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Employee Selection Process

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The Process of Selecting the Right Employees

Introduction

What is the most vital aspect of an organization? Well, some people would say it is the finances and processes that have been put in place to advance its business strategy. Raub (2017) states that without a doubt, the people that make up the organization are the most critical component. The position of Raub (2017) is correct because it is people who drive processes, manage finances, and make vital decisions that drive organizational strategy. Having the most qualified and motivated people in the right positions and roles can be the differentiating factor between the success of the business versus its failure. The method of hiring employees should be based on the most effective human resource policy and procedures to ensure that the right people are recruited to the right roles. In this essay, we discuss the process of selecting the best workers of the retailer in question.

Strategy Types

Cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies are ways through which companies can gain a competitive advantage in the market. Cost leadership is a strategy often used by business firms to reduce production costs below those of competitors or industry average and increase efficiencies. Dombrowski, Krenkel, and Wullbrandt (2018) explain that cost leadership is about reducing the costs and producing the least expensive products in the industry to gain and boost the market share.

Firstly, companies can implement a cost leadership strategy by increasing their profits through cost reduction, while charging prices within the range of industry-averages. Secondly, the approach is achieved by lowering prices to increase market share, while still ensuring that reasonable profits are being made because production costs have been reduced (Dombrowski, Krenkel & Wullbrandt, 2018). To implement this strategy, the organization must have access to resources needed to invest in the most efficient technology to help reduce prices. Two, the supply chain management process must be very efficient and must have a low-cost base regarding facilities, materials, and labor.

Differentiation is about having quality products and services that are more attractive and stand out from the rest of the competition. Since the retail industry has almost similar goods, the organization can differentiate its products and services in terms of brand image, support, and customer service. Achieving differentiation requires robust research, innovation, and development team, the ability to produce and deliver the best goods and services, and an effective sales, promotion, and marketing strategy. Companies that have achieved differentiation have leaner processes that focus on innovation and quality in production and delivery.

Lastly, the focus strategy concentrates on a specific niche of the market. Through fathoming the dynamics and trends of the market and unique customer needs in the niche, companies develop well-specified products or services or offer uniquely low-cost products (Dombrowski, Krenkel & Wullbrandt, 2018). Since such firms serve their customers well in the market, they are likely to develop sharp brand image and loyalty that translates into a competitive advantage.

The most appropriate strategy for an “efficiency-minded’ retailer is cost leadership. Because customers always want the best products for low prices, the cost leadership strategy can keep the retailer highly efficient and profitable. Low prices and high quality becomes the selling point for the retailer. To maintain low costs and efficiency, the company must have an excellent logistics plan, minimized spending on human resources, and business automation. Process efficiency, intensive growth strategies, effective management, and robust technology are critical to achieving the strategy.

To obtain cost leadership, the human resource department must invest in talented, and highly trained staff who can implement leaner processes and effective management approaches to reduce production costs (Wood, 2018). The HR, therefore, must invest in a robust and efficient selection and training program for the staff to become competent managers, logisticians, and marketers.

Job Design Approaches

The popularly used approaches to job design are job enrichment, job engineering, job enlargement, and job rotation (Khan, Azhar & Hayat, 2015). The dimensions of job design mostly focus on complexity and impact. The impact dimension, as postulated by Khan, Azhar and Hayat (2015), determines the degree to which the approach used in job design is connected with factors outside the immediate job, like performance evaluation and management, working conditions, the needs of the consumers, the compensation and reward systems and the design of the organization.

Job rotation is often done by moving the workers from job to job. The focus of such rotation is to reduce boredom and add variety by allowing them to perform varied roles and tasks (Khan, Azhar & Hayat, 2015). When some activities are no longer as challenging as before, staff can be moved to another role, which has similar requirements in terms of skills and knowledge. Apart from helping to address disinterest and boredom, job rotation helps the management in achieving a certain level of flexibility, especially when employees have many skills. An example is when the HR director moves one customer representative to work for some time as a sales consultant.

Job engineering is focused on the activities to be done, processes to be used, employee workflows, the layout of the staff, standards of performance, and interdependence among systems and people. The job design’s hallmark is the specialization of labor (Khan, Azhar & Hayat, 2015). Such specialization at the highest levels allows staff to perform tasks rapidly, reduce supervision needs, simplify the hiring processes, and allows short work periods to automate performance (Wood, 2018). An example is when the employees are permitted how the work methods in the logistics department and the sales department of the retailer link up to improve performance.

Job enlargement is about expanding the number of varied tasks done by workers in a single job. The approach changes jobs in some situations or circumstances to included additional different tasks. Apart from adding interest, enlargement gives the staff more responsibility. For example, the functions of a sales representative at the retail store may be expanded to include offering customer after-service and inventory management support (Wood, 2018). Job enrichment focuses on adding some motivators to the job to improve its attractiveness, motivation, and rewarding nature.

A job can only be enriched when its nature becomes more creative, exciting, and challenging. Apart from improving employee satisfaction, job enrichment enhances the efficiency of task performance, which is vital for the retail’s overall cost leadership strategy (Wood, 2018). An example is when a warehouse staff whose primary role is to stocking the retail store shelves can also help in filling order slips and processing incoming inventory with added reward and control.

The practical job design applications mentioned above are essential to the management. If the jobs in the retail store and effectively and appropriately designed, then highly efficient managers are likely to job the retailer (Wood, 2018). Efficient managers implement leader and effective processes that advance the strategy of the retail store. The employees become motivated to improve the profitability and productivity of the retailer. The focus of the job design applications should be to improve the efficiency of the company to achieve its cost leadership business strategy.

Challenges and Constraints in Employee Recruitment

Companies face challenges and constraints that impact their recruitment processes. While some of these constraints are internal, a considerable percentage can also be attributed to the candidates being interviewed for different roles in the organization. Lussier and Hendon (2017) explain that internal constraints that are likely to affect recruitment negatively include the image and reputation of the firm, unattractive jobs, and organizational policies. An organization with a poor image and reputation is not likely to attract the best workers. Unattractive jobs come in the form of poor remuneration and benefits package, low chances of promotion and advancements, and sometimes lack of opportunities for growth and development.

However, two issues are of specific significance, especially to the overall strategy of the retailer. The first challenge is finding employees who fit the culture of the company. Human resource professionals are always seeking employees who can embody the culture of the organization and lead in taking it forward (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). New staff should integrate into the company’s team and work well in the environment of the firm.

Finding staff who fit the culture of the company should be a top priority for any HR department, yet it remains a significant challenge. In some cases, recruiters are forced to let go of great and talented candidates because they do not gel with the culture of the company and the team environment that has been created to advance strategy (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). To address this issue, HR must ensure that the culture of the company is well articulated and captured in the job descriptions. For instance, the mission and internal environment of the company can be displayed in the adverts to help candidates understand the organization. Only those fitting the described culture and internal environment are likely to apply.

The second challenge is the need to make a speedy hire. HR professionals are encountering the problem of having to make quick recruitment (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). Because competition is heating up, and resources are limited to get the best talent, companies are making quick recruitment decisions that end up hurting them. Coupled with the fast growth of companies, HR does not have adequate time to screen candidates and select the best fit (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). To address this problem, recruiters should document the required information for specific roles in advance to help in saving time and cutting some steps involved in recruitment. Such data can be gathered through managers and line supervisors on the requirements of these roles.

Ideas for Candidate Selection Process

Training HR staff, understanding the job, and using valid tools can help add value to the selection process. Individuals involved in the process of selecting must be adequately trained mainly on the performance metrics of the interviewing process (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). Especially, people involved in the selection should be adequately trained on interviewing. Secondly, identifying and using valid selection tools is essential. The tools and techniques used must be relevant to the job in question and linked with successful job performance.

A way of validating tools is to engage outside consultants or HR business partners (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). Thirdly, the selection purely depends on an exceptional understanding of the job. The HR team must, therefore, start with excellent knowledge of the role and the features that differentiate successful job performance (Wood, 2018). A specific strategy to understand the job is conducting internal analysis or partnering with experts in the field of selection processes.

During selection, there are common problems that must be avoided. Firstly, the recruiting panel should not take candidates at their word. The team must probe for specific situations and examples where the candidate demonstrated the success factors in question. Secondly, regardless of time and resource limitations, the selection process should be robust and not sped-up. Most managers cite a lack of time as the reason for quick hires. This is a huge mistake. Thirdly, relying on gut feelings and instincts is a huge problem.

References

Dombrowski, U., Krenkel, P., & Wullbrandt, J. (2018). Strategic Positioning of Production within the Generic Competitive Strategies. Procedia CIRP, 72, 1196-1201.

Khan, N. J., Azhar, S., & Hayat, Z. (2015). Strategic approach to job design: an issue in strategy implementation. International Journal of Human Resource Studies, 5(1), 48

Lussier, R. N., & Hendon, J. R. (2017). Human resource management: Functions, applications, and skill development. Sage publications.

Raub, S. (2017). When employees walk the company talk: The importance of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy. Human Resource Management, 56(5), 837-850..

Wood, S. (2018). HRM and organizational performance. In Human Resource Management (pp. 74-97). Routledge.