The importance of Recruitment and Selection as a specialized activity in Human Resource Management

Tatenda Ngara

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Mar 17, 2021
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To effectively achieve the goals of an organization, people with the right set of skills and competence should be assigned to strategic positions at the right time and under the best suitable conditions. This requires a vast amount of time on human resources planning in order to avoid placement of counter-productive employees which therefore makes recruitment and selection a specialized function in human resources management. Recruitment and selection are a specialized activity in human resources management as it addresses determining the number of vacant posts, meeting employment legislation and the needs of the organization, creating a person specification, job description then selecting the correct candidate using specialized selection tests.

Flippo (1961), defines recruitment as a process of finding applicants for the positions which the organisation wants to fill. It is the role of human resource managers to advertise the vacancy either internally within the organisation for their employees or externally to recruit a different calibre of new employees. The hiring manager ensures that the vacancy is advertised in the correct places that the target applicants have access. Organisations can post vacancy notices on the company website, through recruitment agencies and also on local media such as newspapers. The role of recruitment is very important to recruitment managers as it takes expertise to attract the right candidates to apply for the role especially in a seller’s market which has scarce numbers of potential employees.

Before this recruitment process can be done, Human resource managers through a recruitment and selection team, determine the correct number of people needed by the organisation for the position. Assigning a huge number of people may prove to be costly to the organisation as the salaries may outweigh the profits being brought in the company against the role being performed. It is therefore important that the Human Resource Manager revises if that the job is really necessary and if it contributes to the achievement of the organization’s goals. This necessitates the formulation of a job description by hiring managers which states the role, hours of work and to whom the person responds to or immediate supervisor.

Recruitment and selection are also of paramount significance to Human resource management as it helps meet the employment legislation of the country and the goals of the organisation. Human resource managers are professionals that ensure that there is no negligence and discrimination against members of the public that wish to join the organisation. Candidates can be discriminated against their age, gender, race and ethnicity when applying for a job and this is illegal as stipulated in Zimbabwean constitution Chapter 28-01. Negligence and discrimination can lead to huge lawsuits that can leave the organisation bankrupt and consequently recruitment and selection becomes major a specialised activity in Human Resource management as it requires a professional in labour law.

Human resource management practitioners also focus on drawing up conclusions as to what the person best suitable for the vacancy should look like or the attributes they should have and this is called a person specification. Most organisations are prone to corruption and nepotism this makes recruitment and selection a specialised activity in human resource management as the professionals try to find the best person-organisation fit. The person specification can narrow down the type of the candidate needed for the vacancy based on the required skills and qualities such as age, educational level, technical qualifications, work experience, physical and mental requirements and personality traits.

The area of recruitment and selection that makes it vastly important as a specialised function in human resource management is the selection of the candidates. Bates (1993), defines selection as choosing those job applicants who are best suited for the vacant positions. There are various kinds of selection tests used by human resource managers to narrow the huge pile of candidates and these include preliminary interviews, aptitude tests and personality tests. The most common selection test in Zimbabwe is the face-to-face interview but there are also other organisations such as Delta Beverages and Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority that prefer having psychometric tests. The final stage in the selection process involves checking up with the new employee’s manager on whether they are the perfect suit for the job and coping to the needs of the role which validates the selection procedure.
 

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