What is Recruitment?

Recruitment is the most important part of Human Resource Management (HRM) which is done by HR (Human Resources) of a company, firm, or industry. To understand the policy, HR needs to understand and analyze the requirement of a profile who can fit into the position as per the company’s objectives and goals. Recruitment involves shortlisting, hiring, and analyzing candidates' skills along with experience and qualifications and comparing them with the organization's requirements or job profile. The objective of the recruitment process is to find the right candidate for the right job.

In a recruitment process, the management provides detailed information about a job and its responsibilities involved to the HRM team, so that they understand and analyze the requirements to be fulfilled. After selecting candidates, a manager provides information about future career programs, career goals, availability of effective management system, benefits, performance appraisal, review, workforce management software, disciplinary actions, etc. to the employees.

Steps involved in the recruitment process

• Hiring Need: First, HR (Human Resources) needs to analyze the nature of the job, job profile, and the requirement suitable for achieving organizational goals.

• Job description: It is a document that contains the complete description of a job or the profile containing roles and responsibilities required to be performed.

• Execute recruitment plan: After analyzing the job description, a recruiter should implement a plan in such a way that it follows the preliminary thinking of the management.

• Review applicants: In this step, HR needs to examine the background along with shortlisting a candidate for a job profile such as qualification, previous company, last drawn salary, etc.

• Conduct interviews: After analyzing a candidate's background, recruiters need to call a candidate for screening and a one-to-one interview process.

Some Important Points

• Managers should have a clear picture of job requirements and suitable compensation so that they can direct the same to the HR team.
• Managers or HR teams must communicate to the candidates about payroll, compensation, or remuneration before hiring them within the organization.
• Hiring a suitable candidate for a particular job role should be effective so that HR can avoid unnecessary issues related to employee productivity and the achievement of management goals.
• HR should explain and provide brief information about the workplace, rules, targets, employee performance, benefits, development, and business goals.
• The HR team should brief about rules and regulations regarding COVID-19 protocols for safety and security.
• HR needs to have a clear concept of job profile from the entry-level and related resources, and manage manpower while providing training and development.
• HR needs to discuss employee performance, employee review, job description, and disciplinary actions in the workforce before recruiting a candidate as a part of SHRM (Strategic Human Resource Management).

Types of Recruitment

There are two types of recruitment processes:

Internal Recruitment

• Permanent employees: Companies can hire for a particular position from their permanent employees as it is a less time-consuming process.
• Retired employees: Companies can recruit their ex-employees again for a particular job profile. Sometimes employees take voluntary retirement from their jobs, and companies consider them as an appropriate resource to achieve their objectives.
• Temporary employees: Companies hire these employees for a particular purpose or a fixed tenure. In this recruitment process, organizations give the opportunities to existing temporary employees as per their performance to utilize them as a career pool.

External Recruitment

• Advertisement: It is a source through which companies promote their brand, product, and job requirements.
• Job fair: It is a place and a strategic approach towards a job profile where companies can brief about talent and skills from a person they are looking for.
• Recruitment portal: It is a portal where all job requirements are posted by the HR of an organization.
• Campus interview: It is the process of screening candidates and is mainly conducted in business schools (B-schools) and several traditional colleges. Companies adopt this process to recruit young talents and skill-based employees for their businesses.
• Walk-in-interviews: It is also termed an open job interview in which companies conduct a large number of interviews in a short period.

Limitation/Challenges of Recruitment

The following are the limitations or challenges of a recruitment process:

• In internal recruitment, external talents are not allowed to showcase their talents and skills. Candidates who possess an appropriate talent and deserve an opportunity are excluded from the recruitment process.
• External recruitment incurs huge costs and devotes more time to hiring candidates as compared to internal recruitment. This increases hiring costs and reduces the overall profits of companies.

Common Mistakes

A lot of times, students confuse the concept of recruitment and selection. Some think that recruitment involves the selection process of a company, and they do not relate this with the concept of selection. This results in a lack of knowledge and impacts their exam and campus interviews. Therefore, teachers must conduct debates, group discussions, or role-play activities among students.

Context and Applications

Recruitment is a fundamental topic of Human resource management and is important for other courses of study like, Master of Business Administration (MBA), Post Graduate Program in Management (PGPM), Bachelor of Business Administration (Human Resource Management or Personnel Management), and Diploma in Human Resource Management.

Related Concepts

While studying recruitment concept, it is important to read the following topics to get a better understanding:

• On-boarding
• Employee retention
• Training and Development
• E-recruitment
• Employee Attraction
• Employee Separation
• Recruitment
• HRM
• Employee Management
• Workplace
• Job Profile
• Strategic Planning
• Payroll

Practice Problems

Q1. An advantage of internal recruitment is:

1. Time saving
2. Quality
3. Costly
4. Rigid

Correct option: a

Explanation: When a company opts for an external recruitment, it incurs higher cost and devotes more time. On the other hand, a company can recruit appropriate candidates working within the business after evaluating their performance. This enables companies to save more time and cost. Therefore, HR managers can look for internal recruitment for filling the vacant position more quickly.

Q2. What among the following is a factor that affects recruitment policy?

1. Higher purchasing power
2. Selection criteria
3. Lack of motivation
4. Stress

Answer: b

Explanation: Selection process is one of a major factors which affects and influences recruitment policy. Selection criteria involves the parameters, abilities, and attributes required at a particular job. If a candidate lacks any of the criteria mentioned in the selection process, the recruitment policy gets affected.

Q3. Recruitment by advertisement is one of ___________ methods of recruitment

1. Internal
2. External
3. Internal and External
4. Strategic

Answer: b

Explanation: External recruitment means selecting the right candidate outside the organization. Therefore, any advertisement related to vacancies within the organization comes under the purview of external recruitment.

Q4. Which among the following is a source of recruitment?

1. Quality of work
2. Job design
3. Campus interview
4. Job analysis

Answer: c

Explanation: Among the external recruitment processes, campus interviews play a vital role in the whole recruitment process as companies get more numbers of young talents and skilled people.

Q5. Which of the following is a part of a recruitment process?

1. Organizational factor
2. Political factor
3. Work culture
4. On-boarding

Answer: d

Explanation: In recruitment and selection, on-boarding is mandatory as per the roles and responsibilities of a person. On-boarding is usually conducted to make a healthy and comfortable environment for a new employee with clarity about their job role.