Recruitment and HRM

Recruitment and HRM

• Recruitment is often overshadowed by selection in HRM literature.
• Organizations that excel at attracting high-quality applicants find the selection stage less critical.
• Recruitment has been called the most critical HR function for organizational success.
• Recruitment includes practices and activities to identify and attract potential employees, typically focusing on external candidates.
• A key development is the focus on how individuals become applicants, known as the 'applicant perspective'.
• The applicant perspective recognizes a two-way relationship where applicant decisions shape the recruitment's success.
• A successful recruitment process relies on both organizational efficiency and how applicants perceive opportunities.

Context of Recruitment

• Recruitment is understood through both organizational and applicant viewpoints.
• Recruitment takes place within a context, including the external environment, organizational characteristics, and job vacancy specifics.
• The UK example illustrates pressures impacting organizations globally.
• Contextual factors drive recruitment activities and emphasize the importance of the applicant's perspective.
• Recent trends, such as e-recruitment, social media, and employer branding, are driven by the applicant perspective.
• Maximizing the applicant pool size was once the primary aim, but modern approaches are more nuanced.

Impact of External Environment

• The external environment affects recruitment through skill needs, applicant supply, economic conditions, labor market dynamics, and social change.
• The economy affects hiring activity through growth and contraction.
• The global economic crisis of 2008 impacted employment levels, with Southern Europe experiencing high unemployment rates (around 25% in Greece and Spain).
• The UK saw an increase in involuntary precarious work since 2008 due to the lack of stable employment.
• Polarized labor markets feature both high-skilled/high-paid and low-skilled/low-paid jobs, with fewer intermediate-skill positions.
• Economic conditions influence employers' ability to fill vacancies.
• Economic conditions influence employers' ability to fill job vacancies.
• A loose job market leads to an oversupply of applicants, giving organizations more power.
• Skills shortages have increased in recovering economies, affecting manufacturing and business services.
• UK skills shortage vacancies (SSVs) increased by a third from 2011 to 2013.
• Organizations may need to find non-traditional applicant pools or offer incentives like more pay.
• Since 2004, European employers have benefited from labor mobility from Eastern Europe.
• The proportion of non-native workers in the UK increased from 9% in 2002 to over 15% in 2013.
• Workers from EUA8 states often take low-skill jobs with lower wages, while migrants in professional occupations are more likely to be found.
• Graduates may not always meet employer demands; 15% of UK employers felt graduates weren't well-prepared in 2013.
• Skills mismatches can negatively impact workers.
• A 2012 UK survey showed 22% of graduates felt overqualified, as did 37% of non-graduates.
• China has expanded university education, but graduate unemployment ranges from 9% to 30%.
• The majority of Chinese graduates showed they are dissatisfied with their jobs in 2013.
• Recruiters must understand labor market trends affecting the skills/jobs match.
• The size and composition of the labor force is changing dramatically.
• Issues include immigration, aging populations, and increased women seeking employment.
• These changes exacerbate skill shortages or offset issues.
• Abolishing the Default Retirement Age in the UK could flatten recruitment and increase youth unemployment.
• Organizations will need to tap into non-traditional talent pools like migrants, older workers, or women returners.
• Industries with skill shortages, such as the European ICT sector, could benefit from targeted recruitment.
• Implicit age discrimination in youth-oriented industries excludes suitable applicants, worsens shortages, and hurts organizations.
• Prioritizing age-diverse recruitment is necessary.
• Job candidates now prioritize location (47%), holiday entitlement (43%), flexible working and bonuses (39%), and workplace culture (38%).
• Flexible working arrangements are highly valued by employees.
• Work-life balance and flexibility are popularly linked to Generation Y/Millennials.
• Generation Y wants advancement and to learn, but also wants to accommodate non-work lives, work with good people, and align with employer values.
• A Canadian study confirmed preferences between the undergraduates show Generation Y is similar to past generations.

Strategies and Legislation

• Attractive global employers design recruitment with Generation Y in mind.
• Freedom from discrimination is a fundamental right.
• All ILO member states must respect, promote, and realize fundamental rights at work.
• Many global companies use a ‘talent pipeline’ recruitment strategy using attraction and employer branding.
• Universum's rankings and reports highlight these practices, having surveyed over 200,000 graduates in 30+ countries in 2014.
• Top 'business' employers: Google, PwC, EY.
• Top IT/engineering employers: Google, Microsoft, BMW.
• Students prioritize creative, dynamic work, future earnings, and leadership opportunities.
• Indian students want leadership, high earnings, rapid promotion, using communication channels.
• Russian students like earnings and performance-related bonuses.
• Chinese students emphasize softer career advancement.
• Universum says global employers should customize their value proposition more heavily in Asia and Russia, with more emphasis on career advancement opportunities and remuneration.
• A global study showed leading multinational corporations follow a talent pool strategy by hiring the 'best' and placing them in jobs.
• These companies have low selection ratios, hiring the top 1% from thousands of applicants.
• They recruit for person–organization or person–culture fit, not specific positions.
• They build relationships with potential candidates through Internet applications, university ties, and internships.
• They use global branding for name recognition and appeal to applicants.
• They offer professional freedom, learning, and work-life balance.
• The ‘elimination of discrimination’ is vital.
• EU member countries comply with EU legislation.
• UK legislation, like the 2000 EU Equal Treatment Directive, outlaws discrimination on protected characteristics like age, sexual orientation, religion, and belief.
• The 2010 Equality Act includes sex, race, gender reassignment, and maternity protections.
• Employers risk legal action for non-compliant recruitment practices.
• Recruitment must consider individuals based on merits and provide equal opportunity.
• Equality in recruitment applies to direct and indirect discrimination based on protected characteristics.
• Recruiting at all-boys’ schools is an example of gender discrimination.
• Positive action emphasizes equal opportunity, while positive discrimination accepts quotas to redress discrimination.
• Positive discrimination remains illegal in the UK.
• Positive action is legal in the UK.
• Employers can take voluntary positive action to increase participation of under-represented groups.
• If women are under-represented in ICT occupations due to recruitment from undergraduate engineering courses, there can be positive action.
• Action could take the form of recruitment campaigns that use alternative channels.
• The Equality Act allows positive action to extend to selection decisions if criteria are met.
• Hiring a woman over a man is allowed if both are equally qualified.
• Employers may take positive action to avoid legal trouble.
• There is an increase in monitoring or positive action in recruitment since disability legislation was introduced in 1995 and 2003.
• There are arguments for a ‘business case’ in reducing discrimination and gaining access to a wider applicant pool.
• Examples of positive action efforts include Sikh recruitment by the British Army or female officers in police forces.
• Monitoring job applicants by protected characteristics can address representativeness and is good practice.
• Equal opportunity policies are more common in public sector organizations and large workplaces because HR uses those policies.
• Caution is recommended in seeking numerical targets if workplace climates are inconsistent with diversity.
• Regulations affect employment of ex-offenders.
• Disclosure of previous convictions is used to protect vulnerable people, like children.
• High profile cases like the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman revealed that vetting during the recruitment stage may have been able to prevent the crime.
• A protected characteristic is a genuine occupational requirement.
• When applying positive action in selection, a candidate must be equally qualified and under-represented or face difficulties in the workplace.
• Employers must use abilities and qualifications as a tie-breaker.
• The 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA) in the UK allows job applicants the right to transparency in the collection of recruitment data.

Factors Influencing Recruitment

• The external environment affects skill needs, candidate supply, the economy, the applicant pool, the labor market, social change and legislation.
• An organization’s activities, location, sector, and growth impact skill needs.
• High unemployment areas experience looser labor markets.
• Financial service organizations have been subject to increasing regulation.
• Although all organizations are affected in some way by external forces, some sectors have relatively more stable skill demand and supply.
• A firm’s stage in its life cycle affects its recruitment needs.
• Phillips and Gully (2015) state that recruitment is impacted by how firms ‘make’ or ‘buy’ talent.
• Firms following a low-cost strategy might seek different skills than those pursuing an innovative one.
• Large organizations: recruit regularly, use more sources, have dedicated HR, train recruiters, and adopt diversity policies.
• Large organizations' strategies are driven and formalized.
• Public sector organizations adopt diversity policies and set targets.
• SMEs dominate most countries’ economies.
• In the UK, 99.3% of enterprises are small (employing less than 50) and 0.6% are medium (employing between 50 and 249).
• SMEs do not have formal structures or HR.
• Recruitment presents greater challenges for smaller companies.
• SMEs face a constrained resource and cannot dedicate enough to recruitment.
• Smaller firms cannot promote a workforce diversity per demographic changes.
• Smaller firms cannot recruit from internal or national labor markets and are often disadvantaged.
• Smaller firms use less bureaucratic and formal methods like word of mouth, referrals, or networking.
• This can limit potential recruits.
• Resricting the pool of recruits for childcare jobs to mainly women eventually resulted in problems of high turnover.
• Restrictions can also be discriminatory and illegal.
• It was shown that informality and the use of trusted recruiting are more cost effective.
• SMEs more easily use local labor markets.
• Small hotels matched customer expectations .
• Large hotels take bureaucratic approaches
• HR devolution and outsourcing have shifted responsibilities.

HRM and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

• Larger organizations have devolved roles and functions to line managers and implement Ulrich’s HR partner model.
• HR is has strategic partners, service centers, and Centers of HR expertise.
• Forty per cent of UK has HR functions.
• The recruitment function appears in various forms.
• Large global companies have HR Partners.
• Shared service centers provide HR services.
• Shared service centers are staffed by outside providors.
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing' (RPO) cuts costs and improves efficiency.
• The recession reduced recruitment levels, but the process still attracts applicants.
• RPO partnerships are sophisticated.
• Personalized, ‘high-value’ approaches occur for high-skilled positions.
• Standardized processes are used for low-skilled positions.
• It was shown there has been a decrease in using agencies because employers see them as unaffordable.
• Organizations may retain the recruitment function, but it becomes centralized to support line managers.
• Agencies can create standard level of service that reduces HR work load.
• Arguably, HR practitioners become active players.
• Organizational characteristics, the type of frequency, strategic foals, and recruitment lead to more global markets for recruits.
• The organizations’ effects can be summarized.
• The change in affects the demand employer faces in motivation, transferable skills, and customer service.
• The employer allocated jobs internal and external and temporary subcontracted and outsourced and full time.
• This relates to employment relationship.
• A 'rational choice process is require dot determine the leveo f huma capital to perfor the job.
• Transfer is required where skills are high.
• Long term relationships are better than those requiring low skill that is short term employment.
• Short term strategy can also affect adverse effect.
• Under invest can affect skill shortage caused by staff turn over.
• Long term means quality is poor.
• Low quality results in many turn over.
• Core and peripheral worker jobs are distinct.
• Core requires resources for the recruitment needed for long term value.
• Value may be outsourced that is less secure.
• Peripheral workers allow more flexible operations but at the cost of job quality and worker safety.
• Technology is a way to create inter rogates the use of freelances and temps.

Recruitment Technology

• The US uses technology in the US to create an 'on demand economy.
• There's an app'.
• 'Handy' is an app to request cleaning services.
• Home cleaning average for $18 an hour.
• The app matches labor demand.
• Handy is n 29 cisties in US, Canada and UK.
• Oher service providers deliver grocery and laundry
• Similarly there are technologies provide opportunities of higher skill services and creativity.
• Topcoder matches freelancing coding.
• Medicast provides health services with apps.
• Benefits include freelancers and students.
• Ethical and welfare issues.
• There is a diverse range of recruitment conditions

Pre-Activity Recruitment

• It is hard to 'best practice.
• There are generalizations about how organizations should recruit.
• It's also hard pre-recruit.
• Two such activities are specifications and description.
• A job should have a purposefull, systematic job analysis.
• Data Collections Methods must include interviews with job encumbents, past job discriptions, and database about occupational classifications.
• Knowledge or skill must also be known.
• A firefighter is able to put of flames.
• situational awarness should also be known.
• multidimensional analysis describes the job, workers conditions, job content.
• What occurs is also important.
• The job and the worker cannot be separated.
• Two hotell workers require interpersonal commuincaitn,
• tight perscripitosn should be a guide while interactions and desctrions go on
• Job analysis should be bork analysis.
• Potential applicant groups should be matched with work.
• Job desctiption are to narrow.
• Technological advances, competitioon, environemtn change the jobs.
• strategic also involves change inside the organation.
• personalites of hte workers must be looked a tto performed the job.
• This involves attributes as well.
• The aim should be observable behaviors.
• UK had a movement to functional competence.
• They require miniminum level of understadan.
• Indi (KPIs) today contine to be used.

Recruiting Technology

• ‘off the shelf’ framework.
• Consultancy and in house frameworks.
• This makes it easier for competencies.
• Demonstrate comptency theam work,
• Team spirit is required for competency.
• Negativetheams may require others to support and complete them,. and they are not self efficenct.
• Conflict is avoided and tehy don't build networks.
• Job anlsys should be specified in the future fore orientatoin.
• Anticipating, merging competencies
• Growning numbers for comepteniceis.
• Companies core comes in the ability to work and communicate.
• The result should be team working.
• Job Impacton the core skilled.
• The change must be competencies and target groups.
• A lot of change result in diversity that will change recruiting.
• The most prominent new way to recruit is via electronic internet access.