The Recruitment Process

The recruitment process

Meaning and importance of recruitment

Recruitment management system is the comprehensive tool to manage the entire recruitment processes of an organisation. It is one of the technological tools facilitated by the information management systems to the HR of organisations. Just like performance management, payroll and other systems, Recruitment management system helps to contour the recruitment processes and effectively managing the ROI on recruitment. Recruitment management system provides and a flexible, automated and interactive interface between the online application system, the recruitment department of the company and the job seeker. It helps to communicate and create healthy relationships with the candidates through the entire recruitment process.

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, a well defined recruitment policy is necessary for organizations to respond to its human resource requirements in time. Therefore, it is important to have a clear and concise recruitment policy in place, which can be executed effectively to recruit the best talent pool for the selection of the right candidate at the right place quickly. Creating a suitable recruitment policy is the first step in the efficient hiring process. A clear and concise recruitment policy helps ensure a sound recruitment process.

It specifies the objectives of recruitment and provides a framework for implementation of recruitment programme. It may involve organizational system to be developed for implementing recruitment programmes and procedures by filling up vacancies with best qualified people.

According to Edwin B. Flippo, ‘Recruitment is the process of searching the candidates for employment and stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organisation’. Recruitment is the activity that links the employers and the job seekers. A few definitions of recruitment are:

- A process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applications from which new employees are selected.

- It is the process to discover sources of manpower to meet the requirement of staffing schedule and to employ effective measures for attracting that manpower in adequate numbers to facilitate effective selection of an efficient working force.

Recruitment of candidates is the function preceding the selection, which helps create a pool of prospective employees for the organisation so that the management can select the right candidate for the right job from this pool. The main objective of the recruitment process is to expedite the selection process.

Recruitment is a continuous process whereby the firm attempts to develop a pool of qualified applicants for the future human resources needs even though specific vacancies do not exist. Usually, the recruitment process starts when a manger initiates an employee requisition for a specific vacancy or an anticipated vacancy.

The purpose of recruitment is to attract and encourage more candidates to apply in the organisation and to increase the pool of candidates at minimum cost in order to enable the selection of best candidates for the organisation. Recruiting is very important because it helps identifying and preparing potential job applicants who will be appropriate candidates. It increases organization and individual effectiveness of various recruiting techniques and sources for all types of job applicants.

The recruitment and selection is the major function of the human resource department and recruitment process is the first step towards creating the competitive strength and the strategic advantage for the organisations. Recruitment process involves a systematic procedure from sourcing the candidates to

arranging and conducting the interviews and requires many resources and time. A general recruitment process requires the preparation of the job description and person specification, locating and developing the sources of required number and type of employees, short listing and identifying prospective employees, establishing and the interviews with the selected candidates and conducting them in order to take the best decision.

The recruitment process is composed of 7 steps:

1. Identify vacancy

2. Prepare job description and person specification

3. Advertising the vacancy

4. Managing the response

5. Short-listing

6. Arrange interviewsConducting interview and decision making

Steps in recruitment and selection process

Sources of recruitment

Every organisation has the option of choosing the candidates for its recruitment processes from two kinds of sources: internal and external sources. The sources within the organisation itself (like transfer of employees from one department to other, promotions) to fill a position are known as the internal sources of recruitment. Recruitment candidates from all the other sources (like outsourcing agencies etc.) are known as the external sources of recruitment.