Human resources are the heart of a company’s operations and success. The global competitive market today creates a need for companies to ensure they manage their human resources to the best. Human resource management is the department in a firm that operates to manage personnel in an organization. Human resource management involves the functions of recruiting and selecting employees, orientation and induction to the selected employees, training and development, and managing their welfare in terms of safety, health and compensation (Lussier & Hendon, 2012) . The process of recruitment and selection should be strategic to ensure that skilled employees are taken on board and to maintain a human resource base that meets the objective of the firm.
A. Factors affecting Supply and Demand for Police Officers
Factors influencing Labor Demand
Human resources can sometimes prove to be hard to identify and trace in the job market. There are internal and external factors that influence this situation for any firm. In the city police department, the factors affecting the labor demand include high retirement rates, crime in the city, and poor job outlook.
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There is need to recruit more officers because of the average age of the current officers at work. The average age in the department is 45 years, therefore , in the next five years, most of the officers will be eligible for retirement. According to the memo, 24% of the current police force will be retiring. There is a demand to hire more officers to replace the retiring personnel.
The city mayor, in his manifesto, promised to increase the number of police patrols to reduce the crime level in the city. The current police department is low on personnel making it hard to achieve this objective with ease. However, increasing the working hours of the current officers brought some controversies on their wage rates due to the excess overtime pay. This situation in the city and the department poses a high demand for police officers to help increase patrols in the city without having to increase labor hours.
Job outlook refers to the expected rates of growth or decline in employment in an occupation over a certain period. The job outlook for the state’s police department is very poor, therefore , in a particular period, there will be a shortage of police officers. A shortage of police officers coupled with the need to improve security in the state, influence the demand for the officers.
Factors influencing Labor Supply
The state has a low supply for qualified police officers due to economic, social, and climatic factors. One factor that is affecting labor supply is the high cost of living in the state making it very hard for people to stay in the state. The cost of living does not attract many people to the state; it is one of the reasons for high out-migration in the state. When many people migrate to other states, the supply of qualified officers is very low.
The climatic conditions of the state also affect the supply of labor in the state. The climate is characterized by cold and harsh winters and very warm summers. These climatic conditions make most people leave the state without returning especially those who go to seek education in other states.
Education levels in the state are low due to the high tuition fees in the private and public tertiary institutions. Most people will migrate to other states to seek education and most of them do not come back to our state. The low education levels affect the supply of labor.
B. Recruitment Plan
Recruitment Objectives
The core recruitment objective of the state’s police department is to locate and encourage qualified applicants to apply for the vacancies in the city police department. Another objective is to ensure that we recruit the highly qualified applicants to meet the objectives of the department. We also wish to recruit the best applicants to improve the job outlook of the police department and improve the retainment level of this personnel .
Recruitment Strategy
| Target Group | Application | Hiring Decision and Offer | Hired Yield Ratio (Number of Hired officers/Number of Applicants) | Target application pool | Application Pool |
| Military Police |
5 |
4 |
60% |
12% |
15 |
| Corrections Officer |
9 |
2 |
11% |
21% |
3 |
| Security Guard |
14 |
3 |
0% |
33% |
0 |
| Criminal Justice Graduate |
10 |
7 |
50% |
23% |
13 |
| Other police department |
5 |
4 |
80% |
12% |
20 |
| Total |
43 |
20 |
50 |
The hired yield ratio indicates the potentially viable candidates in each group that get the job (Bach & Edwards, 2013) . Using this ratio, the application pool that will produce 25 viable candidates is fifty applicants from the different target groups. We will need 15 applicants in the military police, 3 applicants from the correction officers, 13 applicants from criminal justice graduates, and 20 from other police departments. This application poll will enable the police department to hire twenty-five viable job offer-ready candidates.
Military police and other police departments offer the highest hired yield ratio hence we should target these groups the most. We can get approximately thirty-five viable applicants from these two groups, which is above the required amount of hires.
Recruitment methods:
| Target Group | Recruitment Methods |
| Military Police |
Placement on electronic job postings for military personnel – the high use of technology will help reach a large application pool. Employee referrals – involves using the management to recommend the most viable candidates. |
| Corrections Officer |
Placements on electronic job postings - Social sites have the platforms to advertise job vacancies. Newspaper ads – putting up adverts on the job vacancy section of the most used newspaper. |
| Security Guard |
Placement on electronic job postings - the high use of technology will help reach a large application pool. Newspaper ads - putting up adverts on the job vacancy section of the most used newspaper. |
| Criminal Justice Graduate |
Placements on electronic job postings - Social sites have the platforms to advertise job vacancies. The high use of technology will help reach a large application pool. College career fairs – career fairs in different colleges will help meet viable candidates for the job. It is also a fast method of recruitment. |
| Other police departments |
Placement on electronic job postings - the high use of technology will help reach a large application pool. Social sites have the platforms to advertise job vacancies. Employee referrals |
Selection Plan
Selection Methods
Selection is the process of choosing the right candidates for the job based on their qualifications. The most appropriate selection methods for the police department are:
Application forms and CV review
Interviewing
Test administration
Application forms and CVs will be quite a number since we will use online postings and other recruitment methods that require these documents during application. Reviewing these documents will help shortlist the most qualified candidates for the job. Since this method is usually not very effective as candidates can tailor their applications to suit the job, we will then use structured interviews to select the best out of the shortlisted candidates from the review process (Bach & Edwards, 2013) .
Structured interviews are more involving and allow interviewers to gauge the qualification and viability of a candidate to the job. Using well-structured questions that can help assess and evaluate qualifications will help get the best results from the interview. Interviews will help interact one on one with the shortlisted candidates to get a better and more qualified pool of applicants.
A police officer is an occupation that requires much more to skills and experience. The attributes, abilities, aptitudes, and personality of a candidate are important in the job. The health status and social background of the candidate also play a major role in the viability of a candidate for the police occupation. Test administration, therefore , is an important selection technique that will help get a pool of candidates that have the right qualifications for the job in terms of qualifications and the above tests qualifications.
Selection Tests
Background and drug tests
The background tests provide information on the criminal history, credit check, and social status of a candidate while the drug tests assess the use of illegal drugs and any drug-related problems.
These tests will be done after the interviews with the shortlisted candidates.
Personality tests
These tests measure the personal characteristics of a candidate that relate to the applied job performance. We will measure the emotional stability and intelligence, integrity levels, thoroughness, socializing ability, and cautiousness.
This test will be done after the interview together with the background and drug tests.
Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Recruitment and Selection Plans
Time-to-Fill Analysis
The time it takes to fill the vacancies will help evaluate the effectiveness of the recruitment and selection plans. If the time-to-fill is very high or very low, the plan may have a problem or may have been rushed, respectively. An average time-to-fill is the most effective as it allows for the full application of the plans to maximize benefits (Caswell, 2015) .
Internal Satisfaction
The internal control system of the organization should be happy with the plan. Stakeholders and the management can be a great source of assessing the effectiveness of the recruiting and selection plans (Caswell, 2015) .
Retention rates
The length of time that a candidate stays in the job position will determine the effectiveness of the two plans.
Cost-benefit analysis
The recruitment process can be quite expensive therefore assessing the cost of the process against the quality of job performance can help assess the effectiveness of the two plans.
References
Bach, S., & Edwards, M. (2013). Managing Human Resources: Human Resource Management in Transition. Hoboken: Wiley.
Caswell, A. (2015, October). 6 Key Metrics to Measure the Success of your Recruiting Process . Retrieved May 7, 2018, from Recruiter: https://www.recruiter.com/i/6-key-metrics-to-measure-the-success-of-your-recruiting-process/
Lussier, R., & Hendon, J. (2012). Human Resource Management: Functions, Applications, Skills Development. Sage Publications.
