Recruitment and Selection Processes

Terminology

• Recruitment: Locating and encouraging people to apply for job openings.
• Employment Branding: How an organization is perceived in the employment market.
• Labour Market: The area from which applicants are recruited.
• Selection: Choosing the best applicants to fulfill job requirements.

Selection Tools

• Reliability: The consistency of selection procedures over time.
• Validity: How well a selection procedure measures what it aims to measure.
• Panel Interview: A group interview with a board of interviewers.
• Behavioral Descriptive Interview Question: Asks about past actions in specific situations.
• Situational Question: Presents a hypothetical situation and asks how the candidate would respond.

Recruitment Process

• Planning for Staffing Needs: Identifying current and future job openings.
• Job Information Gathering: Gathering job descriptions and specifications.
• Recruitment Method Determination: Deciding whether to recruit internally or externally.
• Internal Recruitment: Sourcing candidates from within the organization using databases, succession planning, and internal job postings. This method has benefits such as already knowing the company culture and history.
• External Recruitment: Sourcing candidates from outside the organization. This method may introduce new perspectives and skills but can be more difficult to manage. Methods include advertisements, job fairs, recruitment agencies, and online platforms.

Pitfalls of Recruitment

• Internal: May lack people with specialized training and expertise or broad enough experience. Difficulty in changing organizational culture.

• External: May not have candidates with the right skills.

Potential Benefits and Pitfalls of Recruitment

• Potential Benefits: Gaining unique skills and experiences, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
• Potential Pitfalls: Lack of knowledge about candidate performance, unsuitable candidates, salary constraints limiting the number of applicants.

Selection Information

• Applications: Avoid illegal questions (e.g., about race, marital status). Request relevant information (e.g., qualifications, references).
• Interviews: Using various methods (e.g., one-on-one, panel, telephone, technology-based). Using structured and unstructured interview questions.
• Interview Questions: Including structured (based on job requirements, behavior description interview, situational), and unstructured (open-ended).

Appropriate and Inappropriate Questions

• Appropriate Questions: Example, for National or Ethnic Origin: "Are you legally entitled to work in Canada?". Questions regarding age, education history, qualifications.
• Inappropriate Questions: Example, for National or Ethnic Origin: "Where were you born?" Questions regarding sensitive information like marital status or religion unless specifically relevant to the job.

Employment Assessments

• Types: Cognitive ability tests, personality tests, emotional intelligence tests, physical ability tests, job sample tests, and substance abuse tests.
• Lie detector tests: Illegal in many jurisdictions.

Emerging Trends

• Candidate experience: Importance of a positive experience during the recruitment process.
• Reduced reliance on cover letters and resumes: Shifting towards other methods.
• Mobile platforms: Use of mobile technology in recruitment.
• Data-driven metrics: Using data to track and measure recruitment effectiveness.
• Artificial intelligence (AI): Use of AI in recruitment processes, including video interviews.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI): Importance of diverse hiring practices.