Recruitment. COMM 203 Flex at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia

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1 Last updated: May 4, 2017 Recruitment COMM 203 Flex at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia W:\Learning Services\Courses\COMM 203\Siobhan Flex Work with Brian

2 Recruitment Recruitment includes any activities carried out by organizations to identify and attract potential employees to the organization. It is the first part of staffing. THE GOALS OF RECRUITMENT INCLUDE: 1. Increasing the number of applicants interested in working in the organization. With more applicants you can be more selective and more likely to find and hire a highly qualified employee. 2. Influencing the type of people who apply. More applicants is not helpful if it is not the right people for the jobs, and screening all these unqualified applicants is time consuming and expensive. Influencing those who apply may include a. Improving the quality of applicants (Knowledge, skills and abilities) b. Enhancing the diversity of applicants c. Reducing the numbers of unqualified applicants d. Enhancing the fit of applicants. This includes looking for applicants with values and goals that are consistent with the values and culture of the organization. 3. Increasing the likelihood of applicants accepting positions if offered. This is the marketing aspect of recruitment, trying to convince applicants that your organization is a great place for them to work. The applicants that you recruit will come from 2 sources internal and external. Internal recruitment is looking for people to fill a position from employees already working in the organization. This is also referred to as an internal labor market. UBC SAUDER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PAGE 2

3 As the diagram shows, jobs are often structured in ladders, where some jobs on the ladder are only filled from within the organization, often from the job below it on the ladder. External recruitment is going outside the organization to hire new employees. This is often jobs at the bottom of a job ladder, or the organization may hire managers from external sources if prior management experience is considered more important than experience working in the line jobs that they will be managing. A common reason for these job ladders and hiring internally is that some jobs may require a great deal of inside information about the organization or unit that can only be gained by working in the company. This is common among many production jobs and middle management. Another key reason is that opportunities for advancement is one of the most important things workers are looking for in a job, and lack of advancement opportunities is the top reason why employees leave an organization. Policies of hiring from within give an organization s employees many opportunities to move up to better jobs over time without leaving the organization. As employees move up the ranks within an organization, they will have an investment in the organization that may be lost if they leave for another employer. This fosters more employee commitment to the organization. THE BALANCE BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SOURCES CAN TAKE SEVERAL FORMS. 1. Internal Only. Many organizations have positions that will only be filled by promotion or transfer from within the organization. External sources would not be considered for these jobs. 2. Internal first, then external. A second approach balancing internal and external sources focuses on finding qualified internal candidates for a job first, and gives priority to any qualified internal applicants over external applicants. UBC is a good example of this. UBC has thousands of staff employees, that is, employees other than faculty. These staff employees are working in program offices, maintenance, the career center, and so on. This is a very large internal labor market at UBC. Any staff position opening must be posted internally for a minimum of 2 weeks so internal candidates from across UBC can apply if they are interested. If no suitably qualified internal applications are received, then after 2 weeks the position can be posted externally. Any qualified internal applicants must be hired before external applicants. UBC SAUDER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PAGE 3

4 3. Internal and External Compete in the Same Pool. This gives equal opportunity to qualified internal and external applicants. Advertising and recruitment is done internally and externally at the same time and all applications are considered together in the same applicant pool with the best applicant being hired. 4. External Only. All organizations must have some positions that are filled externally as this is how new talent enters the organizations. But most organizations will have certain jobs that are filled internally only and others that are filled externally. Surveys of many organizations have found that on average about 40% of positions are filled internally and 60% are filled with external hires. The readings discuss many sources for recruiting applicants. Which of these will be most appropriate depends on what business the organization is in, whether they recruit locally, nationally or internationally, the specific occupations they are looking for, the industry and other factors. Most organizations use a variety of sources, and the sources used will vary for different jobs on the organization. In order to have efficient and effective recruitment, it is also important to evaluate the recruitment program and each source of recruits. This is done with various yield ratios that indicate the percentage of applicants who successfully advance from one step of the recruitment and selection process to the next. This may include the percentage of applicants that are interviewed, the percentage of interviewed applicants who are considered acceptable to be hired, and the percentage of applicants offered a job who accept the offer. These ratios will indicate how effective each source is at bringing in successful hires. The results of yield ratios should also be viewed in light of the costs of the various recruitment sources as these vary widely. Using professional search firms to find recruits is very expensive, but posting ads on the company website is very inexpensive. Together, all this information can then be used to calculate the recruitment costs per employee hired from each source and determine which sources are the most cost efficient. Earlier we discussed human rights legislation and that this prohibits discrimination based on many protected categories, such as race, national origin, gender and so on. This applies to recruitment. Indirect discrimination in recruitment is evident when the pool of applicants is not representative of the relevant labor market. Consider this example: Women are 43% of the relevant labor market Women are 24% of your applicant pool This indicates what is called an adverse impact. That is, in this case the organization s recruitment practices and policies are indirectly discriminating against women. This may not be intentional, and it is illegal whether it is intentional or not. The organization should monitor these statistics and look at its recruitment practices to figure out why they are not attracting women applicants in proportions matching the relevant external market. It may be their advertising is done in sources that are primarily targeted at men. Or if they are using an online recruiting source it may be one that is used more frequently by men than women. Whatever the reason, this data would indicate that the organization is violating the human rights legislation and is responsible for correcting this problem. UBC SAUDER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PAGE 4

5 STUDY QUESTION: A coworker says to you, All the money this company spends on recruitment and advertising to attract people to work here is a complete waste. We have good workers here. They should stop this and give all of us a raise. How would you explain to your coworker that these activities may be critical to the company s success? UBC SAUDER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PAGE 5