Introduction
Human resources are crucial for the success of practically any type of business. For a company to be effective, it is essential to make sure that the workers hired have the necessary skills and qualifications and are able to do their job properly. Therefore, the process of hiring new personnel plays a major role in a company’s life. To find a good employee for a job, it is important to properly organize the process of recruitment and selection. In this paper, we will provide a plan of actions to be taken to find a suitable candidate for a key middle management position in a medium-sized, expanding organization that has, however, a limited budget. We will go through the main steps of recruitment and selection and explain what actions need to be taken during these two stages of looking for an employee in order to optimize the process.
Recruitment
The process of finding an employee starts with identifying the current objectives of the business, forming the human resources strategy that would allow meeting these objectives, analyzing the job that is going to be offered, and formulating the requirements for the future workers.
Having realized the need for a new worker, we will start the recruitment process. It involves “analyzing the position to be filled, the person to fill it, writing a job description and person specification” (Compton, Morrissey, and Nankervis 15). In our case, the job to be offered is a position for a key middle manager in a medium-sized organization that is currently expanding. Therefore, it is possible to start formulating the requirements for the job. Since we are looking for a key middle manager (not the beginner, but also not the top management position), we will need a person who has both education and experience. Let us suppose that we wish to recruit a human resources manager who will work in a new office that is to be opened soon. We need them to have at least a Bachelor in Business Administration.
A successful candidate will also have previously worked at a human resources management position for a commercial organization and has one-year experience of working as such, or at least the experience of half a year. (We are expanding and need a skilled human resources manager as soon as possible, which is why we will consider candidates with the experience of half a year; we also have the budget limitations, so we will not demand more experience; still, we do not have much time to train them, so the experience is necessary.) We will offer regular, full-time employment, with up to two months of the trial period (depending on the level of experience of the candidate). On the other hand, we do not want candidates who do not have the mentioned degree or the outlined experience, are unable to get on well with colleagues or are not punctual.
We will look for candidates in external sources, for the company is growing and we need new people; we also do not have much time to train the existing employees. We will use job boards and employer websites to post the information about our vacancy because this is quite cheap (as we have already mentioned, the budget of the company is currently rather limited). In our advertisements, we will describe the basic responsibilities of our future human resources manager and list the requirements that were mentioned before, both positive and negative. It is also recommended, while looking for candidates, to list some unpleasant factors that the candidate will face in the future because this reduces the number of unpleasant surprises that a worker has when they first start doing their job (Snell and Bohlander 198).
We will list a few factors, but will also post a number of considerable advantages that the worker gets while working for our company. We may also mention the friendly and engaged personnel, the free coffee, tea, and the fruits for the workers that are always provided in the office. It is possible that some of our future applicants will not be really looking for the job. This is why we will also leave a contact number of our HR manager; it is possible that some candidates who are indeed interested in the job will phone us apart from sending their CV, and we will take them into account first.
Our advertisement on the job boards and employer websites will make a primary pool of candidates for us. We will start considering their resumes. It is important to take into account the yield ratios while performing the recruitment process, for which aim it is possible to analyze the previous yield ratios that the company had (Rao 133-134). This will allow us to optimize the process of recruitment, for we will know how many people we need to contact, and will avoid wasting time by considering too many people. From the previous experience of the company, it is known that to hire one person, it is recommended to contact about 20 candidates, interview nearly six of them, and choose one or two who did best to make a conditional job offer and estimate them further during the trial period.
Let us suppose that we received nearly 50 CVs in response to our advertisement. We will perform the initial screening procedure and look through all of them, and we will prefer the ones whose senders phoned us, because, as it was mentioned, there is a larger chance that they are more interested in work than the applicants who did not call us. We will look if the applicants have the proper qualification and experience and if they meet the demands that we described in the advertisement. We will consider the other qualities they listed in their CVs as well. It is also important to take into account the anti-discrimination legislation and avoid judging candidates by e.g., their race, should such information appear in the CV as a text or be apparent from the photograph. Therefore, we will pay no attention to the qualities of the candidate, such as race, while performing the processes of recruitment and selection.
Selection
The process of selection involves choosing the candidates from the primary pool of candidates we now have as a result of the process or recruitment. Out of the 50 CVs that we have received, the primary pool of candidates, we will choose 20 that seems to be the best, and we will contact those candidates by email. We will offer them to pass an employment test in order to perform an initial assessment of the applicants’ abilities and skills, as well as their understanding of the job, and to help choose the best six candidates that will then be invited to the interview (“Employment Tests” n. pag.). The test will be sent to them via email; they will have to fill in the tests and send them back to us. It will also be important to provide them with some additional information about our company and how they would benefit from working for it, in order to make them more interested in the position and stimulate them to complete their employment tests.
When the applicants complete the tests and send them to us, we will evaluate them and choose the six ones who had the best results. At this stage, it is also important to meet the requirements of the existing legislation related to the issues of discrimination and make sure that we do not violate it. For instance, if an applicant has some type of an issue, but it is irrelevant to the position of a human resources manager, we will not rate that candidate lower than we would have if the issue had not existed. On the other hand, if the issue is important (for instance, a serious speech impediment will make it hard for a human resources manager to communicate with their colleagues, which is a crucial part of their job), we will, unfortunately, be forced to take it into consideration.
Having chosen the best six candidates, we will continue the selection process and invite them to the interview. There are many various types of interviews, but we will perform one-to-one interviews (Deb 178). The interviews will be carried out by the human resources manager, for, apart from the general responsibility to take care of the personnel and select candidates, the HR manager, already knows their own job and will be able to see how well the interviewee fits the same position in a different office.
It will also be useful to employ the elements of both the traditional interview (to find out more about the skills and abilities of the applicant, estimate their chances to fit into the organization, and see how much enthusiasm they have) and the behavioral job interview (to better assess their ability to manage various problems or conflict situations, which is often important for a human resources manager) (Deb 179-180). In order to assess the candidate’s ability to work under stressful conditions, some elements of stress interview might also be employed (Beach 92-93).
The interviews will be semi-structured, which will ensure that the interviewer obtains the important information and does not miss anything (which might happen during an unstructured interview), at the same time giving them the freedom to ask the candidate to elaborate something or ask them more deeply about some important issues that might arise in the process (this possibility would be limited or absent if the interview was structured) (Beach 91-92).
It is also important to make the candidates interested in accepting our job offer should we decide to give it. To do this, we will explain to them the conditions of their employment and the benefits they would get while working for our company. We will also once again stress that we offer permanent, full-time employment, which is rather valuable for an employee. We will show them our offices, acquaint them with our personnel, and treat them to the fruits and drinks that were mentioned in the job advertisement. We will also apologize for possibly unpleasant parts of the interview (if we employed the elements of stress interview) and explain that they were used as a part of the stress interview because the position of a human resources manager requires the skills needed to solve conflict situations.
After conducting all the six interviews, we will choose one best candidate. If it is necessary, we will also perform the background check first (for example, to find out if the candidates have a criminal record, or if they can provide good enough recommendations from their previous jobs). We will then make a conditional job offer requiring them to successfully pass the trial period. The length of the period will depend on how well the candidate did during the interview. As for the other applicants, we will tell them that the position is currently filled, but that their skills are appreciated and that they might still be contacted in the future. This is a safety measure in case the newly hired employee fails to meet the company’s demands during the trial period.
Conclusion
As we have seen, there are two main stages of finding a new employee: recruitment and selection. During the recruitment stage, it is required to create a pool of candidates from which to choose a new worker. To do that, we have employed external sources, specifically, online advertisement, and achieved nearly 50 applications. During the selection stage, we contacted 20 applicants and, using an employment test, picked six candidates. We conducted semi-structured, one-to-one interviews, which allowed us to choose one candidate who was apparently the best fit and made a conditional job offer to them. After successfully completing the trial period, the new employee will be able to become a full-fledged member of the company.
Works Cited
Beach, Lee Roy. Human Resource Management in the Public Sector: Policies and Practices. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Print.
Compton, Robert, William Morrissey, and Alan Nankervis. Effective Recruitment and Selection Practices. 5th ed. 2010. Sydney, Australia: CCH Australia Limited, McPherson’s Printing Group. Print.
Deb, Tapomoy. Strategic Approach to Human Resource Management: Concept, Tools and Application. New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2006. Print.
Employment Tests. n.d. Web.
Rao, V. S. P. Human Resources Management: Text and Cases. 2nd ed. 2008. New Delhi, India: Excel Books. Print.
Snell, Scott, and George Bohlander. Managing Human Resources. 16th ed. 2013. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Print.