment and selection, social network sites also affects
the retention policies of the company. In addition to this, impact of SNSs. on geographies,
availability of Internet and literacy limitations is different which allow bias to enter in the pre
selection process.

The results clearly depicted that the way LinkedIn and Facebook is perceived by people is
completely different. LinkedIn is used to get the information on friends’ career development,
updates on business developments and to make professional appointments. While Facebook
use is completely for non – professional activities. This is the major reason for the companies
to prefer LinkedIn as a platform for job hunt than using Facebook. LinkedIn also helps
applicants to promote themselves which in turn helps them to get better job opportunities.

This paper helps in better understanding on the effects of social network sites in recruitment
and selection process. The information provided by the users of LinkedIn and Facebook is
directly linked to the recruiter’s perception regarding that candidate. Thus, the company should
form a policy to contribute to the pre selection process for the era of social media.

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