External Recruitment, Selection, and Staffing

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Institution

External Recruitment, Selection, and Staffing

Companies require employees that are extensively crucial for their full functionality and successful deliverance of services or products. Thus, it is advisable for a company to have a human resource management sector. The central task of this division is to come up with a strategy to recruit company employees. Upon inception of a company, various job openings keep emerging, and there is always a need to fill these positions. It is the human resource department to decide on the best candidate to take up the job vacancies. At this point, they have two main choices, either to recruit employees within the company or source them from outside by advertising the positions. The former of the two alternatives is known as internal recruitment, selection or staffing while the latter choice is otherwise called outsourcing (Gamage & Pang, 2003).

Outsourcing occurred consistently in the Silicon Valley during the early 1970s. Changes within the Silicon Valley in California were growing rapidly, and the need for more workers was on a growing trend. Work within this high-tech region was becoming cumbersome, and many companies saw it best to seek laborers from other companies. Outsourcing is an act of recruiting workers sourced from outside the employing organization. During the 1970s, companies had trouble in attaining the much-needed employees with adept skills. Such people were expensive to hire. At this point, companies decided to employ people with the highly needed skills. Thus, they filtered out all the potential workers and picked people with desired skills, and consequently, turned to external recruitment. They could not rely on their employees since they were working in other sections. External recruitment began by companies purchasing potential workers from vendors. These vendors had an eye for potential candidates, and they took them based on their credentials. Subsequently, they advertised them to various companies until they were employed on a commission basis (Pynes, 2013).

Outsourcing has undergone tremendous changes since it begun. One of the leading changes includes the method used to carry out the processes. Outsourcing companies employ several methods to recruit skilled workers. Advertisement is one of the methods implemented in the recruitment, staffing and selection of potential employees. As days go by, companies are becoming competitive in business and other areas. Such aggressive competition is spreading even to recruitment sections of companies where each one of them wants the best of the available employees. Advertisement mostly involves an external company advertising various job openings within other organizations. Furthermore, the external company is actively involved in meeting up with potential candidates and assessing their qualifications (Schawbel, 2012).

Employment agencies are yet other means of carrying out external recruitment, selection and staffing. The agencies work on behalf of the principal companies that need new employees. They undertake the initial step of looking for employees and catering for interviews in search of the best candidates for the job. They do this at a commission, which the employing company pays up once they get candidates to fill the job positions. At times, these agencies are delegated with the ultimate duty of looking at the needs of the recruited employees. For example, they take care of the employee’s benefits and remunerations. Such cases regularly take place in companies that have outsourced their human resource department (Schermerhorn, 2011).

Companies also prefer entering into business with labor contractors. This is a common occurrence where companies have temporary works. Consequently, they prefer engaging with employees that can work for them within a limited time, otherwise known as a contract. This is beneficial since the employing company cuts down on the extra cost of employing permanent workers, and the work is only short-lived.

Several advantages follow a company once it carries out external recruitment. Such advantages include acquiring new talent that was missing within its workforce. Additionally, new ideas are brought into the company from the outside world. This provides it with the opportunity to use these resources for the ultimate benefit of the company. Growth of companies often involves the requirement of new skills, which are mostly missing within the organizations. It is thus essential for companies to allow room for recruiting workers externally to attain such skills.

Companies within a particular industrial group occasionally require an exposure to various ideologies. Upon exposure to such ideas, the company can overcome competition from similar organizations. Recruiting externally is a vivid channel where companies can utilize to get cross-industry insights. Most of the time, potential candidates are experienced people who have significant work experience from previous jobs. Once they get into a company, they bring knowledge and skills to the new organization. Thus, the new company is exposed to new ideas they can use to improve the productivity of the organization (Schawbel, 2012).

Hiring workers via external recruitment proves to be extensively beneficial since the candidates already have experience. This not only provides the company with excellent workers but also helps save money. Once a company hires new employees, it spends both time and money in training them so that they may be up to speed with the organization’s work. However, once the company outsources its employees, they do not need training. Otherwise, they would only take the new employees through orientation to familiarize them with the environment. In turn, they end up spending less time and money in making the new employees comfortable and familiar with the daily affairs of the company (Schermerhorn, 2011).

On the other hand, external recruitment has several demerits that the company faces whilst carrying out the process. One of the leading disadvantages of external recruitment is spending more cash to cater for all the extra work that the recruiters undertake. Culture stigma is yet another risk that external recruitment can expose employees to once they join the new company. Once people move from one company to another, they are bound to experience a cultural change. Most likely, culture within the new company is different from their previous places of work. Hence, acclimatizing to the new norm within their places of work may be challenging. Others even face stigmatization from fellow workers just because their cultures differ in one or several ways. Such cases also have possible detrimental effects on workers experiencing stigma. For example, the worker may be demoralized to work and have a negative attitude towards work. In turn, the company also suffers since the worker’s productivity is low and so is the organization’s (Pynes, 2013).

One of the common mistakes that recruiters make while undertaking external recruitment is lack of advertising new job vacancies to existing employees. Occasions occur where a company misses noticing that the best person for the job is already working within the company. Failure to elaborate the interview process in details to the interviewees is yet another common mistake that recruiters make in their job. Interviewees often fail because of lack of detailed information regarding the whole process. Moreover, recruiters fail to describe the job in details to the candidates. In turn, the candidates end up turning down opportunities since they feel that the job does not meet their satisfaction. On the other hand, some candidates take up jobs that do not fall within their expectations since they did not get adequate initial job description.

The recruitment process requires regulations and laws to ensure its efficiency. The process being an equal opportunity to all candidates forms one of the most crucial laws that guide it. Cases have occurred where people in the recruitment team encourage nepotism and discrimination. Consequently, the process ends up being unfair, which is wrong. People tend to discriminate others by age, sex or ethnicity, but such laws are extensively helpful in avoiding the occurrence of such behavior during recruitment (Schawbel, 2012).

The selection procedure following a recruitment process involves placing the right skills within the correct job description. It is carried out in several steps, which include preliminary interviews as the initial stage. At this stage, the company gets rid of applicants that do not meet the minimum standards required of each employee. Filling application blanks is the second stage that follows preliminary interviews. It involves candidates writing personal information that is necessary to the company. The next step involves taking tests such as aptitude, reasoning, and personality exams, which the company uses to comprehend the candidates’ potential. Employment interview is the next stage that potential candidates undergo during the selection process. At this point, candidates face a panel of interviewers who check whether they are fit for the job or not. This is a crucial stage for determining the right candidate to join the company (Gamage, and Pang, 2003).

During the selection process, various issues are bound to occur to both the interviewers and interviewees. Interviewers may miss asking the correct questions required to know the fitness of the candidate to fill the vacancy. On the contrary, interviewees may get emotional hindrances that may prevent them from focusing on the questions. Consequently, the company ends up losing a potential candidate. Mistakes may also happen, and the interviewer asks wrong and irrelevant questions. Such an error may make the company employ unqualified people or lose qualified candidates. Nondiscriminatory laws also act as a guide to the selection process in order to avoid irregularities such as bias of interviewers to some candidates. The law also requires candidates to provide valid information and original documents. This is to prevent candidates from lying about their qualifications, and the company from employing people with false information.

Orientation is the initial step carried out during the staffing process. During this stage, the candidates who have undergone the recruitment and selection processes successfully are introduced to their working environment. They familiarize with the working place to ensure that the company’s productivity is maintained at a high level. Training and development is the next step involved in the staffing process. At this point, the workers are equipped with the right knowledge and skills to indulge with their work in the company. The next stage is the remuneration process, which involves grading the performance of each candidate. The management can make adjustments that help candidates improve their performance according to the remuneration process. The staffing program may face common mistakes from the management. Such mistakes include using wrong remuneration factors that may give false results about the candidates. However, selection laws and regulations help avoid the occurrence of such mistakes and discrimination (Kanan, n.d.).

References

Gamage, D. T. & Pang, S. N., (2003). Leadership and management in education. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

Kanan S. (n.d.). Internal versus external recruitment – which is best? Retrieved on 11 August 2013 from http://www.myfirstsalesjob.com.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=KPc3VDu%2BhZ0%3D&tabid=705&mid=2736

Pynes, E. J. (2013). Human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Schawbel, D. (2012). The power within: Why internal recruiting & hiring are on the rise. Time Business and Money. Retrieved on 11 August 2013 from http://business.time.com/2012/08/15/the-power-within-why-internal-recruiting-hiring-are-on-the-rise/

Schermerhorn, R. J. (2010). Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Schermerhorn, R. J. (2011). Introduction to management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.