Chapter 1 – An Introduction to Recruitment and Selection

SIGNS OF A BAD HIRE

 Not having the skills you expected: unsure how to do necessary tasks, or how to operate essential equipment
 Constantly complains: complain about everything from work environment to nature of work and coworkers
(always negative)
 Conflicts with coworkers: clashes with other employees, don't fit organizational culture, incompatible with
other members of team
 Missed deadlines: constantly missing deadlines may indicate a more serious problem, indicating they are
incapable of doing their job
 Poor work quality: repeating the same errors after being corrected suggests they cannot learn how to do the job
 Attendance problems: continually being late, taking extended lunch breaks or unexpected time off may
indicate dissatisfaction with their job and work is not their priority
 Underperformance: constantly asking the same questions about job or role may impede work and productivity
of their coworkers
 Decrease in morale: poor interpersonal relationships with team members --> decreased unit morale; blames
coworkers for their problems, get into arguments with coworkers about anything and everything
 Unhappiness: may be reflected in constantly criticizing management and coworkers, wasting time on phone or
internet, making unreasonable demands, etc.
 Always on your mind: always thinking about the problem hire, losing sleep because you are worried what that
person will do next

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH A BAD HIRE?

 Need to make a decision whether to:
o Train the new employees to adapt to company and job
o Transfer them to a different position where they are better qualified for
o Cut ties with the employee
 Most new hires are on probationary period, allowing employers to discharge without penalty
 Keeping after that date may lead to significant costs related to discharge if cannot show they are incompetent
 If terminate, must begin recruitment and selection process anew; learn from what went wrong with the bad hire

WHY RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION MATTER

 Talent management: an organization's commitment to recruit, retain, and develop the most talented and superior
employees
o Describes an organization's commitment to aligning all of its processes and systems to retaining and
developing a superior workforce
o Gives the line manager a significant role and responsibility of superior employees with less involvement of
HR
 To be effective, larger organizations rely on Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS)
o HRIS: computer-based systems that track employee data, the needs of HR, and the requirements and
competencies needed for different positions, among other functions
o Generally bundled with payroll and accounting functions
o Can be customized
 Recruitment: generation of an applicant pool for a position / job to provide the required number of candidates for
a subsequent selection or promotion program; done to meet goals / objectives; must meet current legal
requirements
 Selection: the choice of job candidates from a previously generated applicant pool in a way that will meet
management goals and objectives as well as current legal requirement; can include
o Hiring
o Promotion
o Moving current employees into training or development programs

RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION AS STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

 Two basic principles underlying the Human Resource System:
o Carefully coordinate its activities with the other organizational units and people if the larger system is to
function
o HRM must think strategically in systems terms and have the welfare of the whole organization in mind
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 Seven steps in a strategic planning process relevant to recruitment and selection

o Vision, mission and value statements

 Influences strategic goals and objectives that result in how the organization undertakes to recruit
and select talent
 Prominently displayed on websites
 Vision statements presents future aspirations; future level of excellence or quality that serves to
influence the behaviour
 A mission statement should accurately and briefly explain why an organization exists and what it
hopes to achieve in the future; core purpose; defines organization's business
 Vision and mission statements lead to a set of values (principles or beliefs that guides its work)
 Value statement is an expression of core beliefs; make aware of the priorities and goals
o Develop strategic objectives
 Strategy: the formulation of organizational objectives, competitive scopes, and action plans for
gaining advantage; plan for achieving goals
 The strategic objective for recruitment and selection is to obtain the best talent in accordance with
values
o Analyze the external environment
 Must be aware of threats and opportunities
 Often referred to as environmental scan
 Involves a review of technology, laws and regulations, social cultural factors, and changing work
force demographics, etc.
 Legislative Environment
 Recruitment and selection must take place within the context of applicable laws and
regulations
 Include concerns for the human and legal rights of job applicants and employees
 women, visible minorities, immigrants, and Aboriginal people make up a significant
percentage of entrants into the Canadian labour force
 Visible minorities possess expertise, skills, knowledge of foreign cultures and business
practices, and natural trade links with overseas markets that are of value to employers in the
current global economy
 Special challenges but tremendous opportunities emerge from having a workplace that is
increasingly diverse in functional expertise, gender, age, and culture
 Employers cannot discriminate against existing or potential employees with respect to
non-job-related characteristics
 Employers must hire on the basis of an applicant possessing the knowledge, skills, and
abilities or other characteristics that are necessary to perform a job
 Global competition
 Foreign trade is vital to Canadian economy
 Canada is participating in the NAFTA agreement
 More than half of what is produced in Canada is exported; extremely vulnerable to
foreign market conditions
 Increasing globalization has changed the level of competition as new players enter
international markets and trade barriers between countries are softened
 The economic climate
 Economic booms bring skilled labour shortages, giving recruitment and retention high
importance
 Economic slowdowns or recessions lead to cutbacks in jobs, pay, and benefits or hiring
freezes, HR letting people go
 Slowdown may have skilled people looking for jobs, making recruitment easier; but may
also bring unskilled workers
 The number of people in the applicant pool has a major impact on the quality of those
people who are selected for employment
 If there are critical shortages of skilled labour or professionals
 More emphasis on recruitment, and companies may be less selective; seek to
outsource hiring to placement firms and secure temporary workers, either domestic or
foreign
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  Employers can take advantage of an oversupply of labour; less emphasis on
recruitment; more selective in hiring people
 Rapid advances in technology and the internet
 Now expected to be computer literate; be familiar with basic computer software
 Employers using tech more than ever before to recruit and select

 Benefits of e-recruiting
 Access to larger candidate pool
 Lower recruiting costs
 Elimination of printing costs and print media deadlines
 Capability for the immediate tracking of results
 Greater concern for privacy and data security
 Cyberattacks cause disruption to services and email and allow breaches of security
leading to identity theft
 Changing work force demographics
 Work force comprised of 68.9 percent of population
 45-64 y/o = 42.4 percent
 More people 55-64 y/o where people begin to retire, compared to 15-24 y/o
where people begin to enter into work force
 In times of recession, the addition of post-65 workers leaves less room for hiring
entry-level employees
 They may present a very experienced applicant pool when the number of younger
coworkers is decreasing
 More gender balanced I.e. 15-65 y/o -- Males: 70.3; women: 68.5%
 More highly educated I.e. 64.1 percent between 25 and 65 have a certificate, diploma,
bachelor's, or postgraduate degree
 More culturally diverse I.e. visual minorities comprise 79.07 percent of Canadian
population; Aboriginal people make up 4.26 percent
 Must adapt to accommodate demographic changes
 Types of Organization
 Larger organizations tend to have more formalized recruitment and selection systems
 Public sector
 Public services tend to be highly unionized and to follow negotiated processes
 Private sector
 Procedures may vary by type and size of the business or industry
 Small or family run businesses: procedures may be more informal; may not have
the funds for sophisticated systems
 Organizational restructuring
 Technology reducing need for labour; must cope with large segment of work force
approaching retirement
 Have implemented non-age related layoffs and early-retirement incentive
packages; have restructured or downsized
 Traditional organization structure of a pyramid have been flattened
 In a seller's market, more emphasis on recruiting; more organizations compete to hire
fewer qualified candidates
 Redefining jobs
 Workers are required to apply a wider range of skills to an ever-changing series of tasks
 Individuals entering the work force may face at least three to four career changes in their
lifetime
 Younger workers today rarely expect to spend their entire life with an organization
 Employers will expect workers to possess the skills and knowledge of two or three
traditional employees
 Unionized work environments
 30 percent of employees in Canada work in a unionized environment
 The negotiated collective agreements i place generally address issues of recruitment and
selection

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  Require employer to post any job vacancies in the unit covered by collective agreement
before they can be advertised more broadly
 Specify how competitions for vacant positions are carried out
 Must know the requirements of any applicable collective agreement with respect to
recruitment and selection procedures
 Failure to follow may lead to grievances and arbitration
 The best way to improve the procedures is to have HR involved in the negotiating process

 Identify the Competitive Edge

o Effective recruitment and selection practices gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace
o Better able to attract, select and retain best talent = more competitive and successful
o Identify target group of applicants, designing recruitment message to emphasize attributes that are
attractive to target group
 Determine the Competitive Position
o Must get the right people in place; without them, all clever business strategies and technologies are
ineffective
o Must decide what they wish to compete with other firms for best talent
o One way of obtaining competitive advantage is to employ best practices in recruiting and selecting staff
o Best practices
 To remain competitive, companies must have in place HR strategies for recruiting, identifying
and selecting employees who will contribute to the overall effectiveness of the organization
 Old practices may lead an employer astray of new legal requirements as well as to an
underperforming organization

 Implement the strategy

o Once strategy for recruitment and selection has been developed, HR must adopt a process to put the
strategy into action
o Needs to specify the steps that should be taken to implement strategy that lead to organizational goals
o Must outline steps needed to get job done
 Evaluate the Performance
o Not always easy to accomplish strategic goals established
o There are different ways of determining success of a plan

RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION AND THE HR PROFESSION

 HR staff are responsible for knowing latest legal and scientific information with respect to recruitment and
selection
 Responsible for implementing policies and procedures that are in accordance with accepted professional
standards, lead to recruitment and selection of the best talent

AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICAL ISSUES AND PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

 Ethics: the determination of right and wrong; the standards of appropriate conduct or behaviour for members of a
profession
 HRM requires the balancing of rights and interests of management with those of workers, as well as the rights and
interests of management
 Professional Standard: provide guidance on how HR professionals should behave in certain situations including
the use of employment tests
 Ethical standards regulate the behaviour of those using employment tests
 Four basic principles on which ethical behaviour is based:
o Respect for dignity of the persons and peoples
o Responsible caring
o Integrity in relationships
o Responsibility to society
 Ethical code of the Canadian Council of Human Resource Associations (CCHRA); four principles:
o Principle P1: Members have a duty to discharge all of their Professional responsibilities honourably,
competently, and with integrity.
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 o Principle P2: Members have a duty to protect and promote the Profession and to cooperate with the
Association.
o Principle P3: Members have a duty to act in the best interest of their clients and employers.
o Principle P4: Members must at all times act in a manner that advances the principles of health and safety,
human rights, equity, dignity, and overall well-being in the workplace.

ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION

 Frequently occurs during the employment testing of job applicants
 Professional HR associations have written codes and standards to provide guidance on ethical matters
 Membership in the profession is based on adherence to its ethics and professional standards
 Membership is a public guarantee that the member operates in accordance with accepted principles