Recruitment and Sourcing

• Recruitment involves generating a pool of qualified candidates for specific job vacancies.
• The purpose of recruitment is to attract individuals to consider or apply for positions within an organization, ensuring the company has the necessary personnel to achieve its goals.

Recruitment Sources

• Informal recruitment methods like employee referrals and walk-ins often lead to longer job tenure compared to formal methods.

Employee Referrals and Recommendations

• Recommendations from current employees are a good source of effective potential hires as employees are unlikely to recommend someone who cannot perform the job adequately.

Internal Search

• Many large organizations develop entry-level employees for higher positions using a promotion-from-within concept.
• Companies like UPS and McDonald’s utilize these policies to cultivate candidates for promotion.

External Sources

Advertisements

• Organizations commonly use advertisements to announce job vacancies to the public.
• The placement of the advertisement depends on the job, with higher positions or specialized skills requiring wider distribution through newspapers or other media.

Employment Agencies

• Three types of employment agencies exist to help employers and workers connect.
  • Public and state agencies: Assist workers receiving unemployment benefits in finding employment.
  • Private agencies: Collect fees from employers or employees for matching services, which can be absorbed or split.
  • Management Consulting Firms: Specialized private employment agencies, also called executive recruiters or "headhunters", focus on middle and top-level executive placement and hard-to-fill positions.
• Executive Search Firms canvass contacts, perform preliminary screening, and seek highly effective executives who are willing to consider new opportunities.

Schools, Colleges, and Universities

• Educational institutions offer placement services for employers to review credentials and interview graduates.
• Arrangements like cooperative programs and internships allow employers to assess potential employees' performance.
• Educational institutions are a good source for potential employees, whether the job requires a high school diploma, vocational training, or a degree.

Job Fairs

• Job fairs are making a comeback as an effective recruiting tool.
• They are often held near college campuses in the spring and provide opportunities to build a company’s employment brand.
• Job fairs primarily aim to contact prospective employees and collect information and résumés.
• Following a job fair, online applications commonly double in the days following the event.

Professional Organizations

• Professional organizations, including labor unions, operate placement services for their members' benefit.
• These organizations publish job vacancy lists and distribute them to members in fields, such as industrial engineering, psychology, accounting, legal, and academics.

Unsolicited Applicants

• Unsolicited applications received by letter, e-mail, online application, telephone, or in person serve as a source of prospective applicants.

Online Recruiting

• Most companies use the Internet to recruit new employees by adding a "careers" section to their website.
• Organizations planning extensive Internet recruiting often develop dedicated recruitment sites.

Constraints of Recruiting Efforts

Organization Image

• Organizations with a poor reputation for being in a declining industry, causing pollution, producing low-quality products, having unsafe working conditions, or being indifferent to employees' needs may struggle to attract top talent, reducing their appeal to applicants.

Job Attractiveness

• Recruiting a qualified pool of applicants will be difficult if the position is difficult, distasteful, or unattractive.
• Jobs that are seen as boring, hazardous, anxiety-creating, low-paying, or lacking in promotion potential seldom attract a qualified pool of applicants.

Internal Organizational Policies

• Internal policies may prioritize internal candidates, ensuring positions are filled from within the ranks, which may reduce the number of applications.

Government Influence

• Employers cannot discriminate based on non-job-related factors like physical appearance, sex, or religious background.
• Rejecting qualified candidates based on gender or age is against the law.

Recruiting Costs

• Recruiting efforts are expensive.
• Organizations consider effectiveness when choosing recruiting sources, such as maximizing their recruiting travel budget by first interviewing employees using conference calls or through videoconferencing.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Recruitment Strategies

• To determine the best recruitment source:
  • Examine the number of applicants each source yields.
  • Consider the cost per applicant.
  • Look at the number of qualified applicants or the cost per qualified applicant.
  • Look at the number of successful employees generated by each recruitment source.
  • Look at the number of minorities and women that applied for the job and were hired.