In the modern world, it is significant that organizations seek sustainable advantage mainly from intangible assets such as human and social resources. Such organizational competitive advantage relies on the human resource task force through workforce planning, effective employee-relations management, recruitment and selection of workers. The Northeastern police department of the United States undergoes through struggles concerning recruiting and selecting new police officers. The reason behind this challenge is due to the initial failed plan of using employee referral plan as the only strategy to hire police officers. The evaluation of factors influencing labour supply and demand, a better recruitment and selection plan and its objectives, size of the applicant pool, types of people viable for recruitment and finally the methods of counterchecking the effectiveness of these plans.
As the director of Human Resource Management, I acknowledge that are several factors that influence the need for labour supply and demand in the Northeastern police department. Factors that affect labour demand within the police department include productivity through recruiting more police officers and reducing the amount of money spent to pay overtime for already employed officers, demand for service especially the reduction of crime and the elasticity of service demand. Factors that influence the need for labour supply include the United States nation records high rates of migration, the overall job outlook and finally, the state has a high overall cost-of-living.
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These factors prompted the need for the recruitment of new police officers. Productivity is the essential factor that navigates the demand for labour. The reasoning behind this about the hiring of police officers is that the employment of more people to provide labour should equalize the wage rates to revenue productivity. The productivity phenomena act as the critical factor of the need for the recruitment process as the amount of money used to pay officers working during overtime is more than what should be spent. Also later on in a period of five years one quarter of the police service will get replaced. Thence, this will cause the demographic statistic ratio to fall short.
The factor demand for service is another reason why labour demand within the police department is crucial. In this particular case, the Northeastern part of the United States has many young people as residents, who quit school due to economic reasons to seek jobs. Consequently, brain drain is experienced in such areas as poor job prospects end up messing up organizations and the society at large. Moreover, such young people end up seeking shortcuts like engaging in criminal activities causing an increase in crime rates. Therefore, it is vital to note that need for increased service is required to stabilize such influx. Lastly, the elasticity for the demand of service. In this case, if the demand for service is elastic, producing such service becomes elastic as well.
There is high migration rates in the United States not forgetting our primary target, the Northeastern section. Therefore, high populations are experienced in such areas causing high rates of crimes within vast regions. The need for labour supply covers this factor as with an increased number of police officers will lead to increased police patrols curbing the acts of crime. The overall job outlook of providing efficient service to the general public is another factor that prompts labour supply within the police department. The police department aims to ensure citizens get protected from criminal activities in their areas of residence. Hence, increasing the number of police officers in the department ensures increased number of foot, vehicle, motorcycle and horseback patrols.
Since the United States is known to have a high cost of living, many people may fall beneath the poverty line. City-life is known for the high rates of taxes on either sales or income. Thus, with the many people struggling to make their ends meet might result in them seeking criminal activities to sustain their livelihood. Therefore, the need for labour supply arises due to suppressing such irrational conduct. Even distribution of service rendered by the police department ensures that labour supply is accurate and useful. The recruitment process within the police department aims at achieving several goals.
The objectives of the recruitment process include developing effective recruitment and selection strategies for employing police officers. Secondly, the aim of the recruitment process is to increase the number the productivity of the police department through decreasing the amount of money spent on overtime by employing more officers to standardize wage ranges to revenue productivity. Thirdly, the recruitment process aims at increasing the number of patrols within the city to ensure increased surveillance of criminal activities and maintenance of peace, law and order. All these goals of the recruitment process are achievable especially when proper and more effective techniques for employing people designed for the job are applied.
According to data provided officers required for recruitment fall under five categories which are: military police, corrections officer, security guards, criminal justice graduates and finally officers for other police departments. Consequently, this draws the boundary that determines the number of the applicants required to the desired; 25 job applicants. However much the applicant pool stretches to accommodate these applicants, there are particular target groups for these recruitment process. The criminal justice graduates and military police officers are the best candidates for consideration during the recruitment process.
The reason behind this recommendation is that the criminal justice graduates are fully equipped with filed knowledge and through training, it will ensure they get equipped with skills. The idea of employing people who are not cut out for this particular job will get eliminated. Also, military police are effective as they are known for proper uninformed policing skills in civilian populations. The use of uninformed patrols brings about the concealing to the public when these patrols are done, by whom and where. Such kind of knowledge and sets of skills employed to the police department will automatically increase the effectiveness of policing service to the general public by maintaining peace, law and order.
The best strategies for getting the attention of job applicants for recruitment in the police department should involve effective marketing strategies. The use of social media platforms is one of the fastest ways to make crucial information travel fast vastly. Newspaper advertisements and electronic job postings are two of the ways to ensure this information reaches the target group. Newspaper advertisements are affordable, engaging and useful for targeted applicants. They mainly have a system that constructs a target profile for the target subject (Herz, 2002). Electronic job postings on interactive media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are also found to have a wide audience, engaging, digital, and less costly. With such attributes related to these methods, they are bound to be effective in transmitting such vital information to the target group.
There are several ways in which the recruitment process can use to select job applicants. One of the methods includes the use of a traditional approach which is application letters and resume. The reason why this conventional approach is effective is that it gives an equal chance to all candidates which aids in tailoring the same information and brings consistency during the short-listing step of the recruitment. Another way of selecting job applicants is panel interviews. There is a lot of advantage in using panel interviews as it allows simultaneous scrutiny of the job applicant by the panel. In that while, one member of the committee asks a question other members view body language or even the tone of the job applicant.
The panel interview allows later discussions to determine the potential of the job applicant allowing the input of several points of views. Lastly, skills and personality tests are another way of selecting target candidates. Some jobs, for instance, the police work, require one to get equipped with skills necessary for fieldwork. Skills such as physical fitness, general intellect, verbal, numerical, mechanical and sensory skills are among the key. Employing this particular method eliminates the idea of people writing great resumes stating their skills yet in real life they are poor at these skills.
It is important therefore to note to employ skills and personality tests concerning the selection of the target candidates for recruitment. The reason as stated earlier it will help weed out those of the mastery skills on a resume and determine those physically, emotionally and socially fit to join the police department. Another essential test to incorporate during the selection of these candidates is the mandatory drug tests. The importance of the drug tests is to bar those that are under the influence of drugs from getting picked as eligible candidates. The police service is all about saving human life, maintaining peace, law and order in the midst of chaos. Therefore, it is vital that those engaging in protecting the public are of sound mind and not under the influence of drugs which impair judgements.
Starting the career of law enforcement is not easy as it requires one to undergo several background checks prior recruitment. Such background checks necessary to get integrated into the selection process include education history, criminal record and employment history. Verification of information provided in the resume is through these checks. The methods that evaluate the effectiveness of the recruitment and selection process are several. The four that should get used for this selection of police recruitment candidates include the use of questionnaires, analyze the job applicant feedback from the social media platforms, screening resumes and reviewing the job description.
The use of questionnaires will aid in the collection and analysis of information vital in the assessment of the effectiveness of the recruitment process. As detailed relevant data is input to these questionnaires, updating the faults of the selection and recruitment is made easier (Birago, 2014). The use of interactive social media allows collecting user feedback which is significant to rate the appropriateness of the selection and recruitment process. Screening resumes allow the employer to sieve those target candidates with lack of either professional or educational background and left with the eligible candidates. Lastly reviewing the job description advertisements, to ensure the hiring needs are well spelt out for the target candidates. Reviewing the job description time and again ensures proper evaluation of the overall effectiveness of the selection and recruitment process.
References
Asafo-Adjei, B. (2014). An evaluation of the recruitment and selection policies and practices of the National Health Insurance Authority. A case study of the Brong-Ahafo Region (Doctoral dissertation).
Herz, F. S. (2002). U.S. Patent No. 6,460,036. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
