Use Of Technology In Recruitment

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Developing the right recruitment strategies is very important for an organization. There are various generations of employees in an organization with varied attitudes and behavior and the expectations of each generation could be quite different from each other. Understanding the values and behaviors of existing employees help in guiding the human resource professionals to develop appropriate recruiting techniques and strategies.

Recruitment Sources

In most of the recruiting techniques, the HR professional is the one who is in constant contact with the candidate, hence plays a very important role in setting the foundation for the relationship of the candidate with the organization. There are varies sources which an organization uses for its recruitment needs, these can be external sources or internal sources. The recruiting techniques adopted try to analyze candidates based on their knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) and determine the fit with regards to the individual and the job requirements and also personality and organization match.

The various sources though which staffing occur in an organization are applicant initiated, employee referrals, internships, employment websites, college placement offices, employment agencies, job fairs and network-based resources (Revels & Morris, 2012). There are also employment arrangement agencies which provide skilled and knowledgeable workers on a temporary basis. These contracts made with such employees are usually short-term and last for a specific amount of time and are used by an organization for its immediate needs.

We now discuss the two most cost-effective ways of recruitment through internal sources: employee referrals and internships and also look at recruitment through the use of advertisements.

Employee Referrals

In this method, the existing employees of the organization are the sources for new candidates. They recommend the organization to their friends and family and provide additional information about the company. In most of the cases, the current employees tend to refer to candidates who are similar to themselves hence it is easier to identify individuals who are compatible with the culture and value system of the organization. Employees hired through referrals usually have longer tenure with the organization, better performance and more pre-hire knowledge which facilitates socialization. This is due to the realistic job previews given by the exiting employee and the exiting relation between the referrer and the candidate.

The employees who refer are the ones who have positive work attitudes and feel good about their employers as they are willing to recommend the organization to their friends and family. Though, sometimes referrals can also be motivated by the extrinsic rewards offered by the organization (Shinnar, Young, & Meana, 2004).

The negative side to this process is that the same friendship between the candidate and the referrer and the sense of trust between them may make the candidate to have undoubted faith in the information provided by the referrer and may cause the candidate to build excessive expectations. The candidate may also ignore the need to conduct more thorough information gathering about the company which may lead to an irrational assessment of the organization. Hence after starting employment, the candidate could be disappointed because their expectation fell short and hence resulting in poor person-organization fit (Hsieh & Chen, 2011).

Internships

Internships are sought by college-going individuals as a part of their academic curriculum in order for them to gain on-the-job experience. These individuals are employed by an organization so that they can gain experience about the organization and the work environment and also acquire the knowledge and skills required for the job during this course. After the completion of their internships, these individuals can be hired by the organization for appropriate positions which can be determined depending on their performance during the internship period and they would require very less training compared to the other candidates. During the course of the internship, it gives the organization a way to effectively examine the candidates in the organizational setup and judge the person-organization fit. The individuals would get to know about the organization and the culture and this would help them in developing realistic expectation about their jobs.

Recruitment through Advertisements

One of the most prevalent external sources of recruitment is through the use of advertisement. The advertisement is a crucial step in recruitment. An advertisement for a job offers typically contain not only the job vacancy to be filled in but it also portrays the image of the company and its guiding principles (Gerard Ryan, 2000).

In the case of a recruitment advertisement the product is job offer and an organization markets the same through proper communication. In the increasing world of competitiveness, everyone wants to hire suitable and best candidate for the job vacancy. The success of the recruitment process partially depends upon the success of placing an appropriate advertisement. The applicants, when they read a job advertisement, develop an image of the organization, and the image of the organization has significant impact on the success of a recruitment drive. The applicant tries to relate his aspiration and expectation from the job with the image of the company, and when it matches he will be more willing to grab the opportunity. It also prevents the poor-fit candidates from applying for the job and hence saves on wastage of time in evaluating those candidates. An effective advertisement consists of correct use of language, the job description, the layout and design and the organizational description.

Use of technology in recruitment

An organization spends significant amount on this kind of a recruitment process. The cost of recruitment increases with the number of applicants. The increasing number of recruiters and applicants in the job market has made the recruitment process very competitive. The search for the best candidate in terms of academic and behavioral qualifications and ensuring a proper cultural fit of the candidate with the organization has kept recruitment managers on their toes. Apart from high cost involved in the process, there is significant time invested as well which could be used for devoting on company’s core business area.

With changes in job market scenario, a change in recruitment process is also required to handle the voluminous data and workload. The use of technology can help in reducing the recruitment time and cost significantly (Politt, 2008). The online recruitment process can be used to hire the prospective candidates for an organization efficiently. The advances in technology can be utilized for data collection, data storage and data processing much more quickly, safely and effectively.

The cost of online recruitment process

The major part of the cost associated with implementation of the online recruitment process consists of one time initial investment in data center and software purchase. However this cost is justified with the direct savings in cost and time, the process brings to the company. The process thus gets more effective as the size of the organization grows which justifies for the initial investment.

Benefit of online recruitment process

As explained by the signaling theory which was originally developed for economics research on the role of buyer and seller (Spence, 1974), it has been adopted to explain the potential relation between applicants and recruiters. In the absence of any information, a candidate can form their own perception about the organization based on the peripheral information available. If the recruiter is friendly and co-operative, an individual will carry same perception about the organization since the recruiter here is representative of the organization. Similarly, a well-structured and organized website conveys the message that the organization possesses the same characteristics. Candidates are attracted towards the work environments which are closer to their personal preferences (Kristof, 1996).

The major benefits of the online recruitment process are:

1. Speed and efficiency: the technology enables human being to collect and process a larger number of applications per day than being done by human alone. The automatic process of collection, storage and processing can be done by programmed interface, while the decision part can be left for managers. A basic filter and screening program as well can be put in place to select more promising and suitable candidates, thus saving their time significantly which they can utilize to invest in the core business of the firm (Proctor, 2010).

2. Profile creation and updating: the use of online process enables to create access and update the profile of the candidate form anywhere and anytime.

3. Monitor the progress online: the applicant can get the status of his application anytime she wants. If required a program can be set to send messages regarding further notice and updates to candidates automatically at predefined intervals.

4. Brand image of the company: the company’s online recruitment process may boost the brand image of the company by provide an enhanced experience to the applicants, by ensuring a uniform and consistent recruitment process throughout the organization (Phillip W. Braddy, 2006).

5. Post jobs simultaneously at multiple channels: the online platform helps an organization to post its requirement simultaneously at many places like, universities, corporate center, third party recruiters etc.

6. Better picture of the organization: in traditional job advertisements, an interested applicant only knows about the details mentioned in the advertisement which consists of mostly job descriptions and requirements. The online process may provide an applicant a chance to explore the company’s culture, its guiding principles and core values (Phillip W. Braddy, 2006). The applicant may perform a self-selection mode by trying to figure out whether there is a cultural fit between the organization and the employee or not.

A web site should portray correct culture, core values, core purpose, vision and mission of the organization, since it helps in developing the perception with the candidate. A correct convey of message will result in better understanding of the organization. The candidate will self-evaluate and then apply based on her career aspirations and fit with the organization. An organization can use subtle techniques to convey its messages, e.g. if a company displays the award ceremony for innovation, it sends out a signal that this company values and encourages innovation. Thus people with same aspiration will be attracted towards the company. This helps the company to attract better employee who are culturally aligned with company.

External Recruitment versus Internal Promotion

The methods discussed above deal with getting outside individuals to fill the vacancies in the organization. But there are also current employees who would be eligible for the vacancies. We now discuss these two strategies of staffing and the type of organizations which employ them.

An organization can either promote an individual internally or hire an external candidate for the position. In most of the cases external hires are paid more than what an internally promoted individual would have received. This could be due to the perception of superiority that the management sees in the external candidate over the existing employee who has been working with the organization for some time. It could also be because the external candidates have stronger observable indicators of abilities (Bidwell, 2011). The external candidates have uncertainties in terms of the person-organization fit and lack firm-specific skills. The firms also would have access to more information related to the internal candidate than they would know about the external candidate and hence make a better decision about the fit between the internal candidate and job position. This results in higher turnover rates among external recruits than internally promoted candidates. The internally promoted candidates do not leave the organization quickly because they recognize the confidence organization has in them and their abilities which it has shown by promoting them and they would not want to hurt this sense of trust.

When it comes to capabilities, the external recruit need not be better than the internally promoted individual. The external recruit would take time to get inducted into the new job role and learn the values and culture of the new organization, whereas the internal candidate would have already been privy to what the position entails as he would have seen his superior perform the tasks, hence would require much less time to get adjusted to the new position. But the internally promoted candidates also would take time to stop doing the work they have been doing till date and adapt to the new role and responsibilities and acquire new skills required for the position.

Along with promotions, internal candidates can fill positions through lateral transfers. This could be coupled with a promotion in terms of rank and vertical movement in the organization or could be just a horizontal movement. These steps are taken by an organization to provide job enrichment and job enlargement to their employees. The employees would be able to expand their skill sets and organization would be well-equipped with individuals who would be ready and capable of taking up more holistic top positions.

The kind of decisions an organization takes with respect to hiring externally or internal promotions also gives a signal to the existing employees regarding their own career paths. By promoting individuals from within their own ranks, the organization and its employees maintain a long-term relationship and the firm accumulates specific human capital. In these organizations, promotions are used as carrots for inducing superior performance from employees. This also generates a sense of competition among the employees and when the competition is opened to even external candidates, the current employee competes with not only his colleagues but also with the outsiders. This reduces his chances of winning drastically and reduces the incentive to compete, thus reducing the effect of the carrot (Chan, 1996).

Most of the organizations acquire knowledge through hiring externally. This is especially true in organizations working in a fast-paced industry. In order to gain information and knowledge about the industry and competitors, firms usually seek external sources like suppliers, customers and consultants. But most of this information is in the form of tacit knowledge which cannot be separated from the individual and difficult to acquire independently. Hence when individuals more from one firm to another, they carry this knowledge along with them and when they apply it in different contexts, they are effectively transferring the knowledge from one firm to another (Song, Almeida, & Wu, 2003). This new knowledge will be able to take the firm beyond its current level and break its limits in current technological and operational boundaries. The hiring of an external candidate would also mitigate "group think" in the organization and often this new employee can play the role of devil’s advocate. The new employee can also bring in new fresh ideas into the organization.

The kind of bond an external candidate would have with the organization would be that of an economic bond whereas an internally transferred candidate would have an emotional bond with the organization. Hence we see that there are advantages and disadvantages to both internal and external recruitments. The organization should use its judgment in a given situation and take a decision.

Traditional steps involved in recruitment

Irrespective of the source of recruitment, organizations have been following a set of steps to conduct the recruitment process. The steps mentioned below give the basic framework followed by majority of the organizations today.

Step 1 – Provide the correct job description

Employers check the fit of the employee in terms of technical competence and other abilities for the job to which the candidate is applying for. Job analysis includes the KSA. To attract candidates the design of job description is very important as it helps the recruiters and the candidates to form priorities. An incomplete or misleading job description can attract the wrong candidates to apply.

Step 2 – Resume shortlisting

The resumes help in shortlisting of candidates from a large pool of candidates, it acts as a differentiator. Resumes and employment application forms are very important for both the candidate and the recruiter; this is the only source by which a recruiter will get to know of the candidate’s capability. Once a resume is received is will go through a lot of scanning and the resume and the employment form will be judge on various parameters, and hence a judgments about the candidate will be formed before the interview. Most of the times a capable candidate is not selected just because of bad resume points or because of lack of attention paid in filling the employment forms. Thus, it being the most initial step discourages its selection right in the beginning confirming no selection. (By Ikwukananne Udechukwu, 2009)

Step 3– Telephone screening and performance testing

Telephonic interviews are best when the recruiter wants to judge the technical expertise of the candidate, hence performance can be easily measured, with less cost and time wastage. Companies generally prefer an initial screening of shortlisted resumes via a telephonic interview when the number of resumes is large enough to make a formal interview process unfeasible.

Step 4 – Interview (Structured and Non structured Interview)

This involves the real testing of the candidate’s confidence and his results on parameters not present in the resume. It also is used to check the candidate’s credentials and claims made in the resume and telephonic interviews. It also helps to test employee’s interpersonal skills that are important for the candidate to be able to perform the job.

Step 5 – Final offer of acceptance

Post the interview, the candidates who are found to be eligible are given a formal letter of acceptance. The candidate, at this juncture can negotiate on the compensation and other terms and conditions if not already done in the interview.

The five steps mentioned above are the typical steps followed in a recruitment process with some changes being introduced by some companies according to their requirements. The basic frameworks irrespective of these changes remain the same. This process though being followed successfully has its set of issues and therefore offers the opportunity to better it by adding some changes in the process by redesigning some processes and adding additional parameters to judge the candidate. The tradeoff is that with more processes and parameters the time and effort and thereby initial cost may increase. They however will pay off in the long run if implemented correctly.

Common mistakes in the recruitment process

The mistakes can be broadly classified under two heads – hiring the wrong candidate and not hiring the right candidate. These are directly proportional to each other and the reduction in hiring of wrong candidates will also reduce the chances of not hiring the right candidate. Both of these have far reaching consequences for the organization. We shall now see the possible reasons for hiring a wrong candidate. This may give us some idea as to factors to consider before during recruitment. The reasons can be broadly divided into two categories; employer actions and candidate characteristics (Rosse, 2002)

Employer actions

This can be further subdivided into two categories, internal influences and external influences. The most common internal influences that lead to hiring wrong candidates are,

Incomplete or not thorough interviews and in some cases no interviews at all

Incomplete or no checking of references

Focus on wrong Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA)

Not including necessary KSA

Interviewer not qualified to take interviews

The external influences which lead to hiring wrong candidates are,

Pressure from external entities to hire

Hiring of relatives and close associates of self or co workers

Inadequate talent pool to hire from

Time constraints placed by top management or affected department heads

While external influences cannot be completely eliminated, the internal influences can definitely be reduced to a large extent by following set guidelines and procedures.

Managers keep a perceptive or intuitive ideas and mindset about decision-making. Arbitration theory explains that recruiters hire a candidate on the basis of the past success of the candidate. There are various biases a manager has when making a decision. Decision making bias is where the recruiter decides about the candidate on the basis of just the one experience. Another is the confirmation bias where managers will only confirm anything which satisfies their thinking. Credibility of the manager’s decision in selecting the candidate is very important, if a manager has selected any candidate based on any fact; then that fact needs to be credible. Managers generally give greater weightage to information that they personally feel as correct and conveniently ignoring the others. Therefore a manager’s perception becomes very important in recruiting a candidate. (Jean M. Philips, 2008)

Candidate characteristics

The most important thing that a manager needs to understand, when it comes to hiring is that, the person being hired is not for the job but for the organization. A person may be well suited for the job, but his/her fit into the organizational culture needs to be looked at very carefully. Traditional hiring methods tend to concentrate more on the person’s fit for the job. Due to this managers face a variety of issues when it comes to hiring. The most common mistake in hiring is due to candidate faking. Faking of credentials and qualifications is a criminal offence and does not constitute part of this report. The focus will be more on the aspect of candidates faking their fit for the job. It is up to the manager to figure out if the candidate is really what he/she claims to be. There multiple ways to reduce the error of hiring a wrong candidate. One of the ways to assess a candidate is on the person’s cognitive ability as well as conscientiousness level along with checking for technical ability. Cognitive ability is a candidate’s awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment abilities. Conscientiousness deals with the ability to take ethical decisions. Research has proved that the use of cognitive ability and conscientiousness scores will reduce the number of fakers hired than the use of any one of these measures alone. Using multiple predictors in a hiring process reduces the negative impact of faking in an organization, mainly through a reduction in the number of fakers who will be selected otherwise. (Mitchell H. Peterson, 2009)

Another way of reducing the chances of hiring a wrong person is to check for the person-organization fit. Most managers just try to ensure that the candidate’s knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) fits with the current job requirements, but what are conveniently ignored are the characteristics of the person which may not be in sync with the organization’s characteristics. Such a candidate can rarely be a long term asset for the organization.

An alternate method of recruitment

A four stage process of finding a right candidate for the organization is as follows,

Assessment of the work environment

It is beneficial to assess the work environment in terms of organization characteristics rather than job characteristics. This will lead to assessment of the candidate in terms of fit into the organization and also whether the candidate’s personalities and characteristics will lead to organizational effectiveness.

Assessment of talent required

Based on the output of first stage, the next step is to assess the type of person required for the organization. The KSA of the candidate technically are most important; but on the similar platform the nature, attitude, values and beliefs of the candidate are also to be assessed. Also the social and interpersonal skills that would be needed needs to be clearly defined. For a long term fit into the organization, the cognitive and non-technical abilities of a person are more important than the technical skills. For long term payoffs, organizations can also incur some initial expenditure to conduct technical trainings for otherwise good candidates who are not perfect technically. On the other hand, changing the personality of a person who is technically competent but not culturally fitting into the organization structure is very difficult.

Conduct an multiple stage, transparent recruitment process

Multiple screening methods help eliminate the fakers, as previously discussed, but may also dissuade some employees from taking up the job. The tradeoff is that in the process of eliminating wrong candidates, some right candidates may also get dissuaded. In a situation where the talent pool is large such tradeoffs may not create too big an impact. The incentive of eliminating the fakers and also ran outweigh the error of rejecting good candidates. Here, the interviews should be conducted by managers and potential coworkers with who the candidate is likely to work. This significantly reduces the future problems. At the same time, the candidate also needs to be given a realistic job purview so that he/she does not have any preconceived wrong notion about the nature of job.

Reinforce organization fit at work

The process of recruitment is just the first stage. A constant reinforcement of the organizations values needs to be done in the minds of the recruits till they get immersed in the idea. It also provides a feedback mechanism which helps to iron out niggles in the organization working. (David E. Bowen, 1991)

Ethical Implications to Recruitment

Preferential Hiring

In order for organizations to ensure employment equity, sometimes preferential hiring takes place wherein the hiring managers tend to recruit more of underrepresented members in the organization, stressing less on the person-job fit. Less qualified woman employees are hired when there is a directive to the hiring manager that women are underrepresented in the company. The issue of discrimination in hiring has been prevalent despite government legislation and employment equity programs by companies. Traditional male dominated occupation like the police force and female dominated occupation like nursing has been subject to gender role stereotyping while hiring. The perception that man possesses more of certain attributes like dominance, aggression, endurance and women possesses more of certain attributes like nurturance and homemaking has led to the stereotyping in certain occupations like police force which is viewed as a traditionally masculine job or nursing which is viewed as a traditionally feminine job. Men in female dominated organizations are generally promoted to more legitimate positions. Eg. Men hired in the nursing professions are generally promoted to "nursing management", which is a more legitimate profession. This is known as the "glass escalator effect" (Eddy S. Ng, Dec,2007).

Organizations believing social dominance theory promote inequality and legitimized discrimination on the basis of gender while hiring (Eddy S. Ng, Dec,2007). On the other hand organizations pursing affirmative action bring employment equity in their hiring process. Hence these organizations have more minority applicants in their application pool. The minority candidates hired under this preferential criterion were less qualified, but were no less in performance during the interview as compared to the best qualified candidates (Eddy S. Ng, Dec,2007). It is often debated that preferential hiring programs by companies pursuing affirmative action policies, leads to allocating jobs to under qualified candidates, which ultimately reduces efficiency of the company. According to George Sher "A person is preferentially hired if that person is hired in place of somebody else who better satisfies the hiring criteria and is given the advantage by moral considerations" (Philips, Feburary 1991). But the "accepted hiring criteria", against which the qualifications of applicants are measured, may be inherently flawed. Consider for example a company A is hiring on a first-come-first-serve basis for 5 open positions, while a company B is hiring form a pool of 50 to 100 applicants for its 5 open positions. Company A will select the first 5 who meets the "fair and accepted hiring criteria" (Philips, Feburary 1991). Company B, on the other hand has a fairly large applicant pool and will select the best performing candidates among that pool. Hence even though company A is hiring by the rulebook, it might select less qualified candidates than company B, because of its first-come criteria. Thus preferential hiring does not necessarily mean hiring less qualified candidates for the job. Company B, which has an affirmative action strategy, does preferential hiring, but it has a huge applicant pool and stringent selection process, which selects the best performers, not necessarily the best qualified. The debate, that preferential hiring leads to inefficiencies within the company is not necessarily true.

Fairness and ethical hiring practices

Fairness and ethics in hiring practices is considered paramount by prospective job candidates. Ethical hiring in effect is determined by how the hiring manager conducts the hiring process and not by the end result of the hiring for the applicants or for the organization. The hiring manager is the face of the organization to the job applicant. Thus ethical behaviour by the hiring manager promotes ethical values of the organization and builds confidence and commitment about the organization in the minds of the potential hires. On the other hand, treating applicants unfairly leaves an unfavourable image of the organization on the applicants. Many applicants consider the interview process of an organization as a benchmark of how the organization operates. Hence job applicants who are treated unfairly in the interview process are most likely to dissuade others from joining the organization and they themselves would turn down their selection offer in all probability. Even if they accept the offer after an unethical or unfair interview process, they are most likely be less committed towards the company and less likely to develop emotional bond for the organization.

Hiring procedures are generally well documented in organizations and hiring managers don’t have much latitude, but to comply with the rules and regulations. But mere compliance with the rules does not render the selection process as ethical. A hiring process is legally compliant if it can assess all the candidates and determines who will perform best at the job. This in effect implies that all the candidates to be treated equally; the hiring managers conduct structured interviews, pre-planned and performance based; use a variety of tools for selection and finally go beyond the legal compliance to ensure fairness in hiring. Keeping this in mind, there major ethical perspectives, utilitarianism, rights and duties and fairness and justice (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006) can be explored for relevance in hiring process.

Utilitarianism in ethical context sees the greatest good for greatest number of people as the most important value (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). If a choice has to be made between an action which will have the greatest good for the greatest number of people vis-à-vis an action which will please an individual or a group of individuals but not result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, then the former action should be chosen according to Utilitarianism. At the organization level a manager following the ethical guidelines of utilitarianism would choose an individual who would be best qualified and fit for the organization as a whole and not his own department or team. If selection of best candidate for a job results in highly skewed demographic distributions then according to utilitarian theory, the hiring practices of the company needs to be modified to increase diversity which will be good for the society. A company which needs a diverse workforce might select the best qualified applicants form a pool of applicants, but they need not enhance diversity (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Hence the objective would not be to select only the best qualifying candidates, but have a structured and stringent interview process which will select the best performing candidates and the hiring criteria has to be such that it provides greatest good for the greatest number of people. To change the hiring criteria to fit utilitarian perspective, affirmative action need to be taken. The first affirmative action approach is to remove biases (gender, race, age) from the hiring managers. The second is to remove barriers that might result in underrepresentation of certain groups. Eg. If a company is hiring through internet advertising, then it also has to address those people who don’t have access to internet, but nonetheless well qualified for the job. This can be done by advertising in print media and other job magazines or advertising on radio. The third approach is to increase diversity by giving extra points for gender, race etc (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Eg. In the selection of IIM’s most of the institutes gives extra credits to female candidates and non-engineers to increase diversity among the batch. Also, in the US, a huge untapped pool of qualified employees who have physical disabilities, are left unutilized. If only 1 million of those disabled employees can be employed then the US government can have 21.2 billion annual increases in revenue and around 4 billion of savings in food stamps and unemployment subsidies (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Thus for an organization selecting a disabled employee over one with no disability might have negligible effects, but for the society and the economy at large it has significant impact. In summary, thus utilitarian hiring ethics requires the manager to think beyond short term effects of hiring decisions on the organization and its immediate beneficiaries and focus more on its impact on the society.

The second ethical perspective, rights and duties, states that an act is ethical if it respects the rights of others and performs the duties that are by virtue of that right (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). For example if a person has a right to privacy then it is our duty to leave him alone. Broadly there are there rights in the ethical framework, relevant for hiring; position rights, human rights and citizens’ rights.

Position rights: The hiring manager, by virtue of his position has the right to recruit the candidate whom he finds best possible among the pool of candidates. Thus if there is a vacancy for 2 positions and 10 people applying for the job, then the manager has the right to reject 8. But the manager should exercise his right responsibly and care should be taken to evaluate the candidate on the basis of the job requirements, so that the manager can overcome his personal bias.

Human Rights: To hold the human rights of the applicant, the manager should be responsible to protect the privacy of the applicant and should also respect his personal dignity. The manager thus should be transparent in the hiring process and should tell the truth upfront, providing the applicants honest assessment and updating them about their status.

Citizens’ Rights: The citizens’ right entails that all applicant should be treated as equal and the manager should not discriminate and reject a candidate on the basis of age, gender, and ethnicity.

By respecting these above mentioned rights, fairness in the hiring process of the organization can be achieved.

The third perspective, Fairness and justice; states that justice can be done by being fair to all those affected by the decision. The three main types of organizational justice are, procedural, distributive and interactional justice (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006).

Distributive justice: A justice is distributive and holds equity, if it does not predict different outcome for different subgroups (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Equity in the hiring process exists when no discrimination is done and selection is based on hiring the best performing candidate. Hence according to distributive justice, fairness in selection is determined if it preserves the rights of minority subgroups in the hiring process.

Procedural Justice: Procedural justice states that not only the outcomes of the hiring process should be fair according to distributive justice, but procedures for decision making should also be fair. Sometimes perceived fairness in the process lessens the effects of perceived unjust outcomes (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006).

Interactional Justice: Interactional justice states that people not only care about the fairness of outcomes or procedures, but also take into account the quality of interpersonal treatment they receive from others. Fairness seems to be high when people are treated with dignity, politeness and respect and low when they are treated rudely or harassed. Interactional justice is thus very important in hiring to convey the message of fairness among the applicants.

Building on these 3 pillars of ethical hiring practices, hiring managers can develop the psychological contract among applicants at the time of hiring.