Major Issues Related to Strategic Recruitment - Coursework Example

Introduction: Searching and hiring efficient, competent and productive people is becoming more and more difficult due to the emergence and growth of globalization and increasing competition. It is also because of the changes taking place in the workforce of the organizations. Organizations need to make their recruitment processes competitive enough to meet the challenges that are emerging through globalization by managing the upcoming employees' talents and also the diversity among the recruited employees. [1] Most importantly, the recruitment practices adopted by any organization should be inline with the overall organizational strategy. This is because the recruitment strategies highly influence the organizational strategy and is a critical element of effective human resource management. In the recruitment of employees, Human Resource Management, HRM, places a greater concern for flexibility and adaptability in a person. In the HRM standard, recruitment is not just mechanism for filling vacancies, it is a significant lever for organizational structure and change [2]. It is critical for organizations for making continuous improvement in processes. Recruiting people is in fact a long-term investment of hiring people who are capable of achieving the organization's goals and missions. In short, recruitment is about attracting the right person to the right job at the right time. [3] The process of recruitment is a highly critical one in terms of its effects on it effect on the organization. It affects each and every aspect of the organization from the organizational structure and culture to the overall strategy of the organization. This is the reason why high emphasis is given by the organizations in recruiting employees for any post in the organization. The paper discusses the strategic recruitment policies and practices and several recruitment methods such as internal recruitment, external recruitment and e-recruitment. The most significant relation between the organizational strategy and the recruitment is also highlighted in the closing stages of the paper. Major Issues related to Recruitment: It is frequently thought that recruitment of employees should be based on merit and there should be Equal Employment Opportunity programs [4]. But not just this resolves the major issue of recruitment. There are a number of issues that are associated with recruitment. Some of the major issues of recruitment are Redundant Staff Re-hiring, Employment of Relatives, discrimination among hiring people [4] and Diversity. The major issues that will be discussed are related to the recruitment strategies and methods and their effect on the overall organizational strategy. Strategic Recruitment Strategic recruitment focuses on the organizations' time, cost and valuable resources which can be utilized most effectively. This is the reason why strategic recruitment requires proper planning, implementation and assessing. For the implementation of Strategic Recruitment, following steps are preferred: (i) Evaluat ion of Current Processes - An analysis needs to be made about the effectiveness of the current recruitment practices and the resources and time allocated to them. (ii) Develop ment of a Plan - A plan then needs to be developed for the improvement pf the previous practices and streamlining processes. Identification of new ways to hire taskforce and comparatively easier ways of recruitment for the hard-to-fill positions is done. (iii) Identification of Actions to Pursue - The actual policies and practices that will be required are classified. These include succession planning, training, employee retention and transfer, etc. (iv) Evaluat ion of the P rocess of Strategic Recruitment - the process once implemented needs to be monitored through various devices like feedback by the new hires, HR metrics, exit interviews, etc. Recruitment Policies A major issue associated with recruitment policies is that some organizations hire employees on the basis of just filling the vacant position, which results in costly consequences of a bad hire [5]. These kinds of issues lead to a loss in productivity, worsens work environment, increased stress accompanied by a decrease in morale. Creating appropriate and organized recruitment policy to attract and retain the best employees is the first step towards addressing the issues that arise due to deficiencies in the recruitment policies. Sound recruitment policies built by the organizations. help eradicate costly errors of judgment and procedure. If a policy is designed such that the human resource is kept in mind, the recruitment costs can be avoided accompanied with all the employees being treated equally without any discrimination. This will lead to high employee morale and job satisfaction and performance. Some policies also have a pitfall of hiring of employees constantly. this increases the fear of loosing the job for the present employees. In a research it is found that the estimate cost of hiring an employee is $8-$12 thousand!! [5] This is the reason why the issues related to recruitment policies need to be addressed properly in order to efficiently utilize the resources and make the recruitment process cost effective. The challenge of HRM is to develop ground-breaking and efficient policies to attract the employees with the required capabilities and retain them for long-term, as the recruitment market is very competitive [6]. Recruitment Practices Best recruitment practices ensure that the individuals with the required talents are selected through a just and equity based recruitment process [3]. The issues related to the recruitment practices emerge from the internal and external challenges [8]. The external challenges come from the factors such as unemployment rate, available workforce, new expertise and increased competition. These issues can be addressed by properly managing the workforce, hiring new and competent employees and thus fully utilizing the human resource [8]. On the other hand, the internal challenges come from within the organization. These issues arise due to the organization's increased cost and time, lack of proper recruiters, lack of commitment to the recruitment process and inability to understand the organizational strategy. An important best practice of recruiting employees is to consider the ROHI, Return on Human Investment [9]. The employees recruited are an asset to the company. In recruiting employees the organizations make a large amount of investment and thus ROHI is very important to determined and improved. Some of the key components of the recruitment practices without which a successful recruitment is not possible are management's support, proper human resource planning, assessment of performance and most importantly the management of the recruitment process [10]. Recruitment Methods Recruitment methods are the ways the organizations adopt to hire new personnel which are the best of the find. A number of recruiting methods are used in various organizations to attract the best talent for the achievement of organizational goals and missions. The type of position being recruited and the location of the people that need to hire determine the different recruitment methods [3]. The major recruitment methods that are discussed include internal and external recruiting, e-recruiting and the recruitment of women, old people, and minorities. The employees are attracted through newspaper or web advertisements, with the help of agencies, job fairs and other resources. Internal Recruitment Internal Recruitment is hiring people from within the business who already have the knowledge of the organizations goals. Internal recruitment takes place when an organization has the talents needed for some other post within the organization only [11]. The employees recruited in the internal recruitment are thus the existing employees of the organization, for example, for a merit position etc [3]. The employees are easily accessible and are aware of the recruitment process. The process of recruitment takes place through the notices on the notice boards, circulation of memorandums within the organization, meetings or through the intranets in the organization. Some of the advantages of internal recruitment are that it improves employee morale by helping them to advance their career within the organization only rather than switching organizations [12]. As the organization already knows about the capabilities of the individual, the recruitment process becomes less risky, less expensive, less complicated and requires a comparatively shorter training period associated [11]. Where there are a number of merits of internal recruitment, there are also some demerits associated with internal recruitment. Most important of which is that it limits the number of candidates that are being recruited [11], limiting the company with only the employees of the organization. There may be a possibility that some external candidate is fulfils the position in a better way but the company ignores this point. Employees who are hired internally, result in a vacant position in which the employee was previously employed [12]. This may result in less innovativeness in the organization and a resistant to changes and challenges arising from outside the organization. External Recruitment When the employees are recruited not internally, then they are recruited externally. External recruitment is hiring employees from outside the organization through competitive procedures resulting in a stronger and spirited staff [13]. When recruiting externally the organization is open to all applications from the eligible candidates for the position from any part of the world. External Recruitment takes place through the agencies, advertisements and recruitment consultants and consultancies. In contrast to internal recruitment, there are a lot of benefits associated with external recruitment with hardly any disadvantage coupled with it. The major advantage is that a wider number of applications can be invited through external recruitment, making the process more competitive as compared to internal recruitment [13]. External recruitment is also superior to internal recruitment in the sense that internal recruitment focuses on the positive performance of the individual and barriers come in internal recruitment for an employee if there is a single negative performance by the employee [14]. This results in a decreased employee morale and productivity which in turn is harmful for the organization. Therefore, external recruitment has often a priority over recruiting internally. But again, the company needs to understand its primary goals and objectives and their effect on the overall organizational strategy to plan any kind of recruitment method. E-Recruitment It is found that internet has proven to be most effective and efficient way of recruiting in the world where globalization and automation is growing increasing the competition among businesses [3]. E-recruitment involves recruiting employees over the internet through company information technology (IT), websites or the websites designed specially for recruiting employees for different organizations. The greatest advantage of e-recruitment is that it invites a large number of eligible candidates with competitive skills to a specific organization. It is also a very cost effective way [15] of recruiting a comparatively large number of candidates. E-recruitment also involves comparatively less management and greater employee satisfaction as the people who ware being recruited can select their own flexible timings to submit their resumes and arrange their interviews. A research indicates that through e-recruitment 10 times higher number of employees is appointed as compared to newspaper advertisements [16]. This is because through internet a comparatively greater amount of information necessary for the applicants can be provided in comparatively cost effective ways. This result in a less cost per person hired [16]. Some of the disadvantages concerning e-recruitment are the quality of candidates applying for the job, the role of HR personnel whose job becomes more of a facilitator [17] rather than managing the recruitment process and lack of knowledge in the HR personnel. In fact, the role of HR people is highly questionable when recruiting through web. The screening of such a large number of candidates becomes difficult which sometimes result in purchasing software for the screening of the candidates. This practice does not give a personal touch to the people who are being recruited resulting in a lack of motivation towards applying online. Thus, to adopt e-recruitment as a practice, it is not necessarily the technology's efficiency through which the candidates are being screened and selected, rather it is the efficiency and effectiveness of the system through which the organization is able to attract, select, track and integrate with the right person at the right time [17]. Adoption of an e-recruitment practice involves a complete change at the Human Resource level and at the organizational level as well. It greatly influences the organizational strategy. Recruitment of Women & Minorities The issue of the recruitment of women, old people, people with different ethnic race, background and culture and minorities is the most critical issue in the all the methods and practices of recruiting. The factor of discrimination needs to be fully avoided when recruiting employees for any posts. The women, at present, are becoming more and more competitive in the work environment and even some women are on posts higher than that of men and leading men. But in some cases, in fact most of the cases it happens to be otherwise. Women are given less opportunities to be appointed as compared to men and even when they are appointed, they are not given a proper work environment. The mistake is on the side of HR personnel who need to address the issue properly. The diversity among the workforce is a positive aspect and increases competition among employees [7]. Achieving diversity is therefore extremely important to promote and advance proper communication, innovation and creativity and a merge of talents among the employees of the organization [3]. Thus, the organizations should advertise for various posts keeping in mind the women and minorities. The processes for hiring minorities and the like should be as sophisticated as other methods of recruitment [7]. The advertisements should be posted on sources which are easily accessible by the minorities. Diversity attracts a competitive work environment, brings the capabilities of different people together which merge to give the organization a competitive edge in the market and increase profits for the organization [18]. The racial discrimination and other kinds of discrimination result in serious issues. Thus discrimination should be fully avoided. It is on the part of the Human Resource Department of any organization to address these issues properly which if overseen may result in lack of competencies. Effects of Recruitment on Organizational Strategy: Many companies are confused on the point about what actually is organizational strategy which is affected by the business operations. There are different interpretations of strategies with respect to different businesses. But, in short, strategy is a structure that provides what tasks and actions are to be performed in order to make the organization a profitable one [19]. All the organizations try to align their recruitment practices with the organization's overall strategy. This is because recruitment activities greatly influence the way the business will be carried out in the future and the strategies the organizations need to implement and practice in the future. Recruiting internally or externally also has a great influence on the organization's strategies and tactics. Thus whenever adapting any recruitment practice, its long term effects should be considered and not just the current fiscal year's recruitment needs [3]. Although most of the organizations do not consider long term consequences but at present most of the organizations are competing to achieve this goal of aligning their recruitment practices with the organizational goals and mission and the overall strategy. To prevent the worse effects of the recruitment practices on the organizational strategy, the agencies should keep the following points [20] in mind while recruiting: Understand exactly what are the organization's goals and the type of skills that the organization need to achieve a competitive advantage, expand and succeed. Develop an inventory of skills which consists of the existing talents and skills in the organization and the skills that are expected or required by the organization in the future. Most importantly, the recruitment practices and the method used to employ them are highly influential. The major issue is that the recruitment practices are not a separate part of an organization but rather an integral part of the organization's current strategy or policies and the strategy that will be devised by the organization in the future. This is the reason why proper planning, assessing and management is required while recruiting. Conclusion: Thus, in a nut shell, we can say that the process of recruitment cannot be performed in isolation with the organization's mission, goals and strategy. Recruitment is a highly complicated and sophisticated process of hiring the right people which will be beneficial for the organization. The process of recruitment should be based on the human capital. The organizations need to clearly and unmistakably understand the talent and skills that are needed. Once this perspective is analyzed and defined clearly, the policies, procedures, practices and methods to recruit people can be easily designed and implemented, provided there is a proper management and guidance from the side of the human resources personnel as the process of recruitment cannot be successful without the active participation of the human resource department. Bibliography: [1] Strategic Recruitment Seminar (n.d.). 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