Recruitment Methods

Methods of Recruitment

• Referring employees become stakeholders, and referral is a cost-effective recruitment program that can speed up diversifying the workforce.

External Sources

• Advertising: select the best medium based on the position being recruited for, e.g. newspapers, trade and professional journals, and internet job sites.
• Constructing an effective advertisement: use wordings that evoke the applicant's attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) and create a positive impression about the firm.

Recruiting via the Internet

• Advantages: cost-effective, attracts more applicants over a longer period, immediate responses, online prescreening, and automation of applicant tracking and evaluation.
• Disadvantages: more unqualified applicants, additional work for HR staff, and limited access to some applicants.

Evaluating Recruitment Effort

• Indices used to evaluate effectiveness: number of recruits, number of recruits within a particular duration, cost per recruit, ratio of qualified recruits to unqualified recruits, and job performance and tenure of recruits by method.

Internal Sources

• Advantages: prior knowledge of candidates' strengths and weaknesses, more accurate view of candidate's skills, stronger commitment to the company, increases employee morale, and less training and orientation required.
• Disadvantages: failed applicants may become discontented, lack of new blood, and higher cost related to training a professional.

External Sources

• Advantages: new "blood" brings new perspectives, cheaper and faster than training internal employees, possible to obtain executives and specialists, and high possibility to select the most appropriate person for the job.
• Disadvantages: may not select someone who will "fit" the job or organization, may cause morale problems, may affect labor-management relations unfavorably, longer adjustment or orientation time, and likely employee turnover occurs.

Employee Referrals

• Referrals by current employees can be an effective recruitment method.

Human Resource Management (HRM) Functions

• HR Planning: determining the needed type and number of employees.
• Job Analysis: providing job description and job specification.
• Reward Management: deciding competitive salaries, wages, incentives, and benefits to attract job applicants.
• Selection: determining the most appropriate person to fill the job vacancy.