• Job analysis identifies the duties and human requirements of each of

the company’s jobs.

• The next step is to decide which of these jobs you need to fill, and to
recruit and select employees for them.
Steps in the recruitment and
selections process
1. Decide what positions to fill, through workforce/personnel planning
and forecasting.
2. Build a pool of candidates for these jobs, by recruiting internal or
external candidates.
3. Have candidates complete application forms and perhaps undergo
initial screening interviews.
4. Use selection tools like tests, background investigations, and physical
exams to screen candidates.
5. Decide who to make an offer to, by having the supervisor and perhaps
others interview the candidates.
Workforce or employment or
personnel planning
• Workforce (or employment or personnel) planning is the process of
deciding what positions the firm will have to fill, and how to fill them.
Its aim is to identify and address the gaps between the employer’s
workforce today, and its projected workforce needs.
Strategy and Workforce Planning

• Workforce planning shouldn’t occur in a vacuum.

• Instead, workforce/employment planning is best
understood as an outgrowth of the firm’s strategic and
business planning.
• For example, plans to enter new businesses, to build new
plants, or to reduce activities will all influence the number
of and types of positions to be filled.
• At the same time, decisions regarding how to fill these
positions will impact other HR plans, for instance, training
and recruitment plans. The Strategic Context feature
illustrates.
Forecasting Personnel Needs (Labor
Demand)
• How many people with what skills will we need? Managers consider
several factors.
• For example, retirements, growth plans, and turnover history.
• Short term labor demand: Forecasting workforce demand starts with
estimating what the demand will be for your products or services. Short
term, management should be concerned with daily, weekly, and
seasonal forecasts.
• Longer term, managers will follow industry publications and economic
forecasts closely, to try to get a sense for future demand. Such future
predictions won’t be precise, but should help you address the potential
changes in demand.
Trend analysis
• Trend analysis means studying variations in the firm’s employment
levels over the past few years. For example, compute the number of
employees at the end of each of the last 5 years in each subgroup
(like sales, production, secretarial, and administrative) to identify
trends.
Ratio Analysis
• Ratio analysis, means making forecasts based on the historical ratio
between (1) some causal factor (like sales volume) and (2) the
number of employees required (such as number of salespeople).
• For example, suppose a salesperson traditionally generates $500,000
in sales. If the sales revenue to salespeople ratio remains the same,
you would require six new salespeople next year (each of whom
produces an extra $500,000) to produce a hoped-for extra $3 million
in sales.
Scatter Plot
• A scatter plot shows graphically how two variables—such as sales and
your firm’s staffing levels—are related.
While simple, tools like scatter plots have drawbacks.
1. Historical sales/personnel relationships assume that the firm’s
existing activities and skill needs will continue as is.
2. They tend to reward managers for adding employees, irrespective of
the company’s needs.
3. They tend to institutionalize existing ways of doing things, even in
the face of change.
Forecasting the Supply of Inside
Candidates
• The personnel demand forecast provides only half the staffing
equation, by answering the question: “How many employees in what
positions will we need?”
• Next, the manager must forecast the supply (availability) of inside and
outside candidates.
• Most firms start with possible inside candidates.
• Create your own personnel skills inventory and development record
form
Skills Inventory Systems
• Skills inventory systems enables employers to collect and compile
employee skills information in real time via online employee surveys.
• Skills inventory programs help management anticipate staffing and
skills shortages, and facilitate workforce planning, recruitment, and
training.
• They typically include items like work experience codes, product
knowledge, the employee’s level of familiarity with the employer’s
product lines or services, the person’s industry experience, formal
education, industry experiences, foreign language skills, relocation
limitations, career interests, and performance appraisals.
Personnel replacement charts
• Personnel replacement charts (Figure 5-3) are another option,
particularly for the firm’s top positions.
• They show the present performance and promotability for each
position’s potential replacement. As an alternative, with a position
replacement card you create a card for each position, showing
possible replacements as well as their present performance,
promotion potential, and training.
Markov Analysis (Or “Transition
Analysis”)
• Employers also use a mathematical process known as Markov analysis
(or “transition analysis”) to forecast availability of internal job
candidates.
• Markov analysis involves creating a matrix that shows the
probabilities that employees in the chain of feeder positions for a key
job (such as from junior engineer, to engineer, to senior engineer, to
engineering supervisor, to director of engineering) will move from
position to position and therefore be available to fill the key position.
Forecasting the Supply of Outside
Candidates
• If there won’t be enough skilled inside candidates to fill the
anticipated openings (or you want to go outside for another reason),
you will turn to outside candidates.
Predictive Workforce Monitoring
• Workforce planning therefore often involves paying continuous
attention to workforce planning issues. Managers call this predictive
workforce monitoring.
• For example, The staffing department works with the firm’s business
heads twice a year to assess workforce needs—both immediate and
up to 2 years in the future
• Others consider various factors such as workforce characteristics such
as age, retirement eligibility for employees with various skills,
economic trends, anticipated increases or decreases in staffing levels,
and internal transfers and promotions.
Matching Projected Labor Supply and Labor Demand

• Workforce planning should logically culminate in a workforce plan.

This plan lays out the employer’s projected workforce and skills gaps,
as well as staffing plans for filling these gaps. For example, the plan
should identify the positions to be filled; potential internal and
external candidates or sources for these positions; the training and
promotions moving people into the positions will entail; and the
resources that implementing the plan will require, for instance, in
recruiter fees, estimated training costs, relocation costs, and interview
expenses.
Succession Planning
• Succession planning is the ongoing process of systematically
identifying, assessing, and developing organizational leadership to
enhance performance.
• Succession planning involves developing workforce plans for the
company’s top positions.
• Succession Planning three steps:
1. Identify key position needs
2. Develop inside candidates,
3. Assess and choose those who will fill the key positions.
Employee Recruiting
• Employee recruiting means finding and/or attracting applicants for
the employer’s open positions.
Recruiting Yield Pyramid
• Recruiting Yield Pyramid
• The historical arithmetic
relationships between
recruitment leads and invitees,
invitees and interviews,
interviews and offers made, and
offers made and offers accepted.
Finding Internal Candidates

• Job posting: Job posting means publicizing the open job to employees
(usually by literally posting it on company intranets or bulletin
boards). These postings list the job’s attributes, like qualifications,
supervisor, work schedule, and pay rate.
• Qualifications skills inventories also play a role.
Informal Recruiting and the Hidden Job Market

• Many (or most) job openings aren’t publicized at all; jobs are created
and become available when employers serendipitously encounter the
right candidates.
Recruiting via the Internet

• Most employers recruit through their own websites, or through online

job boards such as Indeed and CareerBuilder.
Pros And Cons
• Online recruiting generates more responses quicker and for a longer time at
less cost than just about any other method.
• And, because they are richer and more comprehensive in describing the
jobs, web-based ads have a stronger effect on applicant attraction than do
printed ads.
• But, online recruiting has two potential problems.
• First, older people and some minorities are less likely to use the Internet, so
online recruiting may inadvertently exclude more older applicants (and
certain minorities).
• The second problem is Internet overload: Employers end up deluged with
résumés.
• Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are online systems that help
employers attract, gather, screen, compile, and manage applicants.
• As one example, a bank uses its ATS to bump applicants who don’t
meet the basic job requirements; it then e-mails them suggesting they
review the bank’s site for more appropriate positions.
Trends Shaping HR:
• SCIENCE IN TALENT MANAGEMENT: Most employers use tools
like job boards to produce large numbers of recruits, and then use
ATS and screening systems to cut those numbers down.
• DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Recruiters use social media
recruiting in several ways. They dig through social websites and
competitors’ publications to find applicants who may not even be
looking for jobs.
• THE NEW EXTENDED WORKFORCE: Many employers today
build their staff wholly or in part around an extended workforce
consisting, for instance, of freelance programmers, designers, or
marketers. Freelancer community websites enable such employers
to recruit the right freelance team based on the freelancer’s
reputation and work product.
 Advertising
• While Web-based recruiting is replacing traditional help wanted ads, a
glance at almost any paper will confirm that print ads are still popular.
• To use such help wanted ads successfully, employers should address
two issues:
1. the advertising medium
2. the ad’s construction.
The Media
• The best medium—the local paper, The Wall Street Journal, The
Economist, for instance—depends on the positions for which you’re
recruiting. For example, the local newspaper is often a good source
for local blue-collar help, clerical employees, and lower-level
administrative employees. On the other hand, if recruiting for workers
with special skills, such as furniture finishers, you’d probably want to
advertise in places with many furniture manufacturers, such as the
Carolinas, even if your plant is in Tennessee. The point is to target
your ads where they’ll reach your prospective employees.
Constructing (writing) The Ad
• Experienced advertisers use the guide AIDA (attention, interest,
desire, action) to construct ads.
1. A potential candidate becomes aware of a job, position or company
(usually through advertising)
2. The potential candidate becomes interested by learning about
job/company benefits & how it fits with lifestyle
3. The potential candidate develops a favorable disposition towards
the job
4. The potential candidate forms a applying intention, do research,
engages in application process or applies
Employment Agencies
• There are three main types of employment agencies: (1) public agencies
operated by federal, state, or local governments; (2) agencies associated
with nonprofit organizations; and (3) privately owned agencies.

• Public and nonprofit agencies: Every state has a public, state-run

employment service agency.

• Private Agencies: Private employment agencies are important sources of

clerical, white-collar, and managerial personnel. They charge fees (set by
state law and posted
Use one agency if:

1. Your firm doesn’t have its own human resources department and
feels it can’t do a good job recruiting and screening.
2. You must fill a job quickly.
3. There is a perceived need to attract more minority or female
applicants.
4. You want to reach currently employed individuals, who might feel
more comfortable dealing with agencies than with competing
companies.
5. You want to reduce the time you’re devoting to recruiting
To help avoid problems:

1. Give the agency an accurate and complete job description.

2. Make sure tests, application blanks, and interviews are part of the agency’s selection
process.
3. Periodically review equal employment data on candidates accepted or rejected
by your firm, and by the agency.
4. Screen the agency. Check with other managers to find out which agencies have
been the most effective at filling the sorts of positions you need filled. Review
the Internet and classified ads to discover the agencies that handle the positions
you seek to fill.
5. Supplement the agency’s reference checking by checking at least the final candidate’s
references yourself.
Recruitment Process Outsourcers

• Recruitment process outsourcers are special vendors that handle all

or most of an employer’s recruiting needs. They usually sign short-
term contracts with the employer, and receive a monthly fee that
varies with the amount of actual recruiting the employer needs done.
Temporary Workers and Alternative
Staffing
• Employers increasingly supplement their permanent workforces by
hiring contingent or temporary workers, often through temporary
help employment agencies. Also known as part-time or just-in-time
workers, the contingent workforce is big and growing.
• Employers use temps for many reasons. One is continuing weak
economic confidence among employers. Another is the trend toward
organizing around short-term projects.
• Alternative Staffing: The use of nontraditional recruitment sources.
• The Temp Agency: Employers can hire temp workers either through
direct hires or through temporary staff agencies.
Temp Employees’ Concerns
• To make temporary relationships successful, those supervising temps
should understand their concerns. In one survey, temporary workers said
they were:
1. Treated by employers in a dehumanizing and ultimately discouraging way.
2. Insecure about their employment and pessimistic about the future.
3. Worried about their lack of insurance and pension benefits.
4. Misled about their job assignments and in particular about whether
temporary assignments were likely to become full-time.
5. “Underemployed” (particularly those trying to return to the full-time
labor market).
Offshoring and Outsourcing Jobs

• Outsourcing means having outside vendors supply services (such as

benefits management, market research, or manufacturing) that the
company’s own employees previously did in-house.
• Offshoring means having outside vendors or employees abroad
supply services that the company’s own employees previously did in-
house.
Executive Recruiters

• Executive recruiters (also known as headhunters) are special

employment agencies employers retain to seek out top-management
talent for their clients.
Referrals and Walk-Ins

• Employee referral campaigns are a very important recruiting option.

Here the employer posts announcements of openings and requests
for referrals on its website, bulletin boards, and/or wallboards. It
often offers prizes or cash awards for referrals that lead to hiring.
• Walk-ins Particularly for hourly workers, walk-ins—direct applications
made at your office—are a big source of applicants. Sometimes,
posting a “Help Wanted” sign outside the door may be the most cost-
effective way of attracting good local applicants.
On-Demand Recruiting Services

• On-demand recruiting services (ODRS) are recruiters who are paid by

the hour or project, instead of a percentage fee, to support a specific
project.
• For example, when the human resource manager for a biotech firm
had to hire several dozen people with scientific degrees and
experience in pharmaceuticals, she used an ODRS firm. A traditional
recruiting firm might charge 20% to 30% of each hire’s salary. The
ODRS firm charged by time, rather than per hire. It handled recruiting
and prescreening, and left the client with a short list of qualified
candidates.
College Recruiting

• College recruiting—sending an employer’s representatives to college

campuses to prescreen applicants and create an applicant pool from
the graduating class—is important.
• One problem is that such recruiting is expensive.
• Schedules must be set well in advance, company brochures printed,
interview records kept, and much time spent on campus.
• And recruiters are sometimes ineffective. Some are unprepared, show
little interest in the candidate, and act superior. Many don’t screen
candidates effectively.
Internships
• Internships can be win–win situations. For students, they can mean
improving business skills, learning more about potential employers,
and discovering one’s career likes (and dislikes). And employers can
use the interns to make useful contributions while evaluating them as
possible full-time employees.
Application Form

• The form that provides information on education, prior work record,

and skills.
• With a pool of applicants, the prescreening process can begin. The
application form is usually the first step in this process (some firms
first require a brief, prescreening interview or online test).
• Application forms must comply with Equal Employment Laws.
Problematical items include:
• Education. A question on dates of attendance and graduation is a
potential violation, since it may reveal the applicant’s age.
• Arrest record. The courts have usually held that employers violate
Title VII by disqualifying applicants from employment because of an
arrest. This item has an adverse impact on minorities, and employers
usually can’t show it’s required as a business necessity.
• Notify in case of emergency. It is generally legal to require the
name, address, and phone number of a person to notify in case of
emergency. However, asking the relationship of this person could
indicate the applicant’s marital status or lineage.
• Membership in organizations. Some forms ask to list memberships
in clubs, organizations, or societies. Employers should include
instructions not to include organizations that would reveal race,
religion, physical handicaps, marital status, or ancestry.
• Physical handicaps. It is usually illegal to require the listing of an
applicant’s physical handicaps or past illnesses unless the application
blank specifically asks only for those that “may interfere with your job
performance.” Similarly, it is generally illegal to ask if the applicant has
received workers’ compensation.
• Marital status. In general, the application should not ask whether an
applicant is single, married, divorced, separated, or living with anyone,
or the names, occupations, and ages of the applicant’s spouse or
children.
• Housing. Asking whether an applicant owns, rents, or leases a house
may be discriminatory. It can adversely affect minority groups and is
difficult to justify on business necessity.
• Video résumés. More candidates are submitting video résumés, a
practice replete with benefits and threats. To facilitate using video
résumés, several websites compile multimedia résumés for applicants.
The danger is that a video makes it more likely that rejected
candidates may claim discrimination.