What are the sources of recruitment?

There are two major sources of recruitment:-

External Recruitment:- Individuals who have certain combinations of qualifications in common may be considered to belong to the same labor market. Labor market classifications vary on the personnel literature, but some common ones are blue collar, clerical, professional and technical, and managerial. In this classification scheme, blue collar includes skilled and semiskilled workers (e.g. auto assembly line), clerical includes office support personnel (e.g. secretary), professional and technical include specialists such as accountants, engineers, and scientists, and managerial includes professional management personnel. Because the various labor markets require different recruiting approaches, it is important that they be targeted in advance.

Another important concern is the intensity of the recruitment effort for particular job openings. Historical recruitment data may help with this determination.

As with many organizational activities, timing may also be important. A firm may bring together the historical data and a timetable to form a set of time-based recruiting goals.

Methods of External Recruitment:- Once the labor markets and recruiting yields have been determined, the best means for contacting, informing, and creating interest in potential applicants must be selected. The firm may select one or more recruitment strategies to accomplish this. A recruitment strategy consists of a plan combining recruitment personnel, resources, and recruiting methods. The recruiting strategy must be designed and implemented in a manner consistent with all relevant laws and regulations.

1: Professional or Trade Associations:- Many associations provide placement services for their members. These services may consist of compiling descriptive text on, or listings of, job-hunting members and their qualifications and providing access to members during regional or national conventions. Further, many associations publish or sponsor trade journals or magazines for their membership. These publications often carry classified advertisements from employers interested in recruiting their members.

2: Print and Electronic Media Advertisements:- Employers use newspaper advertisements for many reasons. 1. Job openings can be announced quickly. 2. They are fairly inexpensive compared with other methods, and more than one position can be included in the same advertisement. 3. Newspaper advertisements offer flexibility to employers (free-timetable, blind advertisements). The composition of printed advertisements requires care because the attractiveness or cleverness of the advertisement may have a significant impact on its effectiveness. The composition of printed advertisements also requires care in order to ensure that no violation of EEO laws and regulations takes place. Many companies are turning to special publications as a recruitment method. These include special employment issues of newspapers and magazines, regional and national employment newspapers, and company brochures for direct mailings. The use of electronic media in recruitment has also increased. Radio, cable TV, and electronic bulletin boards have all proven to be effective competition for the printed medium.

3.  Employee Referral: Often when current employees hear of job openings in their firm, they will inform their friends or relatives and encourage them to apply, that is employee referral. Such referrals were prohibited by many companies in the past to prevent close interpersonal relationships from unfairly affecting personnel actions. More recently, the hiring of family and friends of current employees through referral has become recognized as an inexpensive way to obtain loyal and dependable new employees and has been encouraged. But heavy dependence on employee referrals may cause problems, because employees are likely to refer someone fairly similar to themselves. Unfair hiring practices may result, too.

4.  Public Employment Service:- There are some agencies who list all those individuals out of work who are eligible and wish to receive unemployment compensation, as well as many first-time or less steadily employed job seekers. The forced nature of registration at such agencies in order to receive unemployment benefits has created a negative impression of their usefulness as a source of new hires. Public employment agencies are an excellent source of blue-collar and hourly workers.

5. Private Employment Agencies: Private employment agencies can serve as an excellent source of qualified applicants for a wide range of job openings. These agencies typically specialize in the skill level or profession of the applicants that they provide, and they charge fees to either the applicant or the organization (fee paid) for successful placements. Such fees vary from established fixed fees to percentages of the successful applicant’s yearly salary.

6.  Executive Search Firms: Executive search firms direct their efforts toward finding high-level managerial and professional talent for organizations. Their fees are rather high (sometimes as much as 33 percent of a year’s salary for the successful applicant, plus expenses), but they provide a specialized service that may require personnel skills not available in the employer’s own personnel department. Further, it is often said that the best talent is already employed. To the extent that this is true, executive search firms may provide high-quality talent by “raiding” or luring employees away from other organizations. These firms are sometimes called headhunters because of this behavior.

7.  Special Events: On occasion, an employer may wish to recruit applicants at special events such as job fairs. Job fairs may be sponsored by a chamber of commerce, educational institution, or government agency. These special events not only offer a potential source of applicants for the employer but also serve as a good public relations gesture. They represent an opportunity for an employer to become better known in the community and to link that employer’s name with a well-respected sponsor. In addition, some organizations may hold open houses for the community. These open houses provide an opportunity to demonstrate community involvement, as well as to make employment possibilities more obvious and attractive to attendees

8. Campus Recruitment: Many entry-level professional and managerial jobs require a college degree. Each year employers spend thousands of dollars to send recruiters to college campuses around the nation. Campus recruitment programs account for more than 50 percent of “college-educated talent hired each year”. Campus recruiters serve two functions. They act as the organization’s representatives to individuals who typically have no firsthand knowledge of the firm, as well as first-level screening agents for the organization. Thus they are part of both the recruitment and the selection process.

9.Vocational Guidance Counselors:  Vocational guidance counselors are professionals who assist individuals in selecting careers compatible with their abilities, interests, and values. They may be found in high schools, vocational schools, universities, government agencies, and occasionally may be affiliated with private employment agencies. Employers are typically most interested in contacting those counselors employed in high schools and vocational schools, since they come in contact with large number of young people. Making these counselors aware of employment and career opportunities available to their graduates within the organization can result in a significant number of applications for employment. In addition, school vocational guidance counselors may invite the firm’s representatives to discuss career opportunities with the student body at special events, such as career days, or in academic classes when appropriate. These individuals are significant links to many young people as they prepare to enter the workforce.

10: Self-initiated Walk-ins and Write-ins: Some applicants either write directly to the organization or simply present themselves to the personnel department to express an interest in employment. The willingness of an organization to consider such applications is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, they represent a good source for many unskilled or semiskilled applicants interested in full- or part-time work. Second, they provide an opportunity to add individuals to the applicant pool who might not have been targeted by other methods but may nevertheless be qualified for employment. Third, failure to accept such applicants may result in unintended discriminatory hiring practices

11. Computer Data Bases:  Some firms have created a business opportunity for themselves by providing up-to-date applicant data for employers. They solicit resumes from job candidates using the many methods available to employers. They enter applicant data into data bank, maintaining and updating it as necessary. An employer pays a fee for access to the data bank, reviews the applicant information, and contacts applicants who may be interested in employment.
College recruiting has many types of computer data bases. The most common type, the resume data base, requires students to enter information about themselves into a data base that is then edited and made available to employers on a subscription basis by the company providing the service. Another approach, electronic want ads, puts students and alumni in electronic contact with employers. A third type of data base, occupational and company description, provides information on companies and occupations at a general level. It may contain a description of a company, the name of its top personnel officer, sales and earnings, a rating of its salaries and benefits, and the outlook for the company and the industry, or it may simply contain information on many different private and public sector careers.

Internal recruiting

 Pursuing internal recruiting with the advantages mentioned earlier means focusing on current employees and others with previous contact with an employing organization. Friends of present employees, former employees, and previous applicants may be sources. Promotions, demotions, and transfers also can provide additional people for an organizational unit, if not for the entire organization.

Among the ways in which internal recruiting sources have an advantage over external sources is that they allow management to observe the candidate for promotion (or transfer) over a period of time and to evaluate that person’s potential and specific job performance. Further, an organization that promotes its own employees to fill job openings may give those employees added motivation to do a good job. Employees may see little reason to do more than just what the current job requires if management’s policy is usually to hire externally. This concern is indeed the main reason why an organization generally considers internal sources of qualified applicants first.

Job Posting and Bidding

The major means for recruiting employees for other jobs within the organization is a job posting system. Job posting and bidding is a system in which the employer provides notices of job openings and employees respond by applying for specific openings. The organization can notify employees of all job vacancies by posting notices, circulating publications, or in some other way inviting employees to apply for jobs. In a unionized organization, job posting and bidding can be quite formal; the procedure often is spelled out in the labor agreement.

Seniority lists may be used by organizations that make promotions based strictly on seniority, so candidates are considered for promotions in the order of seniority.

Job posting and bidding systems can be ineffective if handled improperly. Jobs generally are posted before any external recruiting is done. The organization must allow a reasonable period of time for present employees to check notices of available jobs before it considers external applicants. When employees’ bids are turned down, they should have discussions with their supervisors or someone in the HR area regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) they need in order to improve their opportunities in the future.

Promotion and Transfer

Many organizations choose to fill vacancies through promotions or transfers from within whenever possible. Although most often successful, promotions from within have some drawbacks as well.16 The person’s performance on one job may not be a good predictor of performance on another, because different skills may be required on the new job. For example, not every good worker makes a good supervisor. In most supervisory jobs, an ability to accomplish the work through others requires skills in influencing and dealing with people that may not have been a factor in nonsupervisory jobs.

It is clear that people in organizations with fewer levels may have less frequent chances for promotion. Also, in most organizations, promotions may not be an effective way to speed the movement of protected-class individuals up through the organization if that is an organizational concern.

Current Employee Referrals

A reliable source of people to fill vacancies is composed of friends and/or family members of current employees. Employees can acquaint potential applicants with the advantages of a job with the company, furnish letters of introduction, and encourage them to apply. These are external applicants recruited using an internal information source.

Utilizing this source is usually one of the most effective methods of recruiting because many qualified people can be reached at a low cost. In an organization with numerous employees, this approach can develop quite a large pool of potential employees. Some research studies have found that new workers recruited through current employee referral had longer tenure with organizations than those from other recruiting sources.

Some employers pay employees incentives for referring individuals with specialized skills that are difficult to recruit through normal means. One computer firm in the Midwest pays $3,000 to any employee referring a specialized systems analyst after an analyst has worked in the company for six months.

However, as pointed out earlier in the chapter, using only word-of-mouth referrals can violate equal employment regulations if protected-class individuals are underrepresented in the organizational workforce. Therefore, some external recruiting might be necessary to avoid legal problems in this area.

Recruiting Former Employees and Applicants

Former employees and former applicants are also good internal sources for recruitment.

In both cases, there is a time-saving advantage, because something is already known about the potential employee.

FORMER EMPLOYEES

Former employees are considered an internal source in the sense that they have ties to the company. Some retired employees may be willing to come back to work on a part-time basis or may recommend someone who would be interested in working for the company. Sometimes people who have left the company to raise a family or complete a college education are willing to come back to work after accomplishing those personal goals. Individuals who left for other jobs might be willing to return for a higher rate of pay. Job sharing may be useful in luring back retirees or others who previously worked for the organization. The main advantage in hiring former employees is that their performance is known.

Some managers are not willing to take back a former employee. However, these managers may change their attitudes toward high-performing former employees as the employment market becomes more competitive. In any case, the decision should depend on the reasons the employee left in the first place. If there were problems with the supervisor or company, it is unlikely that matters have improved in the employee’s absence. Concerns that employers have in rehiring former employees include vindictiveness or fear of morale problems among those who stayed.

FORMER APPLICANTS AND PREVIOUS “WALK-INS”

Another potential source of applicants can be found in the organizational files. Although not entirely an internal source, those who have previously applied for jobs can be recontacted by mail, a quick and inexpensive way to fill an unexpected opening.

Applicants who have just “walked in” and applied may be considered also. These previous walk-ins are likely to be more suitable for filling unskilled and semiskilled jobs, but some professional openings can be filled by turning to such applications. One firm that needed two cost accountants immediately contacted qualified previous applicants and was able to hire two individuals who were disenchanted with their current jobs at other companies.

Internal Recruiting Database

Computerized internal talent banks, or applicant tracking systems, are used to furnish a listing of the KSAs available for organizations. Employers that must deal with a large number of applicants and job openings have found it beneficial to use such software as part of a human resource information system (HRIS). Software of this type allows employers to enter resumes and then sort the resumes by occupational fields, skills, areas of interests, and previous work histories. For instance, if a firm has an opening for someone with an MBA and marketing experience, the key words MBA and marketing can be entered in a search field, and the program displays a list of all resumes containing these two items. The advantage of these computerized databases is that they allow recruiters to identify potential candidates more quickly than they could by manually sorting numerous stacks and files of resumes. Employers who have used internal computer databases have found that they reduce recruiting costs associated with advertising expenditures, search-firm fees, and internal processing and record retention expenses.