CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Compared to the 20th century, job demand and search are very different in the 21st
Vantilborgh & Papersman (2019). The nature, content, and atmosphere of work have changed
as a result of economic developments such on-going automation, outsourcing, information
technology use, globalization, and environmental concerns.

Internet is a trend word wide and in Zimbabwe more and more users are gaining access to
internet every day. During the time this document was created, the researcher discovered that
an online recruitment web application would help Telone pvt ltd to gain a huge potential pool
of applicants. Hence an online web application for Telone was developed to be able help in
the recruitment process. Recruitment is the process of finding and recruiting the best qualified
applicant from within or outside the country for job opening, in a timely and cost-effective
manner. Armstrong (2016) further elaborates on the goal of the recruitment and selection
process and highlights it as the process of finding good quality employees at minimum cost to
meet the human resource needs of an organisation. There are various methods of achieving an
organisation’s staffing objectives, among which are online recruitment, also known as e-
recruitment. Online recruitment however, as highlighted by Joseph and Thompson (2019)
brings with it the disadvantage of a vast amount of irrelevant applications for the recruitment
officers to sift through. This mountain of information has necessitated the development of
this research which is the development of a decision support system to help the human
resource function objectively screen online job applications.

1.2 Background of the study

The acquisition, development, and retention of human capital is a key source of competitive
advantage for enterprises in the 21st century due to economic and market conditions.
Campbell (2017). The importance of people and the human capital they possess in creating
company value in the fiercely competitive global market is highlighted by a substantial
corpus of academic and practitioner research.

In the workplace diversity not only improves an organisations reputation and goodwill but
according to Leonard (2019) it allows several benefits such as idea improvement and
innovation, increased employee productivity, high company morale and the expansion of the
talent pool. For organisations to achieve the goal of a diverse workforce they need to reach a
wide range of prospective candidates across vast geographical barriers and the most cost
effective way to do this is via online recruitment.

The use of online recruitment allows the organisation to hire the best talent from a global
pool of candidates; however, as highlighted by Armstrong (2016), the major problem with the
manual paper work recruitment tradition as a hiring method is that employers are often faced
with a large volume of unqualified or unsuitable candidates, long process to screen and rank
potential candidates. This research attempts to solve that problem by developing a system that
is meant to sift through the applicants Curriculum Vitae (CVs) more effectively using
objective, fair and legally justified criteria such as experience, education background and
other skills. The system is meant to then rank the CVs according to the given criteria thereby
creating a shortlist of candidates from a large pool of applicants. The system will not only
focus on qualifications and experience but also factors in other variables such as candidate
personality, thereby refining the shortlist such that the organisation has a higher chance of
selecting the right candidate.

1.2.1 Background of the organization

According to Asai and Ito (2015), an organizational background explains how and why a
business was founded, how it must be run, how it must be set up, what land it covers, what
ethics it is based on, as well as how the community has supported the business and what
relationship it has with it.

After the post and telecommunications corporation (PTC) was unbundled in 2000, Telone
was formed. It inherited a debt that has followed it ever since. As of October 2017, the debt,
which was 374 million USD, was outstanding. The Zimbabwean government owns Telone, a
parastatal telecommunications corporation with headquarters in the central business district of
Harare. After Telkom South Africa, it is one of the biggest fixed-line networks in southern
Africa. 1980 saw the founding of Telone Telecommunications by Chipo Mtasa. Telone is one
of the largest internet service providers in Zimbabwe since it serves as both an internet
service provider and an internet access provider, providing transmission backhaul for mobile
and data carriers.
 1.2.2 Organisational structure

Board of owners

General
Manager

Internal auditor CEO Branch manager

HR Finance IT Sales marketing GSM Operations Engineering

1.2.3 Vision

Digitally enabled society by 2023

1.2.4 Mission

Provide connectivity and digital solutions

1.3 Problem definition

According to Blanchard and Fabrycky (2018), problem definition refers to the issues that
have arisen as a result of the creation of a new system. As such this section will highlight the
operations of the current system, what the author expects and the consequences of not
rectifying the flaws. The current system of recruitment starts of by using traditional means of
advertising to create awareness for a job opening; these include word of mouth, newspaper
adverts and sometimes television and radio. Only a few organisations also use the internet to
advertise vacancies. The challenge posed by the use these methods is that initially the number
of applicants reached does not give the organisation a diverse enough pool of candidates to
select from and also encourages nepotism. After vacancies are advertised the candidates’
applications are manually read, graded and ranked by recruitment officers, these tedious tasks
subject the process to a lot of human error and prejudice. The author would expect there to be
a web based online system that allows various organisation to post job vacancies, the
objective criteria they wish to use in selection as well assessment exercises for the applicants.
The system would then allow prospective candidates to apply for the posted job positions, use
the objective criteria specified by the recruitment officers to screen, sort and rank the various
applications and create a shortlist for the final round of interviews to be carried out by the
recruitment officers. The continued use of the current system put the company at risk of
losing quality employees to factors such as perceived unfairness, which results from nepotism
and a lack of diversity. The lack of diversity also impedes the spread of innovation.
Employers are likely to miss out of the opportunity to hire the best possible candidates if
recruitment officers are overwhelmed with the paperwork that is currently synonymous with
the recruitment process.

1.4 Aim

To develop, the Analytical Hierarchy Process Based Human Resources Online Candidate
Screening web application.

1.5 Objectives

According to Karni (2011), objectives are defined as what the organization hopes to
accomplish or wants to do with the system that is being designed. These objectives are
expected to be measured, precise, realistic, time-bound, and attainable (SMART).

The system to be developed should be able:

 To filter out unqualified applicants based on their CVs.

 To allow recruitment officers to create weighted personality and aptitude test according to
the job requirements.
 To generate personality test score and feedback for the applicants.
 To rank applicants according to their uploaded CV and test results.
 To create a shortlist of the top applicants.
1.6 Instruments and methods

According to Kernighan and Plauger (2017), a software development tool or instrument is a

computer program that programmers use to design, manage, and debug other programs and
applications. The data collection and analysis techniques the researcher employed to
comprehend the existing system are referred to as methodologies.

Instruments

The following tools, which are described below, will be used in the development of this web
application:

 Macromedia Dreamweaver 8: simple and excellent development tool that is

effective for web applications e.g. Website.

 MySQL Databases – a scalable and robust database system that works well with
web applications.

 PHP – a great and popular server side scripting languages used for creating
dynamic webpages that interact with user offering customized information.

 Google chrome – a browser that is used to test the website during coding.

 Microsoft word – a text editor used for documentation and all paper work.

 Xampp sever – flexible web server that works on different platforms.

 JavaScript – Scripting language for styling user interface.

1.7 Justification and rationale

The necessity and usefulness of the online recruitment in contemporary organisations is very
apparent. However, the sheer volume of candidates requires there to be objective, automated
measures for screening. The proposed system for Telone Zimbabwe was justified as follows.

 By analysing the candidate`s resumes through scanning for keywords hence saving
time, will lessen the job for the HR department during recruitment process.
 With fast and accurate filtration of resumes, the proposed system will build up a good
company image and reputation in its fast and unbiased recruitment process.
 Based on the online personality test and resume parsing, the proposed system will the
rank the applicants automatically there by removing the tedious manual job of going
through each and every resume submitted manually.
 The organization will be able to access a diverse pool of applicants because of the
geographical reach of the internet thereby increasing the chance of hiring the best
candidates because of the system.
 The system will also drastically reduce the use of paper in the recruitment and
selection process, this reduces the environmental impact of the staffing process, while
also saving both parties time and money.
1.8 Conclusion

The system's role in assisting the system's users has already been acknowledged in the first
chapter. The proposed system will result in efficiency and effectiveness because of its
SMART targets. The goals set below address the issues that are currently being experienced
as a result of the current system.