Recruitment

Written by: Christine Marah

Recruitment

Overview

One of the key aspects in any organization is its employees.  Generally, employees are hired through the human resource department or by a recruiter.  Recruitment is known as the procedure of elimination in hiring the best applicant to fit the job description (Jackson & Mathis, p. 178).   Recruiters should be viewed as a win-win to both the organization and the potential employee.  For the organization, the role of the recruiter is to search for the best applicant based on the job description.  For the potential employee, the recruiter is placing them in an organization based on their qualifications that match the job description.  A crucial function in human resource management is the recruitment process (Pfieffelmann, Wagner, & Libkuman, 2010).  

Using the job description, recruiters look for applicants that best fit the position; further, recruiters need to avoid any possible discrimination (O'Malley, 2011).  This means recruiters need to set aside the applicants’ gender, status, religion, age, race and disability and focus on how applicants carry oneself during the interviewing process and how relative their previous work experience to the job description (O'Malley, 2011). In order for an applicant to meet all the job requirements, they must fulfill the knowledge, skills, and abilities based on the job description and qualifications (Jackson & Mathis, p. 136).  The knowledge, skills, and abilities include previous work experience, education, personal, physical, mental, and work performance requirements (Jackson & Mathis, p. 136). Every job description has different job qualifications.  A study was conducted in the healthcare field, and based on the results it found that the employees in management roles did not contain the proper knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the job to the fullest (Behling, Haefner, & Stowe 2011).  Some recruiters may not realize that they are practicing discrimination.  When a recruiter is hired by an organization, usually the organization will provide the recruiter with guidelines for finding the best applicant (Wheeler, 2004).  The guidelines that the organization provides to the recruiter can range from an average age to a particular religion the applicant must be.  

Perception

Recruiters can be viewed as a sales representative.  A recruiter is going to try to sell the organization to the potential applicant.  Also, if the potential applicant has any interest in the organization, they will also try to sell themselves during the interview.  Majority of the recruiters are paid a fee equivalent to a percentage of the applicants’ salary, if the organization decides to hire the applicant.  Some, but not all recruiters will only have the mindset of the commission they will receive if the organization hires the applicant (Wheeler 2004).  So, the recruiters may tell the applicants what want they want to hear, or tell a little white lie and make promises that they know will be broken by the organization (Wheeler 2004).  Unfortunately, if the applicant is dissatisfied with the organization because of the false advertisement from the recruiter, this will leave a poor reflection on the organization.

Recruiting may affect the applicant’s personal life (Pfieffelmann et al., 2010).  Recruiting affects an applicant’s personal life because the job that they are interviewing for may become their primary source of income.  Not only does it affect their income and how they are living their lives but also the level of stress the job includes.  If the job has a high level of stress, the employee can be more prone to health issues.  Ultimately, the applicant’s final decision depends on how well the recruiter represented the organization (Pfieffelmann et al., 2010).  We may not realize but everyone, even organizations are signaling on a daily basis (Karasek & Bryant 2012).   Applicants signal themselves during an interview because it is the way they communicate, cooperate, and carry themselves (Karasek & Bryant 2012).   The way that an organization signals is through recruiting and advertisements (Karasek & Bryant 2012).  

For example, if an organization is not widely known or their website is not incorporated user friendly, the applicant will have little to no knowledge about the organization in which they rely on the information received from the recruiter (Pfieffelmann et al., 2010).  This is an example of signaling theory because the applicant has little to no knowledge about the organization and they will rely on the information received from the recruiter to make one of the most important decisions they will have to make (Pfieffelmann et al., 2010). 

Employee Well-being

During the hard economic times, organizations had a one track mind; do whatever it takes to keep the organization alive.  This not only happens during economic hard times, but it also happens during employee shortages.  When organizations have this mindset, the well-being of employees is not taken into consideration.  For example, Africa has a shortage of nurses due to the high numbers of individuals with contagious diseases (Oulton 2001).  Since Africa has a shortage of nurses and a bad reputation caused by the rapid spread of the contagious diseases, Africa recruits for nurses all over the nation (Oulton 2001).  Expatriate nurses that work in Africa should start off with a reasonable salary because of the high risk environment they are entering, but unfortunately that is not the case (Oulton 2001).  The transformation of moving from your home country to a foreign country is not an easy adjustment.  The organization that I work for as a human resource assistant is an international corporation, whose headquarters is based out of Barcelona, Spain.  Working as a human resource assistant, I see firsthand the struggles that the expatriates face with their big move to the United States.  The expatriates struggle with the adjustments of the United States’ standard of living, applying for citizenship, building their credit etc. Whether an employee is an expatriate or a citizen of the country that they are working in, each employee should be treated equally from pay to employee performance (Oulton 2001).  It would be ethical for employees that are currently working for an organization that has a shortage of employees to treat all the new hires equally.  If employees, especially expatriates are not being treated equally in the workforce, it is only natural for their personal well-being to decline.

Conclusion

As mentioned before, employees are one of the key aspects of an organization.  In order for an employee to perform their best, each employee should have majority of the qualifications.  If an employee lacks particular job qualifications they will end up having low performance scores which will ultimately reflect poorly upon the organization.  Making sure an applicant is suitable for the job will always be a result of how well the recruiter performed their job. 

References

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