Recruiting and Selection Strategies That Human Resource Managers Practice When Hiring Potential Employees For a Company
Nowadays, the main resource, that brings a company to success in business, is its employees. The implementation of the “total quality management” approach in companies considers “the mutual co-operation of everyone in an organization and associated business processes to produce products and services which meet and, hopefully, exceed the needs and expectations of customers” (Dale, 1999 in Rees, p.855).
In other words, employees are required not only to act within given instructions and assigned tasks but to be open-minded to innovations, constant improvements and changing environment.
The traditional recruiting practice was concentrated on a so-called task-oriented methodology, when the requirements to a potential candidate were limited to certain tasks the employee should cope with. The total quality management strategy requires to judge on the competences that a candidate possesses, like “innovative”, “flexible in approach” and “quality driven” and challenges the recruiting and selection strategies to be use by human resource managers (further – “HR manager”) (Rees, 856-858).
The recruiting process within the total quality management context starts with establishing recruitment objectives: “filling the number of open positions”, “attracting a certain type of applicant”, and “filling openings within a certain time frame”. Once, the initial goals are defined, the strategy for recruiting is developed: the questions, whom to select, where to recruit, how to reach targeted individuals and what message to communicate, have to be answered; and the headhunting process begins (Breagh, pp. 103-118).
Michael Zottoli in “Recruitment source research: Current status and future directions” describes five most popular recruitment methods: employee referrals, employment
agencies, advertisements, agencies and walk-ins (p. 355).
These methods could be divided into several categories, according to the relation of the recruiter and a candidate in the process of recruitment as follows: passive and active recruitment strategies (Sparrow, p. 853).
Passive recruitment strategies stand for the candidate to apply to a vacancy that is found by him in various sources. The examples are the advertisements in media, publications on the specialized job-hunting websites, booklets and brochures issued by an employer for a potential candidate; applying to special headhunting agencies, booklets and brochures issued by an employer for a potential candidate college placement offices, etc.
Active recruitment strategies require the initiative to be on the HR manager’s side. It means that the HR manager searches the candidates himself, for instant, using employee referrals or “branding” the company in order to increase its attraction (Carlson et al., 2002 in Van Hoye, p. 452).
The last method guarantees “the continued ability to compete in international labour markets” (Sparrow, p. 853).
Passive recruiting means that an HR manager, examining the applications of candidates, showed interest to the vacancy, has a necessity to decline improper CVs; the most fitting ones are chosen from the rest of population. It does not stand for having a future talent in applications received; there is a possibility that no candidate corresponds to the requirements established. Moreover, employees that are hired via advertisements and agencies are more sensitive to quit, …
