Talent acquisition is the process of identification and acquisition of skilled workers to meet business needs. As part of talent acquisition, businesses apply recruitment as a means of identifying and acquiring skilled workers. Recruitment is the process that provides a company with a variety of potential workers from which to choose. This paper will focus on recruitment, highlighting its importance to organizations and examining the recruitment process and the factors that affect it. It will also evaluate the job applicant’s expectations from the process and how organizations can keep up with such expectations. It will finally discuss the emerging trends in the process, including social media platforms, Corporate Talent Networks, and gamification.
Recruitment
The issue of recruitment arises when an organization needs additional labor. The apparent solution to obtaining other human resources is hiring new employees. However, this is costly and time-consuming. As such, alternatives to hiring new employees, such as outsourcing and overtime labor for existing employees, should be considered (Ryan & Derous, 2016). Recruitment planning, thus, begins after other alternatives have been considered and eliminated.
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The recruitment process is essential to businesses and organizations. This is because selecting the right people for the right job is necessary for the success of any business. Whether a potential employee becomes an asset or a liability to the company is wholly dependent on the recruitment process. Therefore, a business should focus on its recruitment policy and strategy to ensure that only the best employees offer their services (Ryan & Derous, 2016). A good recruitment process is cost-effective as it reduces the time and money involved in acquiring and recruiting workers.
The Recruitment Process
Forecasting. Before businesses recruit, they must make predictions based on the business trends to establish how many new employees they will require (Obedgiu, 2017). Both internal and external factors occasion the need for new employees. Such internal factors include future business expansion plans, budget constraints, and production levels. Such external factors include changes in laws and technology, competition, and unemployment rates. Once forecasting data has been gathered, human resource professionals can identify existing gaps, enabling them to know the correct number of new employees needed and people with the right skills for the job.
Recruitment Strategy. After identifying the existing gaps, recruitment strategy helps in filling them. It involves establishing a specific plan to meet the needs of the organization (Obedgiu, 2017). Here, the business is required to make specifications of the exact type of job applicants it requires. Without such specifications, it will have difficulty making other decisions. The type of targeted individuals could be college students or even those who have experience in the field. Examining the past recruitment strategies could help a business decide what type of employees were suitable in the past.
Carrying out the recruitment strategy. Having established a cogent strategy, the business should implement it. Advertisement is done on various platforms depending on the organization’s strategy (Obedgiu, 2017). It could be on websites, newspapers, and/or social media platforms. This allows potential employees to learn of the job opportunity and make an application. It is important to observe that organizations may consider internal candidates first before advertising the vacancy to external candidates. Once candidates have communicated their interest in the job offer, interviews are conducted to select the pool of potentially qualified individuals.
Evaluation of the Recruitment Results. This stage measures the success of the recruitment process. Numerous organizations do not evaluate the recruitment results majorly because they do not conduct enough research on recruitment. If a successful examination of the recruitment process is not done, organizations cannot learn from their past efforts and mistakes (Obedgiu, 2017). Evaluation enables them to note any errors made and make an effort to correct them during the next recruitment period. For instance, if applicants complained that it was difficult to submit their resumes on the organization’s website, it can improve the website to make it easier for applicants to submit their applications.
Factors Affecting the Recruitment Process
Recruitment Policy. Despite a uniform and elaborate recruitment process, every organization decides how to implement it (Teimouri et al., 2018). It specifies its objectives and designs the framework for implementation of the process. Such determination depends on the organization’s needs and its financial capabilities.
Organization’s Size. If an organization plans on expanding its operations, it will need to hire more people to run its daily activities (Teimouri et al., 2018). This will create a need for the recruitment process. However, if an organization does not intend to expand its business, there will be no need for recruitment.
Organization’s Financial Position. The recruitment process is time-consuming and expensive. If a business is not financially capable of handling recruitment, it will not consider beginning the recruitment process (Teimouri et al., 2018). If it needs new employees, then the recruitment process may not be as thorough as it would have been financially capable of doing so.
Labour Market. The availability of a workforce in the labor market is essential to the recruitment process. If there is a limited labor supply, the organization may have to depend on the existing employees to provide the necessary services (Teimouri et al., 2018). On the other hand, if there is a surplus of workforce during recruitment, the organization could rely on informal means of advertisement of vacancies, such as notice boards and meeting announcements. This would be more cost-effective than formal methods of advertising.
Legal Requirements. These requirements curtail the management’s efforts to select the best candidate for the job. For instance, the prohibition of discrimination in employment affects recruitment activities (Teimouri et al., 2018). These requirements confine organizations to a process that conforms with the law. Such confinements sometimes cause businesses to settle for candidates who are not the best for the job. At the same time, they ensure equality for every candidate that meets the specifications of the job opportunity.
Competitors. The recruitment strategies of the organization’s competitors play a vital role in the recruitment process (Teimouri et al., 2018). Sometimes, organizations have to change their policies depending on the ones being followed by their competitors to maintain a healthy competition.
The Applicants’ Approach
Besides achieving the employer’s desired outcome, the recruitment process should also serve the job applicants’ needs. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the applicants’ needs to design the recruitment process accordingly. A prosperous recruitment process attracts the intended applicants. Most organizations attract various applicants, many of whom are not suitable applicants (Furnham & Palaiou, 2017). This happens when they apply an advertisement method that is not suitable for the required candidates. For instance, if a company requires a highly experienced candidate, such candidates would probably be happily employed elsewhere. Using social networking sites would be an efficient platform to advertise the vacancy to such potential applicants. Therefore, applicants depend on the organization to make applications.
Once an organization has caught the applicants’ attention, it needs to entice them to apply for the job. Some factors make positions more attractive to candidates (Furnham & Palaiou, 2017). First, an applicant will look at the benefits of the job, such as retirement benefits and insurance covers. Remuneration is also of utmost importance to an applicant. They want to know whether they are to be paid well for the skills and services they bring to the company. Thirdly, the job duties will also entice the applicants to apply for the job. If the position entails doing more work than usual, the potential employees are unlikely to tender their applications. Applicants also take notice of the geographical location of the organization. This is concerning security and proximity to their residential areas. Organizations should strive to make the position as attractive as possible to guarantee application by suitable candidates.
Emerging Trends in Recruitment
Organizations are increasingly making the workplace more flexible by recruiting for specific assignments rather than jobs. This minimizes the cost of recruitment and the duration of time required for training. Many organizations have also introduced gamification in the recruitment process. Applicants play a game instead of sitting in front of a panel. Organizations can make a conclusion on the suitability of the candidate based on how they play the game. Gamification also makes applicants more inclined to make applications since the recruitment process is informal, and they barely have to practice and make intensive preparations. The traineeship era is also coming to an end. Employers currently want streetwise people who are already equipped with the necessary skills in the job. This has caused people to learn various skills to ensure that they get job opportunities.
Organizations are also applying the Corporate Talent Network. This is an online platform that promotes a company’s brand name. It is also used to communicate job openings in such organizations, making publicity easier (Salahudeen et al., 2017). The use of social networks has also simplified the communication of job opportunities. Most vacancies are announced on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms (Salahudeen et al., 2017). Companies have also increased their focus on passive candidates rather than active ones. It has become apparent that most people are not actively looking for jobs but are open to new opportunities. Hence, companies are employing advertisement methods that will attract passive candidates as well. Social media platforms enable such information to reach passive candidates.
Conclusion
The organization is the major party in the recruitment process. It decides when and how the recruitment process will occur. As such, it takes into consideration the various internal and external factors that affect the recruitment process. It goes ahead to formulate the recruitment strategy per its objectives and then implements that strategy. The implementation stage entails the advertisement of the job opportunities and eventual interviews. Afterward, the organization can make a solid choice on the right candidate. The paper has established the importance of examining the recruitment process to correct past mistakes in preparation for the following recruitment process. It has also been noted that the recruitment process is expensive and time-consuming. Hence, it is not always necessary to obtain labor from external sources.
The applicants are the other parties involved in the recruitment process. Their perspective of the process should be taken into consideration by the organization. The organization needs to entice the applicants to apply by making the vacant position seem attractive. It should evaluate the applicant's desired results and design the process according to such desires, and such desires include insurance and retirement benefits, accessible geographical location, and favorable job duties. This research has further highlighted several emerging trends, including gamification, Corporate Talent Network, and use of social media. Such trends have improved the recruitment process. As such, organizations should move to apply them in their recruitment process. Additionally, applicants should also familiarize themselves with such trends to ensure that they are always informed of job opportunities and the recruitment processes for such opportunities.
References
Furnham, A., & Palaiou, K. (2017). Applicant Attraction to Organizations and Job Choice. In The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Recruitment, Selection and Employee Retention (p. 71).
Marie Ryan, A., & Derous, E. (2016). Highlighting tensions in recruitment and selection research and practice. International Journal of Selection and Assessment , 24 (1), 54-62. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12129
Obedgiu, V. (2017). Human Resource Management, Historical Perspectives, Evolution and Professional Development. Journal of Management Development .
Salahudeen, V. A., Palanisingh, V., & Gurumoorty, T. R. (2017). Emerging Trends in Recruitment and Selection. International Journal of Organizational Behavior and Management Perspectives , 6 (2), 3165-3170.
Teimouri, N., Rangriz, H., Abdollahi, B., & Zeinabadi, H. (2018). Prioritizing the Factors Affecting the Recruitment of Human Resource and Providing an Appropriate Model Based on the Merit System. Journal of Research in Human Resources Management , 10 (2), 207-230.
