HRMN Assignment

Human Resources Planning and Recruitment

Before hiring anyone, it is important to know what an organization's skills and needs are. If a

good job analysis has been performed for positions in the organization, that job analysis provides

much of the basis for HR recruitment planning. Once the planning process has been advanced,

recruiting for employees in an organization can take place. As discussed on week 1, human

resource needs in an organization must address the internal needs of the organization and the

external influences of society. Once those needs are determined, an organization can begin

recruiting to fill those needs. The recruitment planning process consists of figuring out how many

employees the organization must hire with particular skills to be successful, and then determine

what specific skills and attributes those employees should have. There are many techniques that

can help with the recruiting effort.

Recruiting

Recruiting is a natural outgrowth of human resources planning. Once the plan identifies what

skills are needed in the organization, it is time to begin recruiting for those skills.

There are two levels of recruiting:

1. The human resources department manages the process, making sure it follows

organizational and legal recruiting guidelines.

2. The managerial level of recruiting personnel provides the content expertise to ensure that

people with appropriate skills to fit specific needs are recruited.

The basic questions that must be answered when recruiting include:

• What skills are needed?

• What techniques should be used for recruiting for those particular skills?

• How long will the recruiting process take (time lapse) before the new recruits are on the job?

• How many job applicants will be qualified and hired (yield ratios) using the recruiting techniques that are selected?

• Should the recruiting take place internally or externally?

The human resources planning and the job analyses will already determine the skills needed in

the organization. It is important that the human resources manager keep the managers in the

departments focused on meeting the strategic planning goals. Sometimes the department

managers are more concerned with operational (short-term) needs and overlook strategic needs.

It is also important for the human resources department to make sure that department

managers are educated about the legal and ethical concerns of recruiting. Department managers

are often so focused on hiring people who are like the people who have been successful in their

departments in the past, that they are unaware of the advantages of recruiting people who may

bring new ideas and attitudes into the organization, but who may look and act differently.

There are many ways to ensure that people who have needed skills become aware that your

organization is recruiting for their skills. Generally, the more focused on skills, the less general a

recruitment effort needs to be. Unsolicited applicants and referrals are cost-effective ways of

finding needed skills. Both of these techniques may bring equal employment opportunity (EEO)

problems with them, however. It is important to define when unsolicited applicants become

official applicants for a position. The status as to whether a person has applied for a job will

affect the organization's EEO statistics and could determine whether an applicant has grounds for

a discrimination lawsuit. Using referrals tends to get applicants who are like the people who refer

them. Using referrals when a job has not been publicly advertised can lead to a lack of diversity

and potential lawsuits.

Advertising for positions can be general or specific. General advertising appears in broadly

distributed sources. Specific advertising may be in trade or professional journals or websites that

will be read only by people in that profession. Broader advertising will get more applications but

lower yield ratios, whereas specific advertising will bring fewer applicants and higher yield ratios.

Hiring external employment agencies or search firms to help fill positions can be very cost-

effective because the external organizations will pre-screen applicants, resulting in higher yield

ratios for the applicants that your organization actually interviews. Campus recruiting is useful

for entry-level professional positions but will not be effective for positions that do not require a

college education or positions that require previous experience.

Electronic recruiting is more effective when recruiting computer-savvy personnel and on more

focused professional job-recruiting sites. One of the problems with electronic recruiting is dealing

with the numerous search firms that will contact you and want to recruit for your organization

once they see your posting; however, the Internet has great potential to help in the recruiting

effort.

The recruiting effort is an extension of job analyses and is also an extension of the human

resources planning process. Society external to the organization may have a great effect on the

planning and recruiting process. Be aware of issues that affect labor supply and issues that deal

with equal employment opportunity guidelines while planning and recruiting people to work in

your organization. The human resources manager is on the front line of making sure that an

organization can meet its goals, because an organization cannot meet its goals without properly

skilled employees.