week 3 discussion HRM 500 Due Wednesday

Chapter 5

Fundamentals of Human Resource Management

Raymond Noe; John Hollenbeck; Barry Gerhart; Patrick Wright 7th edition

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education

What Do I Need to Know?

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

LO 5-1 Discuss how to plan for human resources needed to carry out the organization’s strategy.

LO 5-2 Determine the labor demand for workers in various job categories.

LO 5-3 Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of ways to eliminate a labor surplus and avoid a labor shortage.

LO 5-4 Describe recruitment policies organizations use to make job vacancies more attractive.

LO 5-5 List and compare sources of job applicants.

LO 5-6 Describe the recruiter’s role in the recruitment process, including limits and opportunities.

© Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Introduction

Two years before Levi’s Stadium opened in Santa Clara, California, it presented a human resource challenge for Elizabeth Brown, the city’s HR director, and for the police chief, Michael Sellers. They needed to plan how to provide for security at the stadium during major events. The city of 120,000 would receive 60,000 or more visitors all at once and in a small area. Protecting these out-of-towners while maintaining an adequate police presence in the rest of the city would be more than the local police force could manage by scheduling extra hours for officers on the payroll.

Brown supported Sellers in identifying a solution and filling the need. Their creative approach involved creating a new position: special-events police officer. The jobs would be filled by officers from other communities who met the requirements, including current full-time employment with a California law enforcement agency, as well as standards for training. They developed agreements with the other governments to ensure that Santa Clara accepted the legal and financial risks. Then, in less than a year, Santa Clara’s HR staff interviewed, screened, and hired the 95 officers needed to meet the stadium’s security needs. They provided the officers with uniforms and radios and hosted a one-day training program at the stadium.

By all measures, the staffing plan was a success. During large events requiring special-events police officers, response times during the city remained consistent with normal levels. Surveys of visitors showed that they felt safe before, during, and after the events. 1

page 129As this example shows, when demand for a service or good rises (or falls), organizations may need more (or fewer) employees. When the labor market changes—say, when more people go to college or when a sizable share of the population retires—the supply of qualified workers may grow, shrink, or change in nature. To prepare for and respond to these challenges, organizations engage in human resource planning—defined in  Chapter 1  as identifying the numbers and types of employees the organization will require to meet its objectives.

This chapter describes how organizations carry out human resource planning. In the first part of the chapter, we lay out the steps that go into developing and implementing a human resource plan. Throughout each section, we focus especially on recent trends and practices, including downsizing, employing temporary workers, and outsourcing. The remainder of the chapter explores the process of recruiting. We describe the process by which organizations look for people to fill job vacancies and the usual sources of job candidates. Finally, we discuss the role of recruiters.

LO 5-1 Discuss how to plan for human resources needed to carry out the organization’s strategy.

The Process of Human Resource Planning

In order to meet business objectives and gain an advantage over competitors, organizations should carry out human resource planning. To do this, organizations need a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of their existing internal labor force. They also must know what they want to be doing in the future—what size they want the organization to be, what products and services it should be producing, and so on. This knowledge helps them define the number and kinds of employees they will need. Human resource planning compares the present state of the organization with its goals for the future, then identifies what changes it must make in its human resources to meet those goals. The changes may include downsizing, training existing employees in new skills, or hiring new employees.

These activities give a general view of HR planning. They take place in the human resource planning process shown in  Figure 5.1 . The process consists of three stages: forecasting, goal setting and strategic planning, and program implementation and evaluation.

Figure 5.1

Overview of the Human Resource Planning Process

Forecasting

The first step in human resource planning is  forecasting , as shown in the top portion of Figure 5.1. In personnel forecasting, the HR professional tries to determine the supply of and demand for various types of human resources. The primary goal is to predict which areas of the organization will experience labor shortages or surpluses.

Forecasting

The attempts to determine the supply of and demand for various types of human resources to predict areas within the organization where there will be labor shortages or surpluses.

Forecasting supply and demand can use statistical methods or judgment. Statistical methods capture historic trends in a company’s demand for labor. Under the right conditions, these methods predict demand and supply more precisely than a human forecaster can using subjective judgment. But many important events in the labor market have no precedent. When such events occur, statistical methods are of little use. To prepare for these situations, the organization must rely on the subjective judgments of experts. Pooling their “best guesses” is an important source of ideas about the future.

LO 5-2 Determine the labor demand for workers in various job categories.

Forecasting the Demand for Labor Usually an organization forecasts demand for specific job categories or skill areas. After identifying the relevant job categories or skills, the planner investigates the likely demand for each. The planner must forecast whether the need for people with the necessary skills and experience will increase or decrease. There are several ways of making such forecasts.

page 130At the most sophisticated level, an organization might use  trend analysis , constructing and applying statistical models that predict labor demand for the next year, given relatively objective statistics from the previous year. These statistics are called  leading indicators —objective measures that accurately predict future labor demand. They might include measures of the economy (such as sales or inventory levels), actions of competitors, changes in technology, and trends in the composition of the workforce and overall population. Recently, for example, low-interest rates on loans, relatively low prices for gasoline, and a long stretch of slow, steady growth in hiring have together made it a good time for many households to buy a car. Rising demand for car purchases has triggered more hiring by auto dealerships. But the same low oil prices leading to cheap gasoline have meant low payoffs for oil-drilling projects. Therefore, in that industry, demand for labor has fallen.2

Trend Analysis

Constructing and applying statistical models that predict labor demand for the next year, given relatively objective statistics from the previous year.

Leading Indicators

Objective measures that accurately predict future labor demand.

As the average age of many workers in skilled trades grows, the coming demand for workers in many trades is expected to outstrip supply in the United States. There is a potential for employers in some areas to experience a labor shortage because of this. How can HR prepare for this reality? What should be done now to avoid the shortage?

© Royalty-Free/Corbis

Statistical planning models are useful when there is a long, stable history that can be used to reliably detect relationships among variables. However, these models almost always have to be complemented with subjective judgments of experts. There are simply too many “once-in-a-lifetime” changes to consider, and statistical models cannot capture them.

Determining Labor Supply Once a company has forecast the demand for labor, it needs an indication of the firm’s labor supply. Determining the internal labor supply calls for a detailed analysis of how many people are currently in various job categories or have specific skills within the organization. The planner then modifies this analysis to reflect changes expected in the near future as a result of retirements, promotions, transfers, voluntary turnover, and terminations.

page 131One type of statistical procedure that can be used for this purpose is the analysis of a  transitional matrix . This is a chart that lists job categories held in one period and shows the proportion of employees in each of those job categories in a future period. It answers two questions: “Where did people who were in each job category go?” and “Where did people now in each job category come from?” Table 5.1 is an example of a transitional matrix.

Transitional Matrix

A chart that lists job categories held in one period and shows the proportion of employees in each of those job categories in a future period.

Table 5.1 Transitional Matrix: Example for an Auto Parts Manufacturer

This example lists job categories for an auto parts manufacturer. The jobs listed at the left were held in 2013; the numbers at the right show what happened to the people in 2016. The numbers represent proportions. For example, .95 means 95% of the people represented by a row in the matrix. The column headings under 2016 refer to the row numbers. The first row is sales managers, so the numbers under column (1) represent people who became sales managers. Reading across the first row, we see that 95 of the people who were sales managers in 2013 are still sales managers in 2016. The other 5% correspond to position (8), “Not in organization,” meaning the 5% of employees who are not still sales managers have left the organization. In the second row are sales representatives. Of those who were sales reps in 2013, 5% were promoted to sales manager, 60% are still sales reps, and 35% have left the organization. In row (3), half (50%) of sales apprentices are still in that job, but 20% are now sales reps and 30% have left the organization. This pattern of jobs shows a career path from sales apprentice to sales representative to sales manager. Of course, not everyone is promoted, and some of the people leave instead.

Reading down the columns provides another kind of information: the sources of employees holding the positions in 2016. In the first column, we see that most sales managers (95%) held that same job three years earlier. The other 5% were promoted from sales representative positions. Skipping over to column (3), half the sales apprentices on the payroll in 2016 held the same job three years before, and the other half were hired from outside the organization. This suggests that the organization fills sales manager positions primarily through promotions, so planning for this job would focus on preparing sales representatives. In contrast, planning to meet the organization’s needs for sales apprentices would emphasize recruitment and selection of new employees.

Matrices such as this one are extremely useful for charting historical trends in the company’s supply of labor. More important, if conditions remain somewhat constant, they can also be used to plan for the future. For example, if we believe that we are going to have a surplus of labor in the production assembler job category in the next three years, we can plan to avoid layoffs. Still, historical data may not always reliably indicate future trends. Planners need to combine statistical forecasts of labor supply with expert judgments. For example, managers in the organization may see that a new training program will likelypage 132 increase the number of employees qualified for new openings. Forecasts of labor supply also should take into account the organization’s pool of skills. Many organizations include inventories of employees’ skills in an HR database. When the organization forecasts that it will need new skills in the future, planners can consult the database to see how many existing employees have those skills.

Besides looking at the labor supply within the organization, the planner should examine trends in the external labor market. The planner should keep abreast of labor market forecasts, including the size of the labor market, the unemployment rate, and the kinds of people who will be in the labor market. For example, we saw in Chapter 2 that the U.S. labor market is aging and that immigration is an important source of new workers. Important sources of data on the external labor market include the Occupational Outlook Quarterly and the Monthly Labor Review, published by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Details and news releases are available at the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov).

LO 5-3 Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of ways to eliminate a labor surplus and avoid a labor shortage.

Determining Labor Surplus or Shortage Based on the forecasts for labor demand and supply, the planner can compare the figures to determine whether there will be a shortage or surplus of labor for each job category. Determining expected shortages and surpluses allows the organization to plan how to address these challenges. HR professionals can increase the value of this planning by developing competency in applying data and analytic techniques. For example, when an organization is deciding to expand or move to a new location, software can analyze data such as job requirements, local graduation rates, compensation levels, and more to estimate the likelihood that the company can readily find and afford the necessary talent in a given location.3

Goal Setting and Strategic Planning

The second step in human resource planning is goal setting and strategic planning, as shown in the middle of Figure 5.1. The purpose of setting specific numerical goals is to focus attention on the problem and provide a basis for measuring the organization’s success in addressing labor shortages and surpluses. The goals should come directly from the analysis of labor supply and demand. They should include a specific figure indicating what should happen with the job category or skill area and a specific timetable for when the results should be achieved.

For each goal, the organization must choose one or more human resource strategies. A variety of strategies is available for handling expected shortages and surpluses of labor. The top of Table 5.2 shows major options for reducing an expected labor surplus, and the bottom of the table lists options for avoiding an expected labor shortage.

Table 5.2 HR Strategies for Addressing a Labor Shortage or Surplus

This planning stage is critical. The options differ widely in their expense, speed, and effectiveness. Options for reducing a labor surplus cause differing amounts of human suffering. The options for avoiding a labor shortage differ in terms of how easily the organization can undo the change if it no longer faces a labor shortage. For example, an organization probably would not want to handle every expected labor shortage by hiring new employees. The process is relatively slow and involves expenses to find and train new employees. Also, if the shortage becomes a surplus, the organization will have to consider laying off some of the employees. Layoffs involve another set of expenses, such as severance pay, and they are costly in terms of human suffering.

Another consideration in choosing an HR strategy is whether the employees needed will contribute directly to the organization’s success. Organizations are most likely to benefit from hiring and retaining employees who provide a  core competency —that is, a set of knowledge and skills that make the organization superior to competitors and create value forpage 133 customers. At a store, for example, core competencies include choosing merchandise that shoppers want and providing shoppers with excellent service. For other work that is not a core competency—say, cleaning the store and providing security—the organization may benefit from using HR strategies other than hiring full-time employees.

Core Competency

A set of knowledges and skills that make the organization superior to competitors and create value for customers.

Organizations try to anticipate labor surpluses far enough ahead that they can freeze hiring and let natural attrition (people leaving on their own) reduce the labor force. Unfortunately for many workers, organizations often stay competitive in a fast-changing environment by responding to a labor surplus with downsizing, which delivers fast results. The impact is painful for those who lose jobs, as well as those left behind to carry on without them. To handle a labor shortage, organizations typically hire temporary employees or use outsourcing. Because downsizing, using temporary employees, and outsourcing are most common, we will look at each of these in greater detail in the following sections.

Cold Stone Creamery employees give their company the competitive advantage with their “entertainment factor.” The company is known to seek out employees who like to perform and then “audition” rather than interview potential employees.

Courtesy of Cold Stone Creamery

Downsizing As we discussed in Chapter 2,  downsizing  is the planned elimination of large numbers of personnel with the goal of enhancing the organization’s competitiveness. The primary reason organizations engage in downsizing is to promote future competitiveness. According to surveys, they do this by meeting four objectives:

Downsizing

The planned elimination of large numbers of personnel with the goal of enhancing the organization’s competitiveness.

1. Reducing costs—Labor is a large part of a company’s total costs, so downsizing is an attractive place to start cutting costs.

2. Replacing labor with technology—Closing outdated factories, automating, or introducing other technological changes reduces the need for labor. Often, the labor savings outweigh the cost of the new technology.

3. page 134Mergers and acquisitions—When organizations combine, they often need less bureaucratic overhead, so they lay off managers and some professional staff members.

4. Moving to more economical locations—Some organizations move from one area of the United States to another, especially from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and the mountain regions of the West. For example, managers looking for ways to cut costs at H. J. Heinz observed that the facility in Pocatello, Idaho, was no longer mainly processing locally grown potatoes. Rather, in response to shifting consumer demands, it was making products for which 70% of the ingredients came from east of the Mississippi (traveling 1,000 miles or so) and other ingredients were from Denver (almost 600 miles away). Heinz decided to close the Idaho facility and have its Ohio factory handle the production of all frozen foods, because Ohio is more centrally located for both ingredients and customers.4 Other moves have shifted jobs to other countries, including Mexico, India, and China, where wages are lower.

Although downsizing has an immediate effect on costs, much of the evidence suggests that it hurts long-term organizational effectiveness. This is especially true for certain kinds of companies, such as those that emphasize research and development and where employees have extensive contact with customers.5 The negative effect of downsizing was especially high among firms that engaged in high-involvement work practices, such as the use of teams and performance-related pay incentives. As a result, the more a company tries to compete through its human resources, the more layoffs hurt productivity.6

Why do so many downsizing efforts fail to meet expectations? It appears there are several reasons. First, although the initial cost savings give a temporary boost to profits, the long-term effects of an improperly managed downsizing effort can be negative. Downsizing leads to a loss of talent, and it often disrupts the social networks through which people are creative and flexible.7 Unless the downsizing is managed well, employees feel confused, demoralized, and even less willing to stay with the organization. Organizations may not take (or even know) the steps that can counter these reactions—for example, demonstrating how they are treating employees fairly, building confidence in the company’s plans for a stronger future, and showing the organization’s commitment to behaving responsibly with regard to all its stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the community.8 The “HR Oops!” box illustrates consequences of not taking those steps.

Also, many companies wind up rehiring. Downsizing campaigns often eliminate people who turn out to be irreplaceable. In one survey, 80% of the firms that had downsized later replaced some of the very people they had laid off. In one Fortune 100 firm, a bookkeeper making $9 an hour was let go. Later, the company realized she knew many things about the company that no one else knew, so she was hired back as a consultant—for $42 an hour.9 However, if companies automated and restructured to get more work done with fewer people, they might not replace all or even some of the positions eliminated.

Finally, downsizing efforts often fail because employees who survive the purge become self-absorbed and afraid to take risks. Motivation drops because any hope of future promotions—or any future—with the company dies. Many employees start looking for other employment opportunities. The negative publicity associated with a downsizing campaign can also hurt the company’s image in the labor market, making it harder to recruit employees later.

Many problems with downsizing can be reduced with better planning. Instead of slashing jobs across the board, successful downsizing makes surgical strategic cuts that improve the company’s competitive position, and management addresses the problem of employees becoming demoralized. During the housing boom of the previous decade, landscaping companies struggled to find enough talented, motivated workers, especially at thepage 135 supervisory level. When bust followed boom, well-managed landscapers used downsizing as an opportunity to improve quality. Bill Davids of Clarence Davids & Co. was one landscaping manager who selected the least productive employees for layoffs. He then rallied the remaining employees to focus on how to operate more efficiently and keep the business afloat during lean times. Davids told a reporter, “Once [employees] see you’re serious and several people have exited, you get the buy-in pretty quick.”10 In fact, for good workers, it can be motivating to be part of a higher-quality, if smaller, team.

Reducing Hours Given the limitations of downsizing, many organizations are more carefully considering other avenues for eliminating a labor surplus. Among the alternatives listed in Table 5.2, one that is seen as a way to spread the burden more fairly is cutting work hours, generally with a corresponding reduction in pay. Companies will choose a reduction in work hours not only because this is considered a more equitable way to weather a slump in demand, but also because it is less costly than layoffs requiring severance pay and it is easier to restore the work hours than to hire new employees after a downsizing effort. When plastics manufacturer Saint-Gobain in Bristol, Rhode Island, experienced a business slowdown, it did not lay off any workers but cut many workers’ hours by 40%. The state stepped in and contributed 70% of the lost wages in exchange for the workers’ continuedpage 136 employment—less than it would have paid in unemployment compensation. This kind of “work share” program, which helps employers keep experienced employees, has been popular in Europe but is fairly new to the United States.11

Early-Retirement Programs Another popular way to reduce a labor surplus is with an early-retirement program. As we discussed in Chapter 2, the average age of the U.S. workforce is increasing. But even though many baby boomers are reaching traditional retirement age, indications are that this group (especially women) has no intention of leaving the workforce soon.12 Reasons include improved health of older people, jobs becoming less physically demanding, insufficient savings, high levels of debt, lack of pensions, enjoyment of work (especially in the higher-paying occupations), and laws against age discrimination. Under the pressures associated with an aging labor force, many employers try to encourage older workers to leave voluntarily by offering a variety of early-retirement incentives. The more lucrative of these programs succeed by some measures. Research suggests that these programs encourage lower-performing older workers to retire.13 Sometimes they work so well that too many workers retire.

Many organizations are moving from early-retirement programs to phased-retirement programs. In a phased-retirement program, the organization can continue to benefit from the experience of older workers while reducing the number of hours these employees work, as well as the cost of those employees. This option also can give older employees the economic and psychological benefits of easing into retirement, rather than being thrust entirely into a new way of life.14

Employing Temporary and Contract Workers While downsizing has been a popular way to reduce a labor surplus, the most widespread methods for eliminating a labor shortage are hiring temporary and contract workers and outsourcing work. Employers may arrange to hire a temporary worker through an agency that specializes in linking employers with people who have the necessary skills. The employer pays the agency, which in turn pays the temporary worker. Employers also may contract directly with individuals, often professionals, to provide a particular service.

To use this source of labor effectively, employers need to overcome some disadvantages. In particular, temporary and contract workers may not be as committed to the organization, so if they work directly with customers, that attitude may spill over and affect customer loyalty. Therefore, many organizations try to use permanent employees in key jobs and use temporary and contract workers in ways that clearly supplement—and do not potentially replace—the permanent employees.15

Temporary Workers According to estimates by the federal government, organizations are using almost 3 million temporary workers. Temporary employment is popular with employers because it gives them flexibility they need to operate efficiently when demand for their products changes rapidly. If an employer believes a higher level of demand will persist, it often can hire the temps as permanent workers. Thus, employment levels for temporary employees tend to fall ahead of a recession and rise ahead of a recovery as companies make these quick adjustments to falling and rising demand.16

In addition to flexibility, temporary employment offers lower costs. Using temporary workers frees the employer from many administrative tasks and financial burdens associated with being the “employer of record.” The cost of employee benefits, including health care, pension, life insurance, workers’ compensation, and unemployment insurance, can account for 40% of payroll expenses for permanent employees. Assuming the agency payspage 137 for these benefits, a company using temporary workers may save money even if it pays the agency a higher rate for that worker than the usual wage paid to a permanent employee.

Agencies that provide temporary employees also may handle some of the tasks associated with hiring. Small companies that cannot afford their own testing programs often get employees who have been tested by a temporary agency. Many temporary agencies also train employees before sending them to employers. This reduces employers’ training costs and eases the transition for the temporary worker and employer.

Finally, temporary workers may offer value not available from permanent employees. Because the temporary worker has little experience at the employer’s organization, this person brings an objective point of view to the organization’s problems and procedures. Also, a temporary worker may have a great deal of experience in other organizations that can be applied to the current assignment.

To obtain these benefits, organizations need to overcome the disadvantages associated with temporary workers. For example, tension can develop between temporary and permanent employees. Employers can minimize resentment and ensure that all workers feel valued by not bringing in temporary or contract workers immediately after downsizing and by hiring temporary workers from agencies that provide benefits. In addition, employers must avoid the legal pitfalls associated with temporary employees and contract workers, as described in “HR How To”.

Employee or Contractor? Besides using a temporary employment agency, a company can obtain workers for limited assignments by entering into contracts with them. If the person providing the services is an independent contractor, rather than an employee, the company does not pay employee benefits, such as health insurance and vacations. As with using temporary employees, the savings can be significant, even if the contractor works at a higher rate of pay.

This strategy carries risks, however. If the person providing the service is a contractor and not an employee, the company is not supposed to directly supervise the worker. The company can tell the contractor what criteria the finished assignment should meet but not, for example, where or what hours to work. This distinction is significant, because under federal law, if the company treats the contractor as an employee, the company has certain legal obligations, described in Part 4, related to matters such as overtime pay and withholding taxes.

When an organization wants to consider using independent contractors as a way to expand its labor force temporarily, human resource professionals can help by alerting the company to the need to verify that the arrangement will meet the legal requirements. A good place to start is with the advice to small businesses at the Internal Revenue Service website (www.irs.gov); search for “independent contractor” to find links to information and guidance. In addition, the organization may need to obtain professional legal advice.

Outsourcing Instead of using a temporary or contract employee to fill a single job, an organization might want a broader set of services. Contracting with another organization to perform a broad set of services is called  outsourcing . Organizations use outsourcing as a way to operate more efficiently and save money. They choose outsourcing firms that promise to deliver the same or better quality at a lower cost. One reason they can do this is that the outside company specializes in the service and can benefit from economies of scale (the economic principle that producing something in large volume tends to cost less for each additional unit than producing in small volume). This efficiency is often the attraction for outsourcing human resource functions such as payroll. Costs also are lower when the the page 138 outsourcing firm is located in a part of the world where wages are relatively low. The labor forces of countries such as China, India, Jamaica, and those in Eastern Europe have been creating an abundant supply of labor for unskilled and low-skilled work.

The first uses of outsourcing emphasized manufacturing and routine tasks. However, technological advances in computer networks and transmission have speeded up the outsourcing process and have helped it spread beyond manufacturing areas and low-skilled jobs. For example, newspapers outsource ad creation to Outsourcing USA, a small business in Dallas, Pennsylvania. At Outsourcing USA, employees design advertisements for print, web, and mobile editions of their clients’ newspapers. The company offers low costs by specializing in a niche market, focusing relentlessly on efficiency, and hiring recent graduates. Careful supervision and a one-month training program ensure that Outsourcing USA delivers quality work.17

page 139Using outsourcing may be a necessary way to operate as efficiently as competitors, but it does pose challenges. Quality-control problems, security violations, and poor customer service have sometimes wiped out the cost savings attributed to lower wages. To ensure success with an outsourcing strategy, companies should follow these guidelines:

· Learn about what the provider can do for the company, not just the costs. Make sure the company has the necessary skills, including an environment that can meet standards for clear communication, on-time shipping, contract enforcement, fair labor practices, and environmental protection. Outsourcing USA finds that its clients prefer buying ad production services from a local company rather than going overseas for potentially lower prices. The Pennsylvania company can offer newspapers in the region faster communications (by being in the same time zone) and greater familiarity with the nuances of American English.18

· Do not offshore any work that is proprietary or requires tight security.19

· Start small and monitor the work closely, especially in the beginning, when problems are most likely. Indiana’s experience offers a cautionary tale with its attempt to outsource the processing of welfare benefits to IBM. While IBM could offer expertise in developing a website and managing the data, it soon became apparent that the company was unfamiliar with some of the challenges of serving the poor. IBM had expected most recipients to sign up online, but most phoned or came into state welfare offices because they were unable to use the Internet or simply more accustomed to handling matters face-to-face. Callers were on hold for hours, and processing fell far behind. Indiana ended up changing the arrangement so that state employees work with clients while IBM handles the back end of the system.20

· Look for opportunities to outsource work in areas that promote growth, for example, by partnering with experts who can help the organization tap new markets. Mansfield Sales Partners offers this type of advantage to companies that have a limited sales force or want to test a new market. Such companies can use Mansfield’s team of experienced salespeople to introduce their products in markets around the world.21

Overtime and Expanded Hours Organizations facing a labor shortage may be reluctant to hire employees, even temporary workers, or to commit to an outsourcing arrangement. Especially if the organization expects the shortage to be temporary, it may prefer an arrangement that is simpler and less costly. Under some conditions, these organizations may try to garner more hours from the existing labor force, asking them to go from part-time to full-time status or to work overtime.

A major downside of overtime is that the employer must pay nonmanagement employees one-and-a-half times their normal wages for work done overtime. Even so, employers see overtime pay as preferable to the costs of hiring and training new employees. The preference is especially strong if the organization doubts that the current higher level of demand for its products will last long.

For a short time at least, many workers appreciate the added compensation for working overtime. Over extended periods, however, employees feel stress and frustration from working long hours. Overtime therefore is best suited for short-term labor shortages.

Implementing and Evaluating the HR Plan

For whatever HR strategies are selected, the final stage of human resource planning involves implementing the strategies and evaluating the outcomes. This stage is represented by the bottom part of Figure 5.1. When implementing the HR strategy, the organization mustpage 140 hold some individual accountable for achieving the goals. That person also must have the authority and resources needed to accomplish those goals. It is also important that this person issue regular progress reports, so the organization can be sure that all activities occur on schedule and that the early results are as expected.

Implementation that ties planning and recruiting to the organization’s strategy and to its efforts to develop employees becomes a complete program of talent management. Today’s computer systems have made talent management more practical. Companies can tap into databases and use analytic tools to keep track of which skills and knowledge they need, which needs have already been filled, which employees are developing experiences to help them meet future needs, and which sources of talent have met talent needs most efficiently.

In evaluating the results, the most obvious step is checking whether the organization has succeeded in avoiding labor shortages or surpluses. Along with measuring these numbers, the evaluation should identify which parts of the planning process contributed to success or failure. For example, consider a company where meeting human resource needs requires that employees continually learn new skills. If there is a gap between needed skills and current skill levels, the evaluation should consider whether the problem lies with failure to forecast the needed skills or with implementation. Are employees signing up for training, and is the right kind of training available?

HR managers should also measure the efficiency of the processes. Sometimes the best way to improve results is to cut costs or shorten time lines. For example, Jared Olsen said his company, Xima Software, studied the time required to hire—from advertising a job to making an offer and waiting for the employee to start. The average time was 54 days, and management decided that was slowing the company down. They revised the process to focus on developing leads before positions actually became available, which shortened the hiring time to just 12 days.22

Applying HR Planning to Affirmative Action

As we discussed in Chapter 3, many organizations have a human resource strategy that includes affirmative action to manage diversity or meet government requirements. Meeting affirmative-action goals requires that employers carry out an additional level of human resource planning aimed at those goals. In other words, besides looking at its overall workforce and needs, the organization looks at the representation of subgroups in its labor force—for example, the proportion of women and minorities.

Affirmative-action plans forecast and monitor the proportion of employees who are members of various protected groups (typically, women and racial or ethnic minorities). The planning looks at the representation of these employees in the organization’s job categories and career tracks. The planner can compare the proportion of employees who are in each group with the proportion each group represents in the labor market. For example, the organization might note that in a labor market that is 25% Hispanic, 60% of its customer service personnel are Hispanic. This type of comparison is called a  workforce utilization review . The organization can use this process to determine whether there is any subgroup whose proportion in the relevant labor market differs substantially from the proportion in the job category.

Workforce Utilization Review

A comparison of the proportion of employees in protected groups with the proportion that each group represents in the relevant labor market.

If the workforce utilization review indicates that some group—for example, African Americans—makes up 35% of the relevant labor market for a job category but that this same group constitutes only 5% of the employees actually in the job category at the organization, this is evidence of underutilization. That situation could result from problems in selection or from problems in internal movement (promotions or other movement along a career path). One way to diagnose the situation would be to use transitional matrices, such as the matrix shown in Table 5.1 earlier in this chapter.

The steps in a workforce utilization review are identical to the steps in the HR planning process that were shown in Figure 5.1. The organization must assess current utilization patterns, then forecast how they are likely to change in the near future. If these analyses suggest the organization is underutilizing certain groups and if forecasts suggest this pattern is likely to continue, the organization may need to set goals and timetables for changing. The planning process may identify new strategies for recruitment or selection. The organization carries out these HR strategies and evaluates their success. For an example of a type of organization an employer might partner with to meet these and other recruiting objectives, see the “Best Practices” box.

LO 5-4 Describe recruitment policies organizations use to make job vacancies more attractive.

Recruiting Human Resources

As the first part of this chapter shows, it is difficult to always predict exactly how many (if any) new employees the organization will have to hire in a given year in a given job category. The role of human resource recruitment is to build a supply of potential newpage 142 hires that the organization can draw on if the need arises. In human resource management,  recruiting  consists of any practice or activity carried on by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees.23 It thus creates a buffer between planning and the actual selection of new employees (the topic of the next chapter). The goals of recruiting (encouraging qualified people to apply for jobs) and selection (deciding which candidates would be the best fit) are different enough that they are most effective when performed separately, rather than combined as in a job interview that also involves selling candidates on the company.24

Recruiting

Any activity carried on by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees.

Because companies differ in their strategies, they may assign different degrees of importance to recruiting.25 In general, however, all companies have to make decisions in three areas of recruiting: personnel policies, recruitment sources, and the characteristics and behavior of the recruiter. As shown in Figure 5.2, these aspects of recruiting have different effects on whom the organization ultimately hires. Personnel policies influence the characteristics of the positions to be filled. Recruitment sources influence the kinds of job applicants an organization reaches. And the nature and behavior of the recruiter affect the characteristics of both the vacancies and the applicants. Ultimately, an applicant’s decision to accept a job offer—and the organization’s decision to make the offer—depend on the match between vacancy characteristics and applicant characteristics.

Figure 5.2

Three Aspects of Recruiting

The remainder of this chapter explores these three aspects of recruiting: personnel policies, recruitment sources, and recruiter traits and behaviors.

Personnel Policies

An organization’s personnel policies are its decisions about how it will carry out human resource management, including how it will fill job vacancies. These policies influence the nature of the positions that are vacant. According to the research on recruitment, it is clear that characteristics of the vacancy are more important than recruiters or recruiting sources for predicting job choice. Several personnel policies are especially relevant to recruitment:

· Internal versus external recruiting—Organizations with policies to “promote from within” try to fill upper-level vacancies by recruiting candidates internally—that is, finding candidates who already work for the organization. Opportunities for advancement make a job more attractive to applicants and employees (see the “Did You Know?” box). Decisions about internal versus external recruiting affect the nature of jobs, recruitment sources, and the nature of applicants, as we will describe later in the next section.

· page 143Lead-the-market pay strategies—Pay is an important job characteristic for almost all applicants. Organizations have a recruiting advantage if their policy is to take a “lead-the-market” approach to pay—that is, pay more than the current market wages for a job. Higher pay can also make up for a job’s less desirable features, such as working on a night shift or in dangerous conditions. Organizations that compete for applicants based on pay may use bonuses, stock options, and other forms of pay besides wages and salaries. Chapters 12 and 13 will take a closer look at these and other decisions about pay.

· Employment-at-will policies—Within the laws of the state where they are operating, employers have latitude to set polices about their rights in an employment relationship. A widespread policy follows the principle of  employment at will , which holds that if there is no specific employment contract saying otherwise, the employer or employee may end an employment relationship at any time. An alternative is to establish extensive  due-process policies , which formally lay out the steps an employee may take to appeal an employer’s decision to terminate that employee. An organization’s lawyers may advise the company to ensure that all recruitment documents say the employment is “at will” to protect the company from lawsuits about wrongful charge. Management must decide how to weigh any legal advantages against the impact on recruitment. Job applicants are more attracted to organizations with due-process policies, which implypage 144 greater job security and concern for protecting employees, than to organizations with employment-at-will policies.26

Employment at Will

Employment principle that if there is no specific employment contract saying otherwise, the employer or employee may end an employment relationship at any time, regardless of cause.

Due-Process Policies

Policies that formally lay out the steps an employee may take to appeal the employer’s decision to terminate that employee.

· Image advertising—Besides advertising specific job openings, as discussed in the next section, organizations may advertise themselves as a good place to work in general. Advertising designed to create a generally favorable impression of the organization is called image advertising. Image advertising is particularly important for organizations in highly competitive labor markets that perceive themselves as having a bad image.27 Research suggests that the image of an organization’s brand—for example, innovative, dynamic, or fun—influences the degree to which a person feels attracted to the organization.28 This attraction is especially true if the person’s own traits seem to match those of the organization. Also, job applicants seem to be particularly sensitive to issues of diversity and inclusion in image advertising, so organizations should ensure that their image advertisements reflect the broad nature of the labor market from which they intend to recruit.29

Did You Know?

LO 5-5 List and compare sources of job applicants.

Recruitment Sources

Another critical element of an organization’s recruitment strategy is its decisions about where to look for applicants. The total labor market is enormous and spread over the entire globe. As a practical matter, an organization will draw from a small fraction of that total market. The methods the organization chooses for communicating its labor needs and the audiences it targets will determine the size and nature of the labor market the organization taps to fill its vacant positions.30 A person who responds to a job advertisement on the Internet is likely to be different from a person responding to a sign hanging outside a factory. Each of the major sources from which organizations draw recruits has advantages and disadvantages.

Internal Sources

As we discussed with regard to personnel policies, an organization may emphasize internal or external sources of job applicants. Internal sources are employees who currently hold other positions in the organization. Organizations recruit existing employees through  job posting , or communicating information about the vacancy on company bulletin boards, in employee publications, on corporate intranets, and anywhere else the organization communicates with employees. Managers also may identify candidates to recommend for vacancies. Policies that emphasize promotions and even lateral moves to achieve broader career experience can give applicants a favorable impression of the organization’s jobs. The use of internal sources also affects what kinds of people the organization recruits.

Job Posting

The process of communicating information about a job vacancy on company bulletin boards, in employee publications, on corporate intranets, and anywhere else the organization communicates with employees.

For the employer, relying on internal sources offers several advantages.31 First, it generates applicants who are well known to the organization. In addition, these applicants are relatively knowledgeable about the organization’s vacancies, which minimizes the possibility they will have unrealistic expectations about the job. Finally, filling vacancies through internal recruiting is generally cheaper and faster than looking outside the organization.

Chad Rabello, director of people operations at NakedWines.com, recognized these benefits and set up processes that would help the company fill more positions internally. One process helps employees build a career at the company, not just carry out a job. Rabello meets with each of the company’s employees (there are fewer than a hundred) to create a career development plan, which may involve learning skills needed for the same or apage 145 different position. Another program invites employees to present new business ideas to top management; the executives pick one idea to fund. This process develops creative thinking and helps Rabello and the other executives identify employees with leadership potential. These programs encourage employees to stay, and they prepare management to fill openings with insiders who have already shared their career goals and practiced solving problems creatively.32

External Sources

Despite the advantages of internal recruitment, organizations often have good reasons to recruit externally.33 For entry-level positions and perhaps for specialized upper-level positions, the organization has no internal recruits from which to draw. Also, bringing in outsiders may expose the organization to new ideas or new ways of doing business. An organization that uses only internal recruitment can wind up with a workforce whose members all think alike and therefore may be poorly suited to innovation.34 And finally, companies that are able to grow during a slow economy can gain a competitive edge by hiring the best talent when other organizations are forced to avoid hiring, freeze pay increases, or even lay off talented people. So organizations often recruit through direct applicants and referrals, advertisements, employment agencies, schools, and websites. Figure 5.3 shows which of these sources are used most among large companies surveyed. Keep in mind that several sources may work together to attract a given candidate. The most effective recruiters don’t just opt for the most profitable methods but choose the methods that best work together to attract the right candidates for a particular kind of job in a particular kind of company.

Figure 5.3

External Recruiting Sources

Source: Based on Gerry Crispin and Chris Hoyt, “Source of Hire 2015: One Last Time—Because No One ‘Gets It,’” Career Xroads, January 9, 2016, available on SlideShare, http://www.slideshare.net.

Direct Applicants and Referrals Even without a formal effort to reach job applicants, an organization may hear from candidates through direct applicants and referrals.  Direct applicants  are people who apply for a vacancy without prompting from the organization.  Referrals  are people who apply because someone in the organization prompted them to do so. According to the survey results shown in Figure 5.3, the largest share of new employees hired by large companies (31.4%) came from direct applications made at the careers section of the employer’s website, and the second-largest share (22.2%) came from referrals.35 These two sources of recruits share some characteristics that make them excellent pools from which to draw.

Direct Applicants

People who apply for a vacancy without prompting from the organization.

Referrals

People who apply for a vacancy because someone in the organization prompted them to do so.

One advantage is that many direct applicants are to some extent already “sold” on the organization. Most have done some research and concluded there is enough fit between themselves and the vacant position to warrant submitting an application, a process called self-selection, which, when it works, eases the pressure on the organization’s recruiting and selection systems. A form of aided self-selection occurs with referrals. Many job seekers look to friends, relatives, and acquaintances to help find employment. Using these social networks not only helps the job seeker but also simplifies recruitment for employers.36 Current employees (who are familiar with the vacancy as well as the person they are referring) decide that there is a fit between the person and the vacancy, so they convince the person to apply for the job. Extending this self-selection advantage, some companies, including Nielsen and Ernst & Young, are even setting up social networks of former employees, or “alumni.” High-performing employees who left to pursue other opportunities and perhaps add to their skills may be well prepared to contribute when they return.37

An additional benefit of using such sources is that it costs much less than formal recruiting efforts. Considering these combined benefits, referrals and direct applications arepage 146 among the best sources of new hires. Some employers offer current employees financial incentives for referring applicants who are hired and perform acceptably on the job (for example, if they stay 180 days). Flynn Restaurant Group pays a bonus for referrals—if they are hired—because the company identified a practical benefit. Based on an analysis of hiring and performance data, Flynn determined that employees who had been recommended by people working for the company went on to outperform employees who had been recruited through other channels.38

The major downside of referrals is that they limit the likelihood of exposing the organization to fresh viewpoints. People tend to refer others who are like themselves. Furthermore,page 147 sometimes referrals contribute to hiring practices that are or that appear unfair, an example being  nepotism , or the hiring of relatives. Employees may resent the hiring and rapid promotion of “the boss’s son” or “the boss’s daughter,” or even the boss’s friend.

Nepotism

The practice of hiring relatives.

Career pages on corporate websites have become the second most common source of job applicants after personal referrals.

Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.

Electronic Recruiting Few employers can fill all their vacant positions through direct applications and referrals, so most need to advertise openings. Most often today, that means posting information online. Online recruiting generally involves posting career information at company websites to address people who are interested in the particular company and posting paid advertisements at career services to attract people who are searching for jobs. Many companies post ads on job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder. However, the popularity of such paid sites has been declining because more and more job seekers are turning to job aggregators, such as Indeed and Simply Hired. These online services gather job information from job boards, company websites, newspaper ads, and more, making it all available through one website or mobile app. In addition, companies are turning to social media, as described in “HRM Social”.

On any of these sites, employers are competing for attention amid the flood of online information. Research by The Ladders, a jobs website, found that workers spend less than a minute and a half reading a job ad before deciding whether to apply. In that context, gaining the interest of qualified workers requires straightforward, simple job descriptions that highlight what is meaningful about the position. For example, in an ad for health care workers, Sodexo USA says these employees have “a tremendous impact on patient satisfaction.”39

Most large companies and many smaller ones make career information available at their websites. To make that information easier to find, they may register a domain name with a “.jobs” extension, such as www.starbucks.jobs for a link to information about careers at Starbucks and www.att.jobs for information about careers at AT&T. To be an effective recruiting tool, corporate career information should move beyond generalities, offering descriptions of open positions and an easy way to submit a résumé. One of the best features of this kind of electronic recruiting is the ability to target and attract job candidates whose values match the organization’s values and whose skills match the job requirements.40 Candidates also appreciate an e-mail response that the company has received the résumé—especially a response that gives a timetable about further communications from the company.

Accepting applications at the company website is not so successful for smaller and less well-known organizations, because fewer people are likely to visit the website. These organizations may get better results by going to the websites that are set up to attract job seekers, such as Monster, Yahoo HotJobs, and CareerBuilder, which attract a vast array of applicants. At these sites, job seekers submit standardized résumés. Employers can search the site’s database for résumés that include specified key terms, and they can also submit information about their job opportunities, so that job seekers can search that information by key term. With both employers and job seekers submitting information to and conducting searches on them, these sites offer an efficient way to find matches between job seekerspage 148 and job vacancies. However, a drawback is that the big job websites can provide too many leads of inferior quality because they are so huge and serve all job seekers and employers, not a select segment.

Because of this limitation of the large websites, smaller, more tailored websites called “niche boards” focus on certain industries, occupations, or geographic areas. Telecommcareers.net, for example, is a site devoted to, as the name implies, the telecommunications industry. CIO.com, a companion site to CIO Magazine, specializes in openings for chief information officers.

Advertisements in Newspapers and Magazines Although computer search tools have made electronic job listings the most popular way to advertise a job opening,page 149 some recruiters still follow the traditional route and advertise open positions in newspapers or magazines. When the goal is to find people who know the local community, advertising in a local newspaper can reach that audience. Similarly, when the goal is to find people in a specialized field, advertising in a trade, professional, or industry publication can reach the right subset of job candidates.

Advertising can be expensive, so it is especially important that the ads be well written. The person designing a job advertisement needs to answer two questions:

What do we need to say?

To whom do we need to say it?

With respect to the first question, an ad should give readers enough information to evaluate the job and its requirements, so they can make a well-informed judgment about their qualifications. Providing enough information may require long advertisements, which cost more. The employer should evaluate the additional costs against the costs of providing too little information: Vague ads generate a huge number of applicants, including many who are not reasonably qualified or would not accept the job if they learned more about it. Reviewing all these applications to eliminate unsuitable applicants is expensive. In practice, the people who write job advertisements tend to overstate the skills and experience required, perhaps generating too few qualified candidates.

Specifying whom to reach with the message helps the advertiser decide where to place the ad. Ads placed in the classified section of local newspapers are relatively inexpensive yet reach many people in a specific geographic area who are currently looking for work (or at least interested enough to be reading the classifieds). On the downside, this medium offers little ability to target skill levels. Typically, many of the people reading classified ads are either over- or underqualified for the position. Also, people who are not looking for work rarely read the classifieds. These people may include candidates the organization could lure from their current employers. For reaching a specific part of the labor market, including certain skill levels and more people who are employed, the organization may get better results from advertising in professional or industry journals. Some employers also advertise on television— particularly cable television.41

Public Employment Agencies The Social Security Act of 1935 requires that everyone receiving unemployment compensation be registered with a local state employment office. These state employment offices work with the U.S. Employment Service (USES) to try to ensure that unemployed individuals eventually get off state aid and back on employer payrolls. To accomplish this, agencies collect information from the unemployed people about their skills and experience.

Employers can register their job vacancies with their local state employment office, and the agency will try to find someone suitable, using its computerized inventory of local unemployed individuals. The agency refers candidates to the employer at no charge. The organization can interview or test them to see if they are suitable for its vacancies. Besides offering access to job candidates at low cost, public employment agencies can be a useful resource for meeting certain diversity objectives. Laws often mandate that the agencies maintain specialized “desks” for minorities, disabled individuals, and war veterans. Employers that feel they currently are underutilizing any of these subgroups of the labor force may find the agencies to be an excellent source.

Government-run employment agencies also may partner with nonprofit groups to meet the needs of a community. In California’s Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, several agencies have cooperated to form EastBay Works. This organization is dedicated to bringing together employers and workers in the two counties. EastBay Works offers a variety ofpage 150 recruiting tools at its website. Employers can post job openings, research the local labor market, and set up a search tool to identify candidates who have skills the employer is looking for. Job seekers can visit the site to hunt for jobs, set up a search tool that finds jobs related to the skills in their profile, assess their existing skills, and arrange for training in skills that employers want.42

Private Employment Agencies In contrast to public employment agencies, which primarily serve the blue-collar labor market, private employment agencies provide much the same service for the white-collar labor market. Workers interested in finding a job can sign up with a private employment agency whether or not they are currently unemployed. Another difference between the two types of agencies is that private agencies charge the employers for providing referrals. Therefore, using a private employment agency is more expensive than using a public agency, but the private agency is a more suitable source for certain kinds of applicants.

For managers or professionals, an employer may use the services of a type of private agency called an executive search firm (ESF). People often call these agencies “headhunters” because, unlike other employment agencies, they find new jobs for people almost exclusively already employed. For job candidates, dealing with executive search firms can be sensitive. Typically, executives do not want to advertise their availability, because it could trigger a negative reaction from their current employer. ESFs serve as a buffer, providing confidentiality between the employer and the recruit. That benefit may give an employer access to candidates it cannot recruit in other, more direct ways. Executive recruiters also may specialize in particular industries or business functions, so they can guide their clients toward candidates the clients might not otherwise consider. Catherine Lepard, for example, heads the Americas Retail Practice for the search firm Heidrick & Struggles. In this role, she helps retailers find people prepared to lead a business through the dramatic changes the industry is undergoing. Often, that means choosing someone who has not spent a career in retail but has learned to navigate different cultures, apply technology, and build agile organizations.43

Colleges and Universities Most colleges and universities have placement services that seek to help their graduates obtain employment. On-campus interviewing is the most important source of recruits for entry-level professional and managerial vacancies. Organizations tend to focus especially on colleges that have strong reputations in areas for which they have critical needs—say, chemical engineering or public accounting. They also may contribute to the development of skills they will need. Ford Motor Company recruits at a set of universities including the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and University of California, Berkeley. It also partners with these schools in research projects, funds scholarships, and sponsors student teams that are building vehicles for competitions.44

One of the best ways for a company to establish a stronger presence on campus is with a college internship program. How does this benefit the company and the students at the same time?

© Image Source/Getty Images RF

Many employers have found that successfully competing for the best students requires more than just signing up prospective graduates for interview slots. One of the best ways to establish a stronger presence on a campus is with a college internship program. Internship programs give an organization early access to potential applicants and let the organization assess their capabilities directly. Internships also give applicants firsthand experience with the employer, so both parties can make well-informed choices about fit when it comes time to consider long-termpage 151 commitment.45 In support of its goal to diversify the hiring of engineers, Boston Scientific worked with engineering deans at historically black colleges and universities to identify promising candidates for internships and get their advice on how to make the program a success. 46

Another way of increasing the employer’s presence on campus is to participate in university job fairs. In general, a job fair is an event where many employers gather for a short time to meet large numbers of potential job applicants. Although job fairs can be held anywhere (such as at a hotel or convention center), campuses are ideal locations because of the many well-educated, yet unemployed, individuals who are there. Job fairs are an inexpensive means of generating an on-campus presence. They can even provide one-on-one dialogue with potential recruits—dialogue that would be impossible through less interactive media, such as newspaper ads.

Evaluating the Quality of a Source

In general, there are few rules that say what recruitment source is best for a given job vacancy. Therefore, it is wise for employers to monitor the quality of all their recruitment sources. One way to do this is to develop and compare  yield ratios  for each source.47 A yield ratio expresses the percentage of applicants who successfully move from one stage of the recruitment and selection process to the next. For example, the organization could find the number of candidates interviewed as a percentage of the total number of résumés generated by a given source (that is, number of interviews divided by number of résumés). A high yield ratio (large percentage) means that the source is an effective way to find candidates to interview. By comparing the yield ratios of different recruitment sources, HR professionals can determine which source is the best or most efficient for the type of vacancy.

Yield Ratio

A ratio that expresses the percentage of applicants who successfully move from one stage of the recruitment and selection process to the next.

Another measure of recruitment success is the  cost per hire . To compute this amount, find the cost of using a particular recruitment source for a particular type of vacancy. Then divide that cost by the number of people hired to fill that type of vacancy. A low cost per hire means that the recruitment source is efficient; it delivers qualified candidates at minimal cost.

Cost per Hire

The total amount of money spent to fill a vacancy. The number is computed by finding the cost of using a particular recruitment source and dividing that cost by the number of people hired to fill that type of vacancy.

To see how HR professionals use these measures, look at the examples in Table 5.3. This table shows the results for a hypothetical organization that used six kinds of recruitment sources to fill a number of vacancies. For each recruitment source, the table shows four yield ratios and the cost per hire. To fill these jobs, the best two sources of recruits were local universities and employee referral programs. Online job board posts generated the largest number of recruits (7,000 résumés). However, only 350 were judged acceptable, of which a little more than half accepted employment offers, for a cumulative yield ratio of 200/7,000, or 3%. Recruiting at renowned universities generated highly qualified applicants, but relatively few of them ultimately accepted positions with the organization. Executive search firms produced the highest cumulative yield ratio. These generated only 20 applicants, but all of them accepted interview offers, most were judged acceptable, and 79% of these acceptable candidates took jobs with the organization. However, notice the cost per hire. The executive search firms charged $90,000 for finding these 15 employees, resulting in the largest cost per hire. In contrast, local universities provided modest yield ratios at the lowest cost per hire. Employee referrals provided excellent yield ratios at a slightly higher cost.

Table 5.3 Results of a Hypothetical Recruiting Effort

The cost per hire is not simply related to the type of recruiting method. These costs also tend to vary by industry and organization size. While the median cost per hire is about $4,000 per person,48 large companies may benefit from having in-house experts, andpage 152 companies needing hard-to-find skills may spend a lot to find them. Companies that make the effort to track employee sources and successes have an edge—if they analyze the data so they can target future efforts more specifically to the sources that deliver the best results.At any employer, recruiters’ challenge is to identify the particular methods that will yield the best candidates as efficiently as possible.

LO 5-6 Describe the recruiter’s role in the recruitment process, including limits and opportunities.

Recruiter Traits and Behaviors

As we saw in Figure 5.2, the third influence on recruitment outcomes is the recruiter, including this person’s characteristics and the way he or she behaves. The recruiter affects the nature of both the job vacancy and the applicants generated. However, the recruiter often becomes involved late in the recruitment process. In many cases, by the time a recruiter meets some applicants, they have already made up their minds about what they desire in a job, what the vacant job has to offer, and their likelihood of receiving a job offer.49

Many applicants approach the recruiter with some skepticism. Knowing it is the recruiter’s job to sell them on a vacancy, some applicants discount what the recruiter says in light of what they have heard from other sources, such as friends, magazine articles, and professors. When candidates are already familiar with the company through knowing about its products, the recruiter’s impact is especially weak.50 For these and other reasons, recruiters’ characteristics and behaviors seem to have limited impact on applicants’ job choices.

Characteristics of the Recruiter

Most organizations must choose whether their recruiters are specialists in human resources or are experts at particular jobs (that is, those who currently hold the same kinds of jobs or supervise people who hold the jobs). According to some studies, applicants perceive HR specialists as less credible and are less attracted to jobs when recruiters are HR specialists.51 The evidence does not completely discount a positive role for personnel specialists inpage 153 recruiting. It does indicate, however, that these specialists need to take extra steps to ensure that applicants perceive them as knowledgeable and credible.

In general, applicants respond positively to recruiters whom they perceive as warm and informative. “Warm” means the recruiter seems to care about the applicant and to be enthusiastic about the applicant’s potential to contribute to the organization. “Informative” means the recruiter provides the kind of information the applicant is seeking. The evidence of impact of other characteristics of recruiters—including their age, sex, and race—is complex and inconsistent.52

Behavior of the Recruiter

Recruiters affect results not only by providing plenty of information, but by providing the right kind of information. Perhaps the most-researched aspect of recruiting is the level of realism in the recruiter’s message. Because the recruiter’s job is to attract candidates, recruiters may feel pressure to exaggerate the positive qualities of the vacancy and to downplay its negative qualities. Applicants are highly sensitive to negative information. The highest-quality applicants may be less willing to pursue jobs when this type of information comes out.53 But if the recruiter goes too far in a positive direction, the candidate can be misled and lured into taking a job that has been misrepresented. Then unmet expectations can contribute to a high turnover rate. When recruiters describe jobs unrealistically, people who take those jobs may come to believe that the employer is deceitful.54

Many studies have looked at how well  realistic job previews —background information about jobs’ positive and negative qualities—can get around this problem and help organizations minimize turnover among new employees. On the whole, the research suggests that realistic job previews have a weak and inconsistent effect on turnover.55 Although realistic job previews have only a weak association with reduced turnover, the cost of the effort is low, and they are relatively easy to implement. Consequently, employers should consider using them as a way to reduce turnover among new hires.56

Realistic Job Preview

Background information about a job’s positive and negative qualities.

Finally, for affecting whether people choose to take a job, but even more so, whether they stick with a job, the recruiter seems less important than an organization’s personnel policies that directly affect the job’s features (pay, security, advancement opportunities, and so on).

Enhancing the Recruiter’s Impact

Nevertheless, although recruiters are probably not the most important influence on people’s job choices, this does not mean recruiters cannot have an impact. Most recruiters receive little training.57 If we were to determine what does matter to job candidates, perhaps recruiters could be trained in those areas.

Researchers have tried to find the conditions in which recruiters do make a difference. Such research suggests that an organization can take several steps to increase the positive impact that recruiters have on job candidates:

· Recruiters should provide timely feedback. Applicants dislike delays in feedback. They may draw negative conclusions about the organization (for starters, that the organization doesn’t care about their application).

· Recruiters should avoid offensive behavior. They should avoid behaving in ways that might convey the wrong impression about the organization.58 Figure 5.4 quotes applicants who felt they had extremely bad experiences with recruiters. Their statements provide examples of behaviors to avoid.

· Figure 5.4

Recruits Who Were Offended by Recruiters

· The organization can recruit with teams rather than individual recruiters. Applicants view job experts as more credible than HR specialists, and a team can include both kinds of recruiters. HR specialists on the team provide knowledge about company policies and procedures.

Through such positive behavior, recruiters can give organizations a better chance of competing for talented human resources. In  Chapter 6  we will describe how an organization selects the candidates who best meet its needs.

page 155 

 

THINKING ETHICALLY

IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH A MUTUAL AGREEMENT NOT TO “STEAL” EMPLOYEES?

In the high-tech industry, recruiting is a war for talent as companies compete for the best engineers and programmers. Presumably, anyone good enough to get hired by Apple or Google would be an asset for another company, so one strategy is to recruit at those and other big-name companies by contacting employees directly and seeing what it would take to lure them away. The aim of this strategy is to get the best people at the expense of competitors, which presumably are left with the second best.

Competing for already-employed workers imposes high costs on employers. They have to pay employees so generously that they would not consider leaving. When recruiting, they have to make even more generous offers. And if many employers are using this recruiting tactic, companies are constantly scrambling to replace workers “stolen” or “poached” by other companies.

Evidence has surfaced that some of the most prominent high-tech firms, including Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe Systems, may have tried to put a stop to this expensive competition for talent. Correspondence among some executives and HR employees refers to informal agreements not to recruit one another’s employees. At some companies, including Facebook and Palm, however, there is evidence that executives have refused to participate in these arrangements.

The possibility of no-poaching agreements came to light because employees complained the practice was suppressing competition in the labor market. What employers were thinking of as poaching employees, these employees viewed as a chance to seek the best employment opportunities. In response to their allegations, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against several companies, saying they illegally colluded to restrict the free movement of labor and to fix wages. The companies settled by agreeing not to restrict recruiting or hiring in the future, while not admitting to any past wrongdoing. More recently, a group of 64,000 tech employees filed an antitrust lawsuit. The parties reached a settlement for $415 million, in which the employers admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay the workers about $5,000 each.

Questions

1. What has been the financial incentive for high-tech companies to agree not to recruit from one another? If the arrangements had not been challenged in court, would you consider them ethical? Why or why not?

2. Given that the Justice Department has seen these arrangements as possibly violating antitrust laws, what would be the most ethical way to decide whether to recruit employees from other companies?

Sources: Howard Mintz, “Silicon Valley’s $415 Million Poaching Settlement Finalized,” San Jose Mercury News, September 3, 2015, http://www.mercurynews.com; Jeff Elder, “Silicon Valley Tech Giants Discussed Hiring, Say Documents,” Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2014, http://online.wsj.com; S. Lynch, “Google and Apple Are Safe from Anti-Poaching Laws, but Not for Long,” Silicon Valley Business Journal Online, April 5, 2013; M. Wohsten, “Gentlemen’s Agreements,” Lansing State Journal, January 29, 2012, p. 13A

SUMMARY

LO 5-1 Discuss how to plan for human resources needed to carry out the organization’s strategy.

· The first step in human resource planning is personnel forecasting. Through trend analysis and good judgment, the planner tries to determine the supply of and demand for various human resources.

· Based on whether a surplus or a shortage is expected, the planner sets goals and creates a strategy for achieving those goals.

· The organization then implements its HR strategy and evaluates the results.

LO 5-2 Determine the labor demand for workers in various job categories.

· The planner can look at leading indicators, assuming trends will continue in the future.

· Multiple regression can convert several leading indicators into a single prediction of labor needs.

· Analysis of a transitional matrix can help the planner identify which job categories can be filled internally and where high turnover is likely.

LO 5-3 Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of ways to eliminate a labor surplus and avoid a labor shortage.

· To reduce a surplus, downsizing, pay reductions, and demotions deliver fast results but at a high cost in human suffering that may hurt surviving employees’ motivation and future recruiting. Also, the organization may lose some of its best employees.

· Transferring employees and requiring them to share work are also fast methods, and the consequences in human suffering are less severe.

· page 156A hiring freeze or natural attrition is slow to take effect but avoids the pain of layoffs.

· Early-retirement packages may unfortunately induce the best employees to leave and may be slow to implement; however, they, too, are less painful than layoffs.

· Retraining can improve the organization’s overall pool of human resources and maintain high morale, but it is relatively slow and costly.

· To avoid a labor shortage, requiring overtime is the easiest and fastest strategy, which can easily be changed if conditions change. However, overtime may exhaust workers and can hurt morale.

· Using temporary employees and outsourcing do not build an in-house pool of talent, but they quickly and easily modify staffing levels.

· Transferring and retraining employees require investment of time and money, but can enhance the quality of the organization’s human resources; however, this may backfire if a labor surplus develops.

· Hiring new employees is slow and expensive, but strengthens the organization if labor needs are expected to expand for the long term. Hiring is difficult to reverse if conditions change.

· Using technology as a substitute for labor can be slow to implement and costly, but it may improve the organization’s long-term performance. New technology also is difficult to reverse.

LO 5-4 Describe recruitment policies organizations use to make job vacancies more attractive.

· Internal recruiting (promotions from within) generally makes job vacancies more attractive because candidates see opportunities for growth and advancement.

· Lead-the-market pay strategies make jobs economically desirable.

· Due-process policies signal that employers are concerned about employee rights.

· Image advertising can give candidates the impression that the organization is a good place to work.

LO 5-5 List and compare sources of job applicants.

· Internal sources, promoted through job postings, generate applicants who are familiar to the organization and motivate other employees by demonstrating opportunities for advancement. However, internal sources are usually insufficient for all of an organization’s labor needs.

· Direct applicants and referrals tend to be inexpensive and to generate applicants who have self-selected; this source risks charges of unfairness, especially in cases of nepotism.

· Electronic recruiting gives organizations access to a global labor market, tends to be inexpensive, and allows convenient searching of databases.

· Newspaper and magazine advertising reaches a wide audience and may generate many applications, although many are likely to be unsuitable.

· Public employment agencies are inexpensive and typically have screened applicants.

· Private employment agencies charge fees but may provide many services.

· Another inexpensive channel is schools and colleges, which may give the employer access to top-notch entrants to the labor market.

LO 5-6 Describe the recruiter’s role in the recruitment process, including limits and opportunities.

· Through their behavior and other characteristics, recruiters influence the nature of the job vacancy and the kinds of applicants generated.

· Applicants tend to perceive job experts as more credible than recruiters who are HR specialists.

· Applicants tend to react more favorably to recruiters who are warm and informative.

· Recruiters should not mislead candidates. Realistic job previews have only a weak association with reduced turnover, but given their low cost and ease of implementation, employers should consider using them.

· Recruiters can improve their impact by providing timely feedback, avoiding behavior that contributes to a negative impression of the organization, and teaming up with job experts.

KEY TERMS

forecasting, 129

trend analysis, 130

leading indicators, 130

transitional matrix, 131

core competency, 132

downsizing, 133

outsourcing, 137

workforce utilization review, 140

recruiting, 142

employment at will, 143

due-process policies, 143

job posting, 144

direct applicants, 145

referrals, 145

nepotism, 147

yield ratio, 151

cost per hire, 151

realistic job preview, 153

page 157 

REVIEW AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Suppose an organization expects a labor shortage to develop in key job areas over the next few years. Recommend general responses the organization could make in each of the following areas: ( LO 5-1 )

a. Recruitment

b. Training

c. Compensation (pay and employee benefits)

2. Some organizations have detailed affirmative-action plans, complete with goals and timetables, for women and minorities, yet have no formal human resource plan for the organization as a whole. Why might this be the case? What does this practice suggest about the role of human resource management in these organizations? ( LO 5-1 )

3. Review the sample transitional matrix shown in  Table 5.1 . What jobs experience the greatest turnover (employees leaving the organization)? How might an organization with this combination of jobs reduce the turnover? ( LO 5-2 )

4. In the same transitional matrix, which jobs seem to rely the most on internal recruitment? Which seem to rely most on external recruitment? Why? ( LO 5-2 )

5. Why do organizations combine statistical and judgmental forecasts of labor demand, rather than relying on statistics or judgment alone? Give an example of a situation in which each type of forecast would be inaccurate. ( LO 5-3 )

6. Give an example of a personnel policy that would help attract a larger pool of job candidates. Give an example of a personnel policy that would likely reduce the pool of candidates. Would you expect these policies to influence the quality as well as the number of applicants? Why or why not? ( LO 5-4 )

7. Discuss the relative merits of internal versus external recruitment. Give an example of a situation in which each of these approaches might be particularly effective. ( LO 5-4 )

8. List the jobs you have held. How were you recruited for each of these? From the organization’s perspective, what were some pros and cons of recruiting you through these methods? ( LO 5-4 )

9. Recruiting people for jobs that require international assignments is increasingly important for many organizations. Where might an organization go to recruit people interested in such assignments? ( LO 5-5 )

10. A large share of HR professionals have rated e-cruiting as their best source of new talent. What qualities of electronic recruiting do you think contribute to this opinion? ( LO 5-5 )

11. How can organizations improve the effectiveness of their recruiters? ( LO 5-6 )

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

SAP Embraces Workers with Autism

Headquartered in Germany, SAP makes software that businesses use to keep their enterprise running smoothly and efficiently. Its 65,000 employees work in more than 130 countries. Given that the company sells complex business systems rather than famous consumer products, recruiting includes educating workers about the company.

SAP’s recruiting strategy is based on the idea that its human resources are a source of competitive advantage. Co-CEO Bill McDermott has said SAP is constantly recruiting “young, brilliant minds” and training people, because “sustainability is much more than natural resources. It’s also people resources.” SAP cultivates the image of a leader in innovation. The careers page of its website says, “We respect the individuality of our employees,” and represents this with a transparent process linking each applicant to any relevant openings. Candidates also may set up a “job agent” to send notifications of new openings meeting specified criteria, read “Advice Bytes” stories from employees, and sign up to follow SAP on Twitter.

Where SAP’s idea of sustainable human resources really stands out, however, is in an initiative to recruit workers with autism. These workers have trouble finding jobs because they struggle with social tasks like interviewing and networking. For SAP, however, hiring people with autism is not just a matter of accommodating people with disabilities, but one of identifying an often-overlooked group of workers who bring value to the table. The autism spectrum includes a wide range of conditions from high functioning to severe, and some individuals not only are able to work but are gifted in some areas. For example, their thinking patterns may be highly structured, and they may pay careful attention to details. For some jobs, such as writing manuals and debugging software, these ways of thinking are exactly what SAP needs. The company therefore has a target that by 2020, up to 1% of its workforce will be employees with autism.

page 158SAP tested its recruitment of workers with autism in Germany and India; based on the pilot program’s success, it rolled out the effort to Ireland, Canada, and the United States. A Danish training and consulting firm called Specialisterne screens candidates. Those who pass the screening are referred to SAP. After SAP selects employees, it provides adaptation training to help them adjust to working on teams, and it assigns them to a mentor. In exchange for this extra effort, the company sees a competitive advantage. Luisa Delgado, a member of SAP’s executive board, put it this way: “Only by employing people who think differently and spark innovation will SAP be prepared to handle the challenges of the 21st century.”

Questions

1. What recruiting methods described here support SAP’s need for talented workers who help the company innovate?

2. Suggest a few other recruiting methods that would help SAP remain a strong, innovative company.

Sources: Company website, “About Us,” http://www.sap.com, accessed April 6, 2016; Sharon Florentine, “How SAP Is Hiring Autistic Adults for Tech Jobs,” CIO, December 9, 2015, http://www.cio.com; Shirley S. Wang, “How Autism Can Help You Land a Job,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2014, http://online.wsj.com; Rob Preston, “SAP CEO Envisions Younger, Greener, Cloudier Company,” InformationWeek, November 25, 2013, http://www.informationweek.com; Katie Moisse, “Tech Giant Sees ‘Competitive Advantage’ in Autistic Workforce,” ABC News, May 22, 2013, http://abcnews.go.com.

MANAGING TALENT

Boeing’s High-Flying Approach to HR Planning and Recruitment

As the world’s biggest aerospace company, Boeing is well acquainted with the industry’s major human resource challenge: identifying, attracting, and keeping enough skilled workers. Across manufacturing, the demand for engineers is intense, but it is especially so in aerospace. Engineers flocked to aerospace companies during the space race, but recently Internet companies have become the main attraction. Consequently, the average age for aeronautical engineers is 47, compared with 42 for U.S. workers overall. In other words, many are approaching retirement. Compounding the problem, Boeing is in the defense business, so it faces legal limits on the number of non-U.S. citizens it may hire.

To meet the challenge, Boeing has dedicated years to establishing a systematic approach to talent management linked to strategy. The system begins with the establishment of priorities. HR executives talk to business leaders about anticipated workforce needs. They divide the workforce into segments and identify which are most critical to success and where the current skills of the workforce do not meet those critical needs. They use predictive models to forecast business trends and workforce demographics. They analyze all this information to identify the changes needed to fill in the gaps in Boeing’s workforce. Then, to apply the results of this analysis, Boeing’s HR team plans how to make the necessary changes through a combination of three tactics: promotions within the company, transfers of employees into positions where they can be developed to meet future needs, and recruitment of employees outside Boeing.

A key aspect of recruitment is reaching out to entry-level engineers on college and university campuses. Boeing has intensified these efforts and is matching other companies’ practice of making job offers earlier during students’ senior years. During recruitment, students interview with several different managers and tour company facilities, so they understand the company and its culture and opportunities. Then, to ensure that the reality of working for Boeing lives up to the image portrayed during recruitment, Boeing has a workforce development program that plans career growth opportunities as carefully as the company plans hiring.

Recruiting efforts alone cannot meet Boeing’s needs unless schools are preparing individuals for technology-related jobs. Therefore, Boeing also enters into partnerships with schools. As analysis of workforce needs uncovers important emerging skills, Boeing helps school leaders plan how to teach those skills. Supporting university research projects bolsters the company’s innovative image on campus. Boeing has also set up a Higher Education Integration Board, which identifies needs for continuing education, evaluates the quality of employees hired from specific schools, and sets strategy for future recruiting and research efforts.

Questions

1. To meet labor shortages within the company, Boeing starts with promotions and transfers. What advantages might it experience from filling positions with current employees?

2. Besides the external recruitment sources described here, what other sources would you recommend for Boeing? Why?

Sources: Taylor Soper, Boeing CTO: “Here’s What I Look for When Hiring Recent Grads,” GeekWire, June 16, 2015, http://www.geekwire.com; Claire Zillman, “America’s Defense Industry Is Going Gray,” Fortune, November 14, 2013, http://management.fortune.cnn.com; Price water house Coopers, “The Right Stuff,” Keyword, July 2013, http://www.pwc.com; Kathleen Koster, “Talent Management: Establishing a Flight Plan,” Employee Benefit News, April 1, 2013, Business Insights: Global, http://bi.galegroup.com; “Boeing Soars over Potential Talent Gap with Its Workforce Training Strategies,” Bloomberg BNA, February 15, 2013, http://www.bna.com.

page 159 

HR IN SMALL BUSINESS

GenMet’s Design for Constructing a 21st-Century Workforce

At GenMet, as for many other small manufacturing companies, the number one hurdle for recruiting is the negative perception of manufacturing jobs. CEO Eric Isbister recalls participating in job fairs at local high schools and seeing parents pull their teens away from exhibits by manufacturers. That attitude has rubbed off on young people, who often assume that manufacturing jobs have all but disappeared—and if they haven’t completely gone away, the jobs must be low-paying and dirty.

Isbister would beg to differ. GenMet, which fabricates metal for making a range of products as varied as military trucks, wind turbine components, and metal shelving for store displays, is a high-tech operation that relies on computers and automated equipment. It also depends on skilled workers such as welders rather than heavy manual labor.

GenMet is located in Mequon, Wisconsin, and has a workforce of about 60. Many of those employees are older than 50, so GenMet’s owners know they have to plan for a wave of retirements in the years ahead. While GenMet president Mary Isbister says, “If I could find people with the skills I need, I could take 10 more welders tomorrow,” recruiting is not just about filling positions that are currently open. Rather, the focus is on how to ensure that the local schools are developing a workforce for the future.

With these goals in mind, recruiting involves outreach to the teachers and students in the community. Over summer break, GenMet hires high school teachers, hoping they will talk about the good jobs students can obtain if they learn math and other relevant skills. It participates in a state-run program that partners businesses with high schools and technical colleges to offer students apprenticeships, where they work a few hours each week, rotating through each department of the company. The company also hosts an annual event on National Manufacturing Day, when visitors are invited to tour, observe the equipment, and see employees enjoying their work. GenMet also sponsors high school robotics teams, bringing them to the company to watch as parts for their designs are fabricated by employees.

Questions

1. Is GenMet working with a labor surplus or a labor shortage? Explain.

2. Why is GenMet’s recruiting strategy so focused on relationships with schools? What other recruiting methods, if any, woud you recommend?

Sources: Company website, “Community,” http://www.genmet.com, accessed April 6, 2016; Dori Meinert, “Manufacturing Magnets,” HR Magazine, November 2015, pp. 45–50; Marti Mikkelson, “Local Manufacturers Still Grappling with Worker Shortage,” WUWM (Milwaukee Public Radio), June 9, 2015, http://wuwm.com; Rick Barrett, “Manufacturers Scramble to Fill Jobs, Struggle to Recruit Women,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 19, 2014, http://www.jsonline.com; Corrinne Hess, “Q&A: Mary Isbister,” Milwaukee Magazine, August 26, 2014, http://www.milwaukeemag.com.

NOTES

1. Elizabeth Brown and Michael Sellers, “Policing the 2016 Super Bowl Stadium,” Public Management, January/February 2016, pp. 12–15.

2. Anna Louie Sussman, “Economy Chugs on Despite Fears,” Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2016, http://www.wsj.com.

3. David Gould, “Where Talent and Tech Meet,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 4, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com.

4. Annie Gasparro, “Tightfisted New Owners Put Heinz on Diet,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2014, http://online.wsj.com.

5. J. P. Guthrie, “Dumb and Dumber: The Impact of Downsizing on Firm Performance as Moderated by Industry Conditions,” Organization Science 19 (2008), pp. 108–23; “Lay Off the Layoffs,” Newsweek, February 4, 2010, http://www.the-dailybeast.com/newsweek/.

6. C. D. Zatzick and R. D. Iverson, “High-Involvement Management and Workforce Reduction: Competitive Advantage or Disadvantage?”, Academy of Management Journal 49 (2006), pp. 999–1015.

7. P. P. Shaw, “Network Destruction: The Structural Implications of Downsizing,” Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000), pp. 101–12.

8. Brenda Kowske, Kyle Lundby, and Rena Rasch, “Turning ‘Survive’ into ‘Thrive’: Managing Survivor Engagement in a Downsized Organization,” People & Strategy 32, no. 4 (2009), pp. 48–56.

9. W. F. Cascio, “Downsizing: What Do We Know? What Have We Learned?,” Academy of Management Executive 7 (1993), pp. 95–104.

10. Dan Jacobs, “Lessons from the Recession,” Landscape Management, June 2011, pp. S21–S23.

11. Derek Thomas, “Work Sharing Calms Economic Waves,” Indianap-olis Business Journal, March 2–8, 2015, p. 11; L. Woellert, “Half the Hours, Most of the Pay,” Bloomberg Businessweek, January 31, 2013, pp. 23–24.

12. Nick Timiraos, “How Older Women Are Reshaping U.S. Job Market,” Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2016, http://www.wsj.com.

13. S. Kim and D. Feldman, “Healthy, Wealthy, or Wise: Predicting Actual Acceptances of Early Retirement Incentives at Three Points in Time,” Personnel Psychology 51 (1998), pp. 623–42.  page 160

14. Donna Rosato, “Ease Your Way into Retirement,” Money, February 2012, EBSCOhost, http://web.ebscohost.com.

15. Steve Bates, “Freelance Nation,” HR Magazine, July/August 2015, https://www.shrm.org; S. A. Johnson and B. E. Ashforth, “Externalization of Employment in a Service Environment: The Role of Organizational and Customer Identification,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 29 (2008), pp. 287–309; M. Vidal and L. M. Tigges, “Temporary Employment and Strategic Staffing in the Manufacturing Sector,” Industrial Relations 48 (2009), pp. 55–72.

16. Jessica R. Nicholson, “Temporary Help Workers in the U.S. Labor Market,” ESA Issue Brief 03-15, U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, July 1, 2015, http://www.esa.doc.gov.

17. Tim Sohn, “Don’t Go It Alone,” Editor & Publisher, April 2011, EBSCOhost, http://web.ebscohost.com.

18. Ibid.

19. A. Tiwana, “Does Firm Modularity Complement Ignorance? A Field Study of Software Outsourcing Alliances,” Strategic Management Journal 29 (2008), pp. 1241–52.

20. Joel Schectman, “Indiana Says It Is Recovering from Failed Experiment in IT Outsourcing,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com.

21. Mansfield Sales Partners, “Sales Outsourcing: Expand Rapidly into New Markets,” http://www.mansfieldsp.com, accessed April 6, 2016.

22. “Q&A: Human Resources,” Utah Business, October 2015, (-discussion moderated by David Cherrington), http://dev.utahbusiness.com.

23. A. E. Barber, Recruiting Employees (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).

24. C. K. Stevens, “Antecedents of Interview Interactions, Interviewers’ Ratings, and Applicants’ Reactions,” Personnel Psychology 51 (1998), pp. 55–85; A. E. Barber, J. R. Hollenbeck, S. L. Tower, and J. M. Phillips, “The Effects of Interview Focus on Recruitment Effectiveness: A Field Experiment,” Journal of Applied Psychology 79 (1994), pp. 886–96; D. S. Chapman and D. I. Zweig, “Developing a Nomological Network for Interview Structure: Antecedents and Consequences of the Structured Selection Interview,” Personnel Psychology 58 (2005), pp. 673–702.

25. J. D. Olian and S. L. Rynes, “Organizational Staffing: Integrating Practice with Strategy,” Industrial Relations 23 (1984), pp. 170–83.

26. M. Leonard, “Challenges to the Termination-at-Will Doctrine,” Personnel Administrator 28 (1983), pp. 49–56; C. Schowerer and B. Rosen, “Effects of Employment-at-Will Policies and Compensation Policies on Corporate Image and Job Pursuit Intentions,” Journal of Applied Psychology 74 (1989), pp. 653–56.

27. S. L. Rynes and A. E. Barber, “Applicant Attraction Strategies: An Organizational Perspective,” Academy of Management Review 15 (1990), pp. 286–310; J. A. Breaugh, Recruitment: Science and Practice (Boston: PWS-Kent, 1992), p. 34.

28. J. E. Slaughter, M. J. Zickar, S. Highhouse, and D. C. Mohr, “Personality Trait Inferences about Organizations: Development of a Measure and Assessment of Construct Validity,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (2004), pp. 85–103; D. S. Chapman, K. L. Uggerslev, S. A. Carroll, K. A. Piasentin, and D. A. Jones, “Applicant Attraction to Organizations and Job Choice: A Meta-analytic Review of the Correlates of Recruiting Outcomes,” Journal of Applied Psychology 90 (2005), pp. 928–44. For a contrasting view, see Mark Ritson, “Employer Branding Can Do Real Harm so Stop It,” Marketing Week, July 11, 2013, EBSCOhost, http://web.b.ebscohost.com.

29. D. R. Avery, “Reactions to Diversity in Recruitment Advertising—Are Differences in Black and White?,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (2003), pp. 672–79.

30. M. A. Conrad and S. D. Ashworth, “Recruiting Source Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis and Re-examination of Two Rival Hypotheses,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Chicago, 1986.

31. Breaugh, Recruitment. Eric Krell, “Weighing Internal vs. External Hires,” HR Magazine, January/February 2015, https://www.shrm.org.

32. Chad Rabello, “How I’ve Learned to Cut Back on New Hires and Make More Promotions,” Fast Company, March 25, 2016, http://www.fastcompany.com.

33. Breaugh, Recruitment, pp. 113–14; Krell, “Weighing Internal vs. External Hires.”

34. R. S. Schuler and S. E. Jackson, “Linking Competitive Strategies with Human Resource Management Practices,” Academy of Management Executive 1 (1987), pp. 207–19.

35. Gerry Crispin and Chris Hoyt, “Source of Hire 2015: One Last Time—Because No One ‘Gets It,’” Career Xroads, January 9, 2016, available on SlideShare, http://www.slideshare.net.

36. C. R. Wanberg, R. Kanfer, and J. T. Banas, “Predictors and Outcomes of Networking Intensity among Job Seekers,” Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000), pp. 491–503.

37. Lindsey Gellman, “Companies Tap Alumni for New Business and New Workers,” Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com; “Boomerang Employee,” TD, November 2015, https://www.td.org.

38. Tamara Lytle, “Managing Employees by the Hour,” HR Magazine, April 2016, https://www.shrm.org.

39. Lauren Weber, “Help Wanted—on Writing Job Descriptions,” Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2013, http://online.wsj.com.

40. B. Dineen and R. A. Noe, “Effects of Customization on Applicant Decisions and Applicant Pool Characteristics in a Web-Based Recruiting Context,” Journal of Applied Psychology 94 (2009), pp. 224–34.

41. Breaugh, Recruitment, p. 87.

42. EastBay Works, “What Is EastBay Works?,” http://www.eastbayworks.com.

43. Lauren Zumbach, “Executive Recruiter Helps Retailers Keep Up with Industry Changes,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 2016, http://www.chicagotribune.com.

44. Frank Kalman, “Connect the Skills,” Chief Learning Officer, March 2015, pp. 26–29, 51.

45. Hao Zhao and Robert C. Liden, “Internship: A Recruitment and Selection Perspective,” Journal of Applied Psychology 96 (2011): 221–229.

46. Tyrone Taborn, “It’s All about the Talent,” US Black Engineer & Information Technology, Summer 2015, pp. 14–17.

47. R. Hawk, The Recruitment Function (New York: American Management Association, 1967).  page 161

48. Heather Clancy, “We Want You 2.0? Talent War Reshapes Recruiting Software,” Fortune, January 12, 2016, http://fortune.com.

49. C. K. Stevens, “Effects of Preinterview Beliefs on Applicants’ Reactions to Campus Interviews,” Academy of Management Journal 40 (1997), pp. 947–66.

50. C. Collins, “The Interactive Effects of Recruitment Practices and Product Awareness on Job Seekers’ Employer Knowledge and Application Behaviors,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007), pp. 180–90.

51. M. S. Taylor and T. J. Bergman, “Organizational Recruitment Activities and Applicants’ Reactions at Different Stages of the Recruitment Process,” Personnel Psychology 40 (1984), pp. 261–85; C. D. Fisher, D. R. Ilgen, and W. D. Hoyer, “Source Credibility, Information Favorability, and Job Offer Acceptance,” Academy of Management Journal 22 (1979), pp. 94–103.

52. L. M. Graves and G. N. Powell, “The Effect of Sex Similarity on Recruiters’ Evaluation of Actual Applicants: A Test of the Similarity-Attraction Paradigm,” Personnel Psychology 48 (1995), pp. 85–98.

53. R. D. Tretz and T. A. Judge, “Realistic Job Previews: A Test of the Adverse Self-Selection Hypothesis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (1998), pp. 330–37.

54. P. Hom, R. W. Griffeth, L. E. Palich, and J. S. Bracker, “An Exploratory Investigation into Theoretical Mechanisms Underlying Realistic Job Previews,” Personnel Psychology 51 (1998), pp. 421–51.

55. G. M. McEvoy and W. F. Cascio, “Strategies for Reducing Employee Turnover: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 70 (1985), pp. 342–53; S. L. Premack and J. P. Wanous, “A Meta-Analysis of Realistic Job Preview Experiments,” Journal of Applied Psychology 70 (1985), pp. 706–19.

56. D. R. Earnest, D. G. Allen, and R. S. Landis, “Mechanisms Linking Realistic Job Previews with Turnover: A Meta-Analytic Path Analysis,” Personnel Psychology 64 (2011), pp. 865–897.

57. R. W. Walters, “It’s Time We Become Pros,” Journal of College Placement 12 (1985), pp. 30–33.

58. S. L. Rynes, R. D. Bretz, and B. Gerhart, “The Importance of Recruitment in Job Choice: A Different Way of Looking,” Personnel Psychology 44 (1991), pp. 487–522.

 

49