Purpose And Importance Of Recruitment

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

INTRODUCTION

DEFINITION AND CONCEPT OF RECRUITMENT

RECRUITMENT NEED

PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE OF RECRUITMENT

FORMS OF RECRUITMENT

FACTORS AFFECTING RECRUITMENT

Internal Factors

External Factors

SOURCES OF RECRUITMENT

Internal Sources of Recruitment

External Sources of Recruitment

ALTERNATIVE TO RECRUITMENT

METHODS OF RECRUITMENT

RECRUITMENT POLICY

RECRUITMENT PROCESS

RECENT TRENDS IN RECRUITMENT

HR CHALLENGES IN RECRUITMENT

ROI OF RECRUITMENT

SELECTION

Purpose of selection

Selection process

Attitude Test

Attitude measurement types

Attitude scale

INDUCTION

Induction and deployment

Employee socialisation

SUMMARY

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

INTRODUCTION

Recruitment is the first step in procurement function. The importance of manpower planning in every business is increasing due to increase in global competitiveness and increase in labour market flexibility. Recruitment function is one of the important parts of an organization’s Human Resource Planning. It serves fulfilling organisations’ need by enabling it to have a set of competitive, motivated, flexible and more adoptable Human Resources which can ensure continued operation for fulfilment of organisations’ objective. Competent Human Resources at the right positions are crucial for the organisation and constitute core competency. The organisation reaps strategic advantage out of it. Recruitment helps in creating a pool of prospective employees for the organisations, so that the right candidates for the right jobs can be selected from this pool. The objective of recruitment process is to get the required number of employees with proper quality that can be selected to help the organisation to attain its goals. Recruitment establishes a link between the job seekers and employers. By which, it ensures the placement of right candidates at the right place at the right time. Following the right recruitment processes and practices facilitate the selection of the suitable candidates for the organisation.

This chapter focuses on four important organisational activities such as recruitment, selection, induction, and placement. These four are important tools for procuring and using Human Resources in an organisation effectively. Recruitment involves employing suitably trained workforce. Selection helps in choosing the right candidate for the right job. Induction and placement refers to putting the selected personnel on the right jobs. Due to increasing importance of human resources, it is now imperative for all organisations to retain the existing manpower and at the same time to recruit and select best possible required talents. To recruit manpower for unskilled jobs, the organisation faces no problems due to abundances in availability of these types of people and high rate of unemployment in India. Whereas recruitment function is more complex and dynamic for managerial positions with professional skills.

DEFINITION AND CONCEPT OF RECRUITMENT

Recruitment is the process that identifies as well as hires the best-qualified candidates from within or outside of an organization for job vacancies, in a most timely and cost effective manner.

According to Edwin B. Flippo, "Recruitment is the process of searching for the potential candidates for employment and stimulating them to apply for job vacancies in the organisation". Recruitment involves the activity that links the job seekers with employment providers.

Recruitment is also a process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process starts with seeking of new recruits and ends when their applications are submitted. The objective is to have a pool of applications from which most suitable employees are selected.

As pointed out by Yoder "recruitment is a process to discover sources of manpower to best meet the requirements of staffing schedule. It also involves employing effective measures for attracting that manpower in adequate numbers to facilitate effective selection in order to get an efficient work force."

Recruitment is an organisational function that precedes the selection. It helps in creating a wide pool of prospective employees for the organisation to facilitate the selection of the right candidates for the right jobs from this pool. Recruitment expedites the process of selection.

Recruitment is a continuous process by which the organisations endeavour to develop a pool of qualified applicants for the existing vacancies as well as for future human resources needs. In general the recruitment process starts from employee requisition process for existing or for anticipated vacancies. Theoretically, recruitment process ends with receipt of applications but in practice the activity continues up to the screening of applicants that eliminate unqualified people.

Recruitment Needs: There are three types of recruitment needs as follows:

Planned: These types of recruitment needs arise from changes in organization and out of retirement policy.

Anticipated: Anticipated needs arise due to movements of personnel. An organization can study the trends of movement by analysing internal and external environment and predict the recruitment need.

Unexpected: Resignation, deaths, accidents, prolonged illness are the primary cause of unexpected recruitment needs.

PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE OF RECRUITMENT

Attract and encourage a good number of candidates to apply for the organisational vacancies.

Create a talent pool of prospective candidates that enables the selection of best candidates to suit for the organisational need.

Determine present and future organisational requirement taking into consideration of personnel planning and job analysis activities.

Links the employers with the potential employees.

Increase potential candidates’ pool at less cost.

Increases success rate of selection process by reducing the number of under qualified or overqualified job applicants.

Reduce the probability of leaving the organisation only after a short period of time, once recruited and selected.

Meet the organizations’ legal and social obligations maintaining its workforce composition.

Determine the appropriateness of the candidates by identifying and preparing potential job applicants.

Increase organizational and individual effectiveness regarding application of various recruitment techniques and taping different sources of recruitment concerned.

FORMS OF RECRUITMENT

Organisations adopt different forms of recruitment practices to cater to its specific needs. The organisations choose whether to go for centralized forms of recruitment or decentralized forms of recruitment.

Centralized recruitment

The recruitment practices of an organisation are said to be centralized when all recruitment functions are performed by the HR department at the head office. One central HR or recruitment department takes the recruitment decisions for all the business verticals and functional departments of the entire organisation. Centralized from of recruitment is a common practice in government organisations.

Decentralized recruitment

Decentralized recruitment practices are most common in case of conglomerates that operate in different and diverse business areas. When the business is diverse and there are geographically spread business areas and offices, then it becomes imperative to understand the needs of each unit in order to formulate the appropriate recruitment policies and procedures. In decentralised form of recruitment, each unit carries out its own recruitment drive taking into consideration of their own recruitment need. However, choice between the two forms basically depends upon management philosophy and needs of particular organization. In some cases combination of both form of recruitment is also in practice. Top level executives as well as lower level staffs are recruited in a decentralized manner.

FACTORS AFFECTING RECRUITMENT

The recruitment function of the organisations get affected and governed by both internal and external forces. The internal factors are endogenous in nature and the organisations do have control over it. The external factors are basically exogenous and beyond the control of the organisation.

Internal factors of recruitment: the followings actors are the internal forces to recruitment.

Size of the organization: The organization’s size and the number of employees employed affect the recruitment process. Generally larger organizations find recruitment less problematic than organizations with smaller in size. Besides this the growth and expansion plans of the organisation also affect recruitment process.

Recruitment policy: The recruitment policy of the organization such as whether to recruit from internal sources or to go for external sources also affects the recruitment process. Apart from recruitment policy of the organisation the recruitment cost also affect the recruitment process.

Image of the organization: Organization’s image has its impact and influence on its recruitment process. Good image of the organization helps in attracting and stimulating potential and competent candidates to apply for the organisation. Managerial overt and covert actions such as good public relations, rendering public services like building roads, hospitals, schools and public parks earn image and goodwill for organization.

Image of the job: Good image of a job is generally characterised by better remuneration and good working conditions, Promotion and career development policies of organization. These factors also have its impact in attracting potential candidates.

External factors of recruitment:

Demographic factors: Demographic compositions such as age, sex, education, literacy rate, economic status of the society and nation have profound influence on recruitment process of any organisation.

Labour market: Labour market condition, such as supply and demand of labour is of particular significance in affecting recruitment process. Recruitment becomes relatively easier, if the demand for particular skill is high in comparison to its supply.

Unemployment situation: The unemployment rate is another important external factor that influences recruitment process. When the rate of employment is high in a locality, the recruitment process becomes simpler and easier because of abundant availability of best-qualified applications and recruitment process tends to become difficult with low rate of employment.

Labour laws: There are quite a good number of labour laws and regulations formulated and implemented by the central and state governments such as the Factory Act, 1948, and the Mines Act, 1952 etc deal with recruitment and govern employment conditions and living conditions of employees etc.

Legal consideration: legal consideration such as employment reservation of jobs for schedule caste (SCs), schedule tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBC) and like are various external factors that affect recruitment.

SOURCES OF RECRUITMENT

Basically, there are two sources of recruitment. One is internal source and another is external source. Every organisation has the choice of choosing candidates from these two kinds of sources, for its recruitment process.

INTERNAL SOURCES OF RECRUITMENT: Internal sources are the most obvious and most likely sources of recruitment. Before an organisation actively begins recruiting applicants, it ought to consider internal sources to choose the type of employees it needs. Different types of internal sources are as follows.

Present employees: Promotion and transfer from among the existing employees can be good sources of recruitment. Since, the existing employees are well conversant with the organization culture, and practices, their motivation level may increase and they can be more productive. Again, internal source is cheaper as it requires less job training. However, the major disadvantage lies in limiting the choice by choosing out of the few people and denying the vast external sources. Furthermore, it may results in inbreeding that creates frustration among other employees, those are not promoted.

Former employees: Former employees like retired or retrenched employees and employees who have left the organization for some reason or other may be interested to return back to the company and render service on full time or part time basis. The organisation may hire those people. The major advantage of this source is that organisations hire those people whose performance is already known. Sometimes the employers recruit the relatives and dependants of deceased too.

Employee referrals: References given by the present employees can be used as a very good source of recruitment. Present employees are well aware of the job requirements, organizational culture of their company in one hand .On the other hand they are also aware of qualifications, emotions, attitudes and experience of their friends and relatives. For which they can make preliminary judgments regarding the match between the job demand with their friends and relatives in providing referral services.

Previous applicants: Applications from the potential candidates are always there with the organization. Sometimes the organization contacts these applicants though mail or messengers and fill up the vacancies. Particularly this source of recruitment is very useful for unskilled or semiskilled jobs.

Advantages of the internal source of recruitment:

Familiarity with own employees: The organization is familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of its own employees. For which, it can evaluate them and assess their suitability better than that of outsiders, who are unknown.

Better use of the talent: The internal recruitment policy gives the organization an opportunity to make a better use of internally available talents and to develop them further and further. This is because the company maintains a record of the progress, experience and services and growth of the existing employees.

Economical recruitment: Internal source of recruitment is economical and less expensive. The organizations save money, time and effort to locate and attract the potential candidates from outside sources. Besides this, since the existing employees are fully aware of and well conversant with the policies and operating procedures of the organisation, they require less training and would stay longer than the outsiders.

Morale booster: It improves employees’ morale as they know that, they are the preferred source in case of vacancies within the organisation.

A motivator: Due to existence of the promotion through internal recruitment, it helps in attracting and retaining employees in the organization. The employees feel that organization provides them job security and opportunity for advancement. Thereby, it promotes loyalty among the employees. .

Disadvantages of internal sources of recruitment:

Limited choice: Internal recruitment may suffer from "inbreeding", by limiting its choice to the internally available talents available only and discouraging the available talents of the vast labour market outside the organization. This may not be healthy for the future of the organization.

Discourage competition: Internal sources of recruitment protect internal candidates from competition. Discarding outside competent candidates from the competition, the existing employees may develop a tendency to take promotion without showing the required competence.

Stagnation of skills: Since, the internal candidates are assured of the promotion, they may not update their skill set, leading to stagnation of skill or it got obsolete. As a result of which it may be difficult to find requisite personnel with required skill to maintain the level of productivity and sufficiency of the organization.

Create conflicts: Internal candidates remain sceptical whether the promoted employees deserve promotion or not, whether the likes and dislikes of the management play important role in choosing the people for promotion, which creates conflicts among internal candidates.

EXTERNAL SOURCES OF RECRUITMENT: These sources lie outside the organisation and usually include:

Employment exchanges: National employment services were established after India got independence. The basic objective is to bring employers and job seekers in a common platform. The compulsory notification of vacancies Act of 1959 (employment exchange act) was instituted and is operative since 1960, in response to it. These employment exchanges have branches operating in most cities. They primarily indulge in registration of job seekers and their placement in the notified vacancies. Employment exchange serves as the useful source for blue-collar, white- collar and technical workers.

Employment agencies: There are number of private agencies, in addition to the government agencies. They invite applications and register them, maintain a databank for providing employment. They shortlist the data bank and furnish a list of suitable candidates as and when needed by the prospective employers. The representatives of the employer organization take the final decision on selection. In this method, the employer organizations save time in getting a large pool of potential candidates. Many times organizational identity remains undisclosed to the job seekers, for which attempts to influence can also be avoided.

Advertisement: News paper job advertisement is the oldest method but still pretty efficient for recruitment. It is cost effective and is still considered as one of the best technique for many jobs, although many HRM professionals do not believe in news paper advertisement. Web job advertisement is the modern recruitment method and fully managed by the organisation.

Professional Associations: Very often, recruitment for certain category of professionals and technical positions is made through professionals association such as Institute of Engineers, All India Management Association, etc . These types of associations are known as ‘Head-hunters. They provide placement services. They prepare list of jobseekers and publish it in sponsor journals or magazines containing advertisements for their members. Usually, highly skilled professionals are recruited through these types of associations. This practice is not a very common in India and very few associations are there which provide such kind of services.

Campus Recruitment: Campus Recruitment is otherwise known as Campus Placement. It has become very popular to-day and commonly used method for picking the required personnel for an organisation. Companies pay visit to some of the premier technical and Professional Institutes with the objective to hire young, intelligent and smart talents at source. In campus recruitment, the job seekers do not approach employers. The employers approach prospective candidates with job offer. The major advantage of this approach is that, the employers get a wide variety of talent pool at one place. They can arrange interviews at short notice. The employers may also take the opportunity of selling their respective organizations to a large students body who would be graduating subsequently. The basic disadvantage is that, only entry positions can be filled up by campus recruitment.

Data Banks: It involves collecting the resume of the candidates from sources like Employment Exchanges, Educational Training Institutes and maintaining a databanks. In the era of information communication technology, this job becomes easier with the help of computer. This serves as a suitable source of recruitment and fulfils the company’s requirement at the time of need.

Casual Applicants: Candidates seeking employment apply casually for jobs. They may send a mail or handover the applications personally, in the Personnel Department. Casual applicants choose those organisations which have good image, who responds quickly, participate in the local activities and try to solve local unemployment problem. For temporary and lower level jobs, this serve as a suitable source.

Trade Unions: Very often, trade union solves the problems of unemployed local people by providing them employment. Underemployed persons and employees seeking change in employment can also take the help of Trade Union. They put a request to the leaders of trade union with the hope of getting suitable employment because, usually, the union maintain good rapport with the management. Thereby trade union serves as a source of recruitment.

Deputation: Deputation is considered as a source of recruitment. It involves sending employees of an organisation to another for the short duration, usually of two to three years. This practice is basically practised in the Government Departments and public sector organizations.

Word-of-mouth: "Word-of-mouth" or personal recommendation is also a source of recruitment, followed by some organizations in India. In this method, the word of the existing vacancies or opening up new organization is passed around. "Employee-poaching’’ is a form of word of mouth type of recruitment. It involves offering employment to the employees working for an organization by the rival organization. This method is economical in terms of both time and money.

Raiding or Poaching: Raiding is a source of recruitment whereby the rival firms try to attract required employees by offering better terms and conditions. This is a common feature in Indian software industries and has become a great challenge for the human resource managers.

Walk In: The busy organizations and rapid changing companies do not want to spend much time on recruitment. In order to smooth out their interview process, they entertain walk-in interview by which the potential candidates attend interview directly without putting a prior application. This type of interview does not require specified place, date and time.

Consult In:

This is a type of recruitment in which the potential job seekers approach the employer organisations personally and consult for the employment. Basically, this practice is followed by busy and dynamic organisations. The suitable candidates are selected by this process of consultation and the vacancy positions are filled up.

Body Shopping:

Basically, some professional organizations and the hi-tech training institutions act as body shoppers. They develop a pool of potential candidates for the possible employment. The prospective employers may contact and negotiate with these organizations to recruit the candidates in accordance with their need and preferences. Otherwise these institutions, approach the prospective employers on their own behalf to get placement for their human resources. These activities are known as body shopping or employee leasing and mostly seen for computer professionals.

Mergers and Acquisitions:

Business alliances like mergers, acquisitions and take over help in getting required human resources. In addition to that, the companies also have their own alliances and partners which share their human resources on adhoc basis.

Advantages of external sources of recruitment:

Open process: Since the process is open, it attracts requisite number and type of applicants which in turn, widens the option for selection.

Availability of Talented Candidates: With the availability of large pool of applicants, it becomes easy for the organizations to get firm specific talents. Thereby, it introduces and infuses new blood in the organization.

Economical: By choosing firm specific talents from external sources, it becomes economical in long run as the employees do not need extra training to perform their jobs.

Opportunity to Select the Best Candidates: With the availability of large pool of applicants, selection process becomes highly competitive. This in turn increases the chance of selecting the best candidates.

Healthy competition: It promotes healthy competition in the work environment and makes it productive and conducive.

Disadvantage of external sources of recruitment

Expensive and time consuming: Recruiting from external sources is time consuming and quite expensive. The probability of getting the suitable candidates to fit into the job may not be so high.

Unfamiliarity with the Organization: As candidates are from outside of the organization, initially, they face difficulties to be familiar with the tasks, job nature and the international scenario of the organization and the like.

Discourage the Existing Employees: The internal employees are not very sure and sometimes sceptical about promotion. This discourages them to perform optimally. Thereby, it decreases productivity of the existing employees and the organization at large.

ALTERNATIVES TO RECRUITMENT

Over time: Short term fluctuation of work in volume can be best handled by offering overtime. It saves employers’ recruitment cost, selection and training cost. Moreover, the employees benefit for overtime pay. However, overworked employees may slow down their pace during normal working hour and could be less productive.

Sub contracting: To meet sudden increase in demand of its product and services, the firms may sometimes opt for subcontracting, instead of immediately expanding capacities. When firms experience increased demand for a specified period of time, then expansion becomes reality.

Temporary employees: These employees are hired for a limited period to perform some specific job and meet short term human resource need. A short term increase in demand can be met by hiring temporary employees from agencies specialising in providing such services.

Employee leasing: Hiring permanent employees of another company who possess certain specialised skills on lease basis to meet short term requirement is another recruitment practice. Basically this practice is followed by firms in developed countries and is not very popular in India. In this case, the recruited personnel work for the leasing company as per leasing agreement.

METHODS OF RECRUITMENT

Recruitment methods are the means by which an employer organization reaches at the potential job seekers . Recruitment methods are different from the sources of recruitment. The former is the means of establishing links with the prospective candidates, whereas, the latter refers to the location where the prospective employees are available. Dunn and Stephen have broadly classified three methods of recruitment.

1. Direct method: This is the method by which the representatives of the organizations visit to the educational and professional institutes in search of the potential candidates . The objective is to establish contacts with the candidates seeking jobs. Persons pursuing management, engineering, medical and basically most of the software programmers are picked up by this manner. Sometimes, employer firms establish direct links with professors of these institutes and solicit information about students with excellent academic records. Employer organisation also send recruiters to the conventions, seminars, set up job fairs and take the help of mobile offices to establish direct contact with the job seekers.

2. Indirect method: Indirect methods include advertisements in the newspaper, on radio and television, in trade and professional journals, technical magazines, and brochures etc. Basically indirect method is most suitable when the organizations want to reach out a vast territory. Sometimes, many organizations prefer for blind advertisement, in which only Box No is mentioned and the identity of the organization is not revealed . Generally, reputed organizations do not go for blind advertisements.

3. Third party method : This method take use of commercial or private employment agencies, state agencies, management consultant firms, professional bodies, professional associations. It also include employee referral and recommendation, services of voluntary organization, trade banks, labour contractors and friends and relatives and so on to establish contact with the job seekers.

RECRUITMENT POLICY:

Every organisation must have suitable recruitment policy. Such a policy asserts the recruitment objective and provides a framework for implementation of its recruitment programme in the form of procedure. A sound recruitment policy involves a commitment to broad principles of filling up organisational vacancies with the best qualified individual. For which it calls for adopting a scientific process of recruitment with due consideration of need and priorities of organisation. Unless a company adopts a suitable recruitment policy, it may not be possible for a company to have right candidates for right job. A sound recruitment policy, therefore, needs to identify--

Organisation objectives

The recruitment needs of the organisation

Preferred sources of recruitment

Suitable criteria for selection

Cost of recruitment

Recruitment process

Since recruitment is the process of locating , identifying, and attracting capable applications for available jobs in an organization. The process of recruitment comprises of the following five steps:

Recruitment Planning: planning is the first step in the recruitment process. It involves drafting a comprehensive job specification for the positions to be filled up. That defines major and minor responsibilities associated with the job, prescribes the needed skills, essential qualifications and experience. It also specify the grade and level of pay, mention joining date, clarify temporary or permanent, and define the special conditions of the job to be filled.

Strategy Development: Once, an organisation find out the size and quality of candidates to be recruited, then a suitable recruitment strategy is developed. The strategic considerations considers issues like whether to choose from internal sources or hire it from outside. It also takes care of choosing recruitment method , geographical area to be selected for searching the candidates and include sequence of activities to be followed in recruiting candidates .

Searching: This step involves attracting job seekers to the organization. Broadly, there are two sources used for recruitment. One is internal source and another is external source.

Screening: Screening may be viewed as the starting point of selection. It can also be considered as an integral part of recruitment because selection process starts only after the applications have been screened and short listed. Screening is done on the basis of Job specification. Applications are screened against the qualification and experiences, knowledge, skills, abilities and interest as mentioned in the job specification. The techniques used for screening may vary depending upon the sources of supply and methods used for recruitment. Preliminary applications screening, de-selections tests and screening interviews are commonly used techniques for screening the candidates.

Evaluation and control: The recruitment process involves considerable cost. The costs generally include cost of preparing job analysis, advertisement cost, administrative expenses, cost of outsourcing or overtime, and the cost of recruiting unsuitable candidates. It also includes recruiters’ salary too. Therefore, to know the effectiveness of recruitment, its evaluation and control is imperative.

Recent Trends in Recruitment

Out sourcing

The HR processes are outsourced by Indian organisations since more than a decade now. Outsourcing firms provide the required personnel to the recruiter. The outsourcing firms conduct initial screening of the candidates taking into consideration of the specific needs of the organisation. Thereby create a suitable pool of talent and make the final selection easier for the employer organisation. The job of the outsourcing firms is to develop a human resource pool and make them available for other companies as per their needs. The outsourcing firms function as the intermediaries and they charge the employer organisations for their services. The followings are the advantages of outsourcing.

Employer organisation need not worry to plan for their human resources much in advance.

Value creation may occur by outsourcing.

It provides operational flexibility and competitive advantage can be obtained by outsourcing.

Management may focus on strategic level processes of HRM.

Company can weed the unsuitable resumes/candidates easily.

Company can save time and lot of its resources.

POACHING/RAIDING

Poaching is a managerial approach that involves "buying talent" rather than developing it. It is concerned with employing competent and experienced persons of other reputed companies in the same or different industry. A rival company offer attractive pay packages and better terms and conditions than that of current employer in order to attract talent. This practice is considered as unethical and not openly talked about. Poaching is very predominant feature of Indian software sector. Poaching weakens the human resource strength of the firm and subsequently the competitiveness. For which, it has become a great challenge for human resource managers of software companies to tackle poaching.

E-RECRUITMENT

in the era of information communication technology era, many medium and large organizations use Internet as a convenient source of recruitment known as e- recruitment. It takes the help of technology to facilitate recruitment process. Advertisement of job vacancies to be filled up is done through worldwide web. The job seekers, after getting the information from the web, fill up the application format or send the curriculum vitae through e- mail using the Internet. On the other hand, the Job seekers can also place their CVs in worldwide web. That can also be drawn by prospective employers at the time of need to fulfil their requirements. E-recruitment is considered as low cost recruitment without any intermediaries. It also takes less time for recruiting right type of people and the process is regarded as efficient one.

HR Challenges in Recruitment

Recruitment is a procurement function. To find and place the best potential candidates, it requires business perspective, expertise, and ability of the recruiter that will be beneficial both for the organisation and individuals. For which, the HR professionals handling the recruitment function always encounter new challenges. To go for internal source or choose the best people of potential candidates from outside is the biggest challenge for such professional. The phenomenal changes in job market in terms of technologies, sources of recruitment, competitions etc also bring lot of challenges for recruitment function to carry on. Moreover, in an already saturated job market, where the practices like poaching and raiding are gaining momentum, HR professionals are constantly facing new challenges, while performing recruitment function for the organisation. They need to conquer different challenges in order to find the best possible candidates in accordance with the requirements of their respective organisations. The followings are the major challenges faced by the HR professionals in recruitment function.

1. Adaptability to globalization: The HR professionals are required and expected to perform recruitment function keeping pace with the changes that are happening all across the globe.

2. Lack of motivation: Recruitment is still considered as thankless job. HR department and professionals receive no appreciation for recruiting the right candidates and good performers, even if the organisation achieves the required results, resulting in decrease in motivation.

3. Process analysis: The recruitment process should be flexible, adaptive and responsive enough in maintaining timeliness and cater to the immediate requirements of the organisation. The process also needs to be cost effective.

4. Strategic prioritization: HR professionals, while performing recruitment function, need to take a strategic move, so that they can get opportunity from the challenges associated with emerging new systems. Therefore, review of staffing needs and prioritization of the tasks in accordance with market demands has become a major challenge for the recruitment professionals.

ROI of recruitment

To calculate, the return on investment (ROI) on recruitment is a very complicated task for any organisation. Indeed, to judge the success of an organisation’s recruitment process is also not easy. Instead, organisations continue their recruitment activity without measuring its impact on the organisation’s business.

Generally, organisations do not prepare or produce any kind of documents or reports on their recruitment processes. There is also no accountability on the part of the HR department regarding sthe costs incurred and the opportunities missed in the process of recruitment. With the increasing focus on strategic human resources, more and more organisations are attempting to adopt one or the other way of calculating the ROI on their recruitments. Many organisations are seeking to assess their HR functions and activities and are trying to quantify their results and outcomes. In order to calculate and maximize the ROI of recruitment for its organisation, a recruitment manager needs to take care of the followings.

Define the results need to be achieved from recruitment very clearly.

Develop methods and ways to measure the time to hire, cost-per-hire and effectiveness of the source of recruitment etc.

Estimate the costs associated with the recruitment project.

Estimate both the tangible and intangible benefits to the organization including the payback period of the recruitments.

Provide proper training and ensure development of the recruitment managers. Assessing the ROI on recruitments can assist an organisation in strengthening its HR processes. It improves its recruitment function and builds a strategic human resource advantage for the organisation.

Diagram – Selection Process