Tom O’Leary’s article “Use Your Team for Recruitment: A Retention Strategy” emphasizes on the importance of a new genre of recruitment strategy which is based on the method of using existing team members as effective means for recruiting new and efficient employees. The article is also focused on the relation between this new kind of recruitment strategy with the strategy of retention. The new trend of involving existing employees to recruit new employees adhere to different sorts of strategies and processes but the article focuses mainly on three common strategies encompassing the use of employees as agents for recruitment, the use of employees as contributing evaluators, and using existing employees as sponsor or peer mentor.

The primary purpose of the article is to convey to the readers the effectiveness of existing team members/employees in recruiting new employees for an organization. The article has been written mainly based on the principles of inductive logic. Going through the article it can be understood that the author has (in an explicit manner) observed the process that is followed by myriads of business organizations while employing their existing team members as agents for recruiting new employees. And it is due to this thorough observation of the author which has enabled him to recommend different proven strategies that can be useful in the realm of using existing employees as means for recruiting new employees. Moreover, it is due to adhering to the principle of induction while observing the utility of using employees as agents for recruitment that the author has been able to recommend some strategies that can help the managements of different organizations to use their existing employees as sources for new recruitments. Furthermore, it must be stated that through the important information (on which the article is based) that the author has ultimately rendered an effective outcome which can be related directly to the process of retention.

The result of the composition of the article is the revelation of a process through which existing team members/employees can be used for recruiting new employees and through which the existing employees can contribute effectively to the retention of the newly recruited employees. The effectiveness of the article can be found in the fact (revealed through it) that by improving the perceptions of new recruits and through the active participation of existing employees in improving the perceptions of the new recruits that an organization can strengthen its recruitment efforts simultaneously with the effort of retaining those new recruits who are both efficient and effective (O’Leary, n.d.). O’Leary’s article should also be considered important because by going through this article the readers (including the students of business management) can understand the fact that “Fostering a sense of community by inclusion will make recruiting and retention efforts more effective” (“Use Your Team for Recruitment: A Retention Strategy”, n.d.). Moreover, the article should be considered an easy-to-follow one because of the ploy of the author to convey the vital information through sub-headings and bulleted points. The segmentation of the article into three different sectors of discussion including the section dealing with the role of employees as agents for recruitment, the section dealing with the use of employees as contributing evaluators, and the section dealing with the usage of existing employees as sponsor or peer mentor, has also made it easy for the readers to get the gist of the article in a comprehensive, yet concise manner.

It must be noted that Tom O’Leary is a Staff Development Consultant in Ireland with over 15 years of business experience (“Use Your Team for Recruitment: A Retention Strategy”, n.d.), and this experience has enabled him to compose an article which has been successful in proving the relation between involving existing employees as effective recruitment agents, evaluators, and mentors, and the retention of effective new recruits. It is always fruitful to provide an article, emphasizing on any particular business strategies, with real-life examples of the implementation and outcome of the implementation of such strategies. Even though the article is explicit and well-organized, the author should have expanded the article a little more by citing and discussing about the implementation of the concerned recruitment and retention strategy by a real (and not fictional) business organization. Such discussion would have enriched the article even more by paving the way for the readers to connect the recommendations directly to the practical world of business strategies and their implications. And, so, for this reason, the author should have provided a practical example of the implementation of the explicitly discussed strategy of recruitment and retention.

(757 words)

References

O’Leary, T. (n.d.). Use Your Team for Recruitment: A Retention Strategy. Retrieved August 31, 2013, from http://humanresources.about.com/od/employeeretention/a/teamrecruitment.htm