UNIT 3: RECRUITMENT

Unit Learning Objective

By the end of this unit, you should be able to apply the Employee Recruitment concepts in your
Case Study #2.

This stage comprises recruitment practices. It deals with policies and procedures
used by organizations to fill an open position due to resignation, retirement, job
abandonment, promotion, or transfer.

RECRUITMENT serves as a tool to locate and entice job seekers who are eligible for
the job. Recruitment sources could be internal or external.

3.1 IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT

Once the company has authorized the recruitment or sourcing officer to fill a position, the next
step is to build up through recruiting, an applicant pool. Employee recruiting means finding and
attracting applicants for the employer’s open job positions.

Why Recruiting is Important

Past surveys say that it is “hard to find good candidates” and even high unemployment
does not necessarily mean that it is easy to find candidates.
Effective recruiting is important because it allows you to find the best candidate from a
significant number of people from your applicant pool.

What Makes Recruiting a Challenge

Recruiting is not an easy job as many factors come into play.
• Some recruiting methods (with cost implications) are superior to others, depending on
the type of job for which you are recruiting.
 • Success in recruiting also depends on non-recruitment issues and policies. For example,
paying 10% more to ad/recruitment agencies can help you build a bigger applicant pool
faster.
• Philippine Labor Law prescribes what you can and cannot do in recruiting.

3.2 SOURCING of CANDIDATES

Now that human resource planning and job analysis have been performed, the
company’s move is to find applicants for possible employment. This is referred to as
recruitment. It is an HRM practice of tracing and enticing probable hires from a pool of job
seekers.
The company starts by notifying job seekers
about the qualifications needed to match the
particular job and the personal and professional
advancements they can offer. Decisions whether to
recruit from within or externally depends on the
company’s culture and recruitment objectives. In the event that managers wish to cut the
workforce size, any job opening is an indication that a replacement from outside must be
found to replace a departing employee.

SOURCES OF LOCATING AND ATTRACTING CANDIDATES

A. FROM OUTSIDE SOURCES

1. Advertising. This is the most common

manner of locating potential hires.
Television ads, radio, direct mail and
print ads have been the basic modes but
in recent years, the internet has
become the trendy thing to use, if not
the most important one. The preparation for recruitment activities requires effort
 and time. The company must discern on what to put into the contents and design
of the advertisements.

2. Walk-ins. Walk-ins are people who would rather physically go to the company,
literally walk into the office, and submit their resume or curriculum
vitae. For some employers, applicants who initiate to apply as “walk-
ins” do tend to be more effective and dedicated employees. Many
companies allow walk-ins and there are those who readily conduct
interviews like contact centers (call centers).

3. Internet Recruiting. The internet is now the most popular way of locating
and attracting applicants. This recruitment format is less costly for
the company. Applicants also benefit from this strategy as they do
not have to print, mail or photocopy resumes.

4. Employee Referral Program. This type of recruitment approach finds applicants

through the help of the company’s existing
employees. The referrals come from the social
connections of the employees. This approach gives
assurance to the company that their current
employees will most likely refer only suitable
candidates. To motivate employees to refer people, companies usually offer
rewards like incentives and bonuses.

These are several ways to increase the effectiveness of employee referral

programs that can be conveyed online or via word-of-mouth.

• Pay for Performance. Some firms save a portion of the referral bonus
until the new hire has stayed for at least 6 months. This would encourage
the employee who referred another to help the latter succeed and be
regularized.
 • “Up the Ante”. Companies do pay steep commissions to employment
agencies and search firms in order to find them new hires so, when the
employees refer people, they are also rewarded with incentives like free
trips, complimentary dinners, gift certificates, free merchandise or free
insurance.

• Tailor the Program. Some firms need more of certain types of skills than
others, but the referrals programs may not reflect this. Part of a good
referral program is guiding the workforce with the type of people that the
organization wants to take in, which would include communicating the
skills and the values sought by the company.

• Increase Visibility. To further promote the referral program, employees

who successfully referred a candidate are recognized. The trick is to show
the employees that they get certain benefits from the referral program.
Some creative strategies are “dinner with the CEO” or “pick a prize”.

• Keep the data. Even if the person referred, the referral, does not actually
get the job, it is still good practice to store the resume just in case another
opening arises.

• Widen the boundary of the strategy. Companies also ask referrals from
former employees and ‘corporate friends’ to widen their options of
finding possible hires.

• Measure outcomes. After implementation, managers need to assess the

volume of referrals, qualifications of the candidates, and success rates of
the new hires. This is to further improve the referral program.

5. Head-hunters. These are search firms that help the company fill executive or
high-level positions.
 6. Campus Recruiting. This form of external recruitment has become widespread
in highly developed companies. The firms form strong linkages with the
universities and colleges to eventually hire the students or future graduates.

7. Employment Agencies. These assist companies with staffing requirements and

can either be public (government-owned) or private. In highly developed
countries, they even have a publicly funded employment agency and numerous
private agencies.

B. FROM WITHIN THE COMPANY (“Recruiting from Within”)

Managers can fill up job openings through a promotion or job transfer.

Below are some key indicators that a firm should be more aggressive in developing
internal talents.

Some indicators of a poor internal filling of position are:

1. Key jobs are not filled up immediately.
2. Key roles are filled by external candidates and not by internal
candidates.
3. Not every current employee turns out to be the right one for the
job.
4. Preferential treatment is the basis of advancement.

Advantages and Limitations of Recruiting from Within

Promoting from within makes sense as the potential candidate, being a current
employee, is already a member of the work team and managers already know their
performance levels as well as strengths and weaknesses. Above all, internal recruiting
lessens recruitment and hiring costs.
Methods for Identifying Qualified Internal Candidates

The proper use of internal recruitment demands an effective internal process for
tracing the most qualified job seekers and motivating those who see themselves qualified to
apply for the job opening. These internal sources can be traced using these methods:

• Inventory of Management Talent. More firms are electronically capturing

qualifications of their employees using some information to spot the employee skills
and capabilities. This information system allows the organization to quickly review
the workforce tool to find the most qualified internal candidate to fill the vacant
position.

• Job Posting and Job Bidding. Organizations communicate information about job
openings through the process of job posting and job bidding. The jobs are usually
published on a firm’s database, bulletin boards, internal vacancy notification memos,
e-mail, or public address system. Employee records of those who are interested are
then meticulously studied and the potential candidate is eventually selected for
screening. Job bidding is seen to be more effective for career growth and
advancement.

3.2 THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

Step-by-Step Recruitment Process

Before a company can hire an applicant, it goes through the
following step-by-step recruitment process:

1. Determine Job Vacancy. A job vacancy may exist for a

variety of reasons like resignation, retirement, job
 abandonment and termination. It can also be attributed to promotion, job transfer or
an entirely new position to fill.

2. Plan How to Fill an Open Position. Once a vacancy exists, managers must then
decide on whether to advertise internally or externally and whether to take in
temporary or permanent workers. Managers are expected to prepare a list of worker
competencies that job candidates must possess.

3. Identify the Target Segment. At this point, the company should be able to see who
they want to hire. A comprehensive plan is essential to help companies and managers
form perceptions about their target segment. Print, radio, television and online
advertising are recruitment methods that will help the company identify their target
segment.

4. Reach Out to Target Segment. After identifying the segment, companies must set a
preferred way to reach out to their target talents. Some common recruitment
techniques are online job posting, job fairs, campus recruitment, etc.

5. Meet-Up with Job Candidates. The cardinal role of the recruitment and hiring team
is to make sure that the job candidates are informed of the reason for the meet-up.
During meet-up, recruiters conduct an initial screening to ensure that job seekers
meet the job specifications, which is an important factor to consider before a hiring
decision.

UNIT SUMMARY

• Recruitment refers to an HRM practice of finding and enticing probable hires from a
pool of job seekers.
• Employee referral programs is now common in many companies and assures the
company that their employees will only refer suitable candidates. As a motivation for
 referring, most employers reward the referring employees with incentives and
bonuses.
• In recruitment, the company starts by notifying job seekers about the job
qualifications needed. Discussions on whether to recruit internally or externally
depends on the company’s culture and recruitment objectives.
• The proper use of internal recruitment demands an effective internal process for
tracing the most qualified job seekers and motivating those who see themselves
qualified to apply for the job opening. These internal sources can be traced in a
number of methods such as doing inventory of management talent, and job posting
and bidding.
• Promoting from within makes sense as the potential candidate, being a current
employee, is already a member of the work team and managers already know their
performance levels and good/bad qualities.

Unit Assessment: You are now required to do a CASE ANALYSIS PAPER of Case
Study #2 in order to assess your understanding of the lessons. To guide you, the
rubrics, case study problem and instructions are provided in your GC and Canvas.