Common hiring practices in Ghana: Moving from common

to best practices

Seth Oppong
International Visiting Scholar
Department of Psychology
North Carolina State University (NCSU)
Pole Hall
April, 2008.
 Abstract
This paper provides an appraisal of the hiring processes in the Ghana. It starts by showing the

importance of sound hiring practices to the economy and growth of corporate Ghana. The major

hiring practices identified and discussed include psychometric testing, online recruitment,

services of recruitment agencies, work samples and employment interviews. Suggestions were

then made as to how to improve the hiring processes mentioned above. The suggestions ranged

from using more structured employment interviews, validation of psychometric tests being used

or constructing valid psychometric tests for use to ensuring that assessors employed during

assessment centres are well trained to perform their roles.

The success of any corporation hinges on the skills and appropriate use of its employees. By
extension, every country’s economy also depends on the appropriate use of its human resources
as success of its corporations aggregate to determine the overall economic growth of the country.
In this regards, any practices that relate to the appropriate use of human resources of every
economy is very crucial. That the appropriate use of human resources is crucial makes personnel
selection and placement issues also important. Personnel selection is the process by which
corporations determine the suitability of job applicants for a particular job while placement
involves the matching of successful job applicants or new hires with appropriate jobs within the
corporation. The whole process is referred to as hiring or staffing by many Ghanaian HR
directors and HR specialists. It needs to be stated that, effective hiring begins with appropriate
recruitment – the process of attracting a pool of suitable applicants or candidates from within
and/or outside the corporation for the vacant position(s).
In the rest of this article, I will elaborate on those practices that appear to be widely used or are
in vogue in corporate Ghana now and suggest ways by which corporate executives, HR directors
and HR specialists can enhance their practices where they are in need of improvement. I focus
more on the private sector where the need to maximize profit and survival dictates that
management fills jobs with qualified persons “even if they are not their cronies”. The key issue is
filling jobs with qualified persons, whether relatives or non-relatives. What are the popular
staffing processes in vogue in Ghana? These include outsourcing of recruitment to employment
agencies, online job advertisement (recruitment), mass employment testing in the area of aptitude
testing, interviews, assessment centers, and work samples. This list is not intended to be
exhaustive but rather illustrative of common hiring practices in Ghana.

What does it mean to say that the staffing operation is outsourced? It means that corporations in
Ghana now rely on fee-charging employment agencies and consultants to fill vacancies
whenever one surfaces. For instance, Axis Human Capital, L’Aine Services Ltd., Psychon H.R.
Ltd., XL Management Services Ltd., and a host of others have assisted several corporations in
fulfilling their hiring needs. Part II (Public employment centers and fee-charging employment
agencies) of Ghana’s Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) allows the establishment of such private
employment agencies. In writing this article, I did a web search at www.businessghana.com,
www.yellowpages.gh, www.business.everythingghana.com , and finally at www.ghanaweb.com.
Of the four web sites which offer online company directories in Ghana, only
www.yellowpages.gh offered the largest listings and as a result, I continued the search with its
company directory. Forty-six (46) companies were listed as employment agencies & consultants
of which 38 were located in Accra, 4 in Kumasi, 3 in Tema, and 1 in Koforidua. When I visited
the homepage of those with websites, their clientele included companies in all the major sectors
of our economy. The head counts of the employment agencies and their clientele all indicate that
Ghanaian corporations are gradually adopting outsourcing as an alternative to in-company hiring.
The reasons usually offered are that it enables the company to focus on its core competencies –
those activities at which it has superior capabilities – and that it reduces labour cost in the HR
department.
Online recruitment is also growing in popularity in Ghana. To assess its popularity, I tracked the
employment agencies with websites. I found that out of the 47 employment agencies in Ghana
listed on www.yellowpages.gh, only 16 of them owned their own websites of which some of
them were under construction; of this number only 5 offered online applications. They included
Axis Human Capital, Edwuma.com (now defunct), L’Aine Services, XL Management Services,
and Mentor Management and Eng. Consultancy (it owns www.careersghana.com). Among the
websites that offer online company directories that also advertise job vacancies are
www.businessghana.com, www.jobsinghana.com, www.jobsinghana.com, www.edwuma.com,
www.allghanadata.com, and www.ghanaweb.com. In addition, a good number of Ghanaian
companies with websites have a link for careers and jobs on their homepages. For example,
Databank Group, Price Waterhouse Coopers (Gh), Ghana Home Loans, HFC banks, National
Investment Bank, ADB, Cal Bank, Procredit Savings & Loans, Standard Charted Bank, Unique
Trust Financial Services, United Bank for Africa, World Bank Ghana Office, and Zenith Bank
Ghana. Out of this list, only Ghana Home Loans, HFC Bank, Zenith Bank, and Databank Group
permit job seekers to submit resumes online. This list and availability of job ads on the online
resources such as www.businessghana.com and www.careersghana.com, www.ghanaweb.com
all suggest the online job advertisement is now popular in Ghana.

Mass employment usually involves administering psychological tests such as aptitude, ability,
and personality tests to a large group of participants all at the same time. This may not be
anything new but it is on ascendency. It appears to be a common practice in the banking sector.
For instance, the author is aware that Department of Psychology at University of Ghana conducts
mass employment testing for Ghana Commercial Bank and Ghana Armed Forces. Mass testing is
often used in Ghana for selecting non-management employees such as recruits into Ghana Police
Service and Ghana Armed Forces. In addition, the private employment agencies organize mass
employment testing to screen job seekers whenever vacancies are reported to them by their client
organizations. It has become necessary to conduct mass employment testing for screening as a
result of the fact that there are now many qualified candidates by education standards for the jobs
available. Some people may even argue that it is a corporate response to the falling standards of
education in the country. However, the glaring truth is that there are now many graduates from
the polytechnics, public and private universities, and professional institutes chasing few
“prestigious” jobs in the country. The situation makes mass employment testing a necessary
option. This means that mass employment testing is unnecessary if your company’s selection
ratio is high – there are fewer people applying for small number of vacant positions in your
company.

Interview has been around for a long time. It has been one of the most important ways by which
Ghanaian companies have assessed the suitability of individual candidates for jobs. It is
sometimes used alone or in combination with other selection procedures. Typically, if a company
relies on the resumes for screening rather than testing they select the candidates with the best
education and greatest experience and subject them to the final hurdle, interview. Even after
mass employment testing interviews are still conducted to select the most suitable job applicant
as mass employment testing are used only for screening. Interviews are the last hurdles that job
applicants must pass to confirm their employment with any corporation. When they are used
alone it is because only a few people could apply and make to the short list or the job in question
is manual and does not require any special training other than the on-the-job-training to be
provided by co-workers or supervisors. For instance, the jobs of the operatives in the a
manufacturing corporations such as filling bottles or cans with liquid or fish flake, punching
holes, washing fresh fruits, etc don’t require any education; that is the workers under the
supervision of foremen or first-line managers (supervisors) in the production departments of
most Ghanaian manufacturing corporations only require physical strengths and proper
functioning sensory organs (vision and hearing). For factory workers, interview is not necessarily
in-depth.

Using work samples involve asking job applicants to perform a piece of work that resembles the
actual job or which is part of the actual job. This is often used by the transportation and
constructions companies. If Sonitra is hiring operators to drive their pail loader and cranes, the
best test of skills and experience is to ask the job applicant to do a test drive. And that is exactly
what they do. The test drive used by Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) in Ghana
in the assessment of individuals towards driver licensure is also work sample. It is most effective
with the so-called blue-collar jobs as in most cases such jobs do not require any high level
education. Janitorial companies usually desire to hire job applicants with little or no education.
Its white-collar job counterpart is what is called the situational exercise. In this white-collar work
sample, prospective supervisors or managers are required to respond either in writing or verbally
to organizational problems they are likely to encounter in their jobs if hired. The alternative is to
ask job applicants to tell you how they reacted in their previous jobs to situations similar to those
likely to be faced. The latter is usually part of interview process and rests on the theory that past
performance predicts future performance reliably while the former is hardly used in hiring in
Ghana it usually forms part of another hiring process called assessment centers.

Last but not the least is the use assessment centers in corporate Ghana. It is more of a process
than a place, though some corporations have particular place where they always carry out the
process. It involves the use of several trained assessors using several procedures to evaluate the
managerial potential of several job candidates. Corporations in Ghana with training schools such
as Ghana Commercial Bank, Ghana Telecom, Agric Development Bank, and Ghana Electricity
Company have the facilities that can enable them to run assessment centers in their managerial
development programs. The assessors are usually executives of the company or trained HR
specialists from the various business schools or departments of psychology. In Ghana, Uniliver is
the only corporation that the author is aware of which truly conducts assessment center or its
similitude. It is a rigorous process; this might explain why some companies scramble for the
“rejects” who fall out at the final hurdle of Unilever’s process without further assessment.
However, others like Maersk (Gh), Nestle (Gh), British-American Tobacco do something
similar. It is usually used in the selection of “hipos” – persons with high potential – into
management development programs that usually last for two years.

From common practices to best practices

Moving from common practices to best practices involves recognizing the weaknesses in the
current hiring systems and making the appropriate modifications. With regards to outsourcing, I
urge Ghanaian corporations to make a clear decision as whether they are outsourcing the entire
hiring process or the recruitment and testing aspects of the process only while retaining the right
to decide the suitability of the applicants at interviews. My recommendation is that the company
should retain the final interview process as they know which individuals can actually fit well into
the organization. This is because if personality testing is not part of the employment testing, the
testing of abilities and knowledge does not indicate the fit of job applicant’s personal tendencies
for the job. However, if management chooses to outsource completely they must compare the
cost of operating hiring in-company to the cost of outsourcing it. If the cost of in-house operation
is lower than cost of outsourcing, then the outsourcing defeats its purpose of lower cost. In doing
this analysis on return of investment, management should ensure that both in-house hiring and
outsourced hiring yield employees of comparable quality.

Conversely, if management chooses to operate the hiring in-house, then they must ensure that
they have a website with features for online recruitment (so that job seekers can submit
unsolicited resumes at any time) and online application (so that job applicants can submit
resumes for posted vacancies). This requires that the company does extensive advertisement.
This can come at little or no cost considering the fact that Ghanaian corporations usually sponsor
TV and Radio programmes; they can add their online recruitment and applications message to
their already existing advertisement contracts with the media houses. In addition, they can make
the resource available to students through periodic onsite visits to the schools or job fairs. They
can also have their websites and information about them published in student magazines. Again,
since there are websites that job seekers often visit, I recommend that the HR personnel take
keen interest in posting jobs at www.businessghana.com, www.careersghana.com, and
www.jobsinghana.com. However, online recruitment should not replace the traditional ways of
recruiting (attracting) suitable job applicants rather it should be complementary.

With respect to mass employment testing, I say that companies that have outsourced the testing
to employment agencies should demand from the consultants evidence of validity (both construct
and predictive) and reliability of the employment tests they use. Construct validity of a test refers
to whether the test measures what it is designed to measure whiles predictive validity refers to
the degree to which the test scores predict performance on the job. Reliability refers to the degree
of consistency with which the test measures a particular attribute. If a test is designed to measure
intelligence, then the test should measure intelligence and nothing more or less and that that
whatever characteristics that test measures should be predictive of success on the job. A reliable
test is the when there is a second administration the test takers should have about the same scores
they obtain during the first administration. This is where the problem is as more test users don’t
know the validity of their tests and even if they do they were not tested on Ghanaians to
determine whether the tests are applicable to the Ghanaian job seekers. What happens if one day
a group of unsatisfied job applicants sues a company for discriminative employment testing?
Lack of evidence that the employment test measures the characteristic it is designed to measure
(construct validity) and of its job-relatedness (predictive validity) can be interpreted as a
violation of Section 17 (2) of Ghana’s Constitution and Principle 6.1 of Ghana Business Code
2006 (non-binding code of ethics based on UN Compact – 10 principles) which both enjoin
corporate bodies to guide against discriminative practices in any undertaking including hiring.

To the extent that the characteristics used in the hiring decision can be shown to be unrelated to
the job for which it was used would imply that the company used non-essential characteristics
such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, age, and a host of such attributes for its hiring decisions
and therefore can be said to be guilty of discriminative employment practice. The corporation
and its consultant would need to demonstrate the job-relatedness of the test they use.
Management should rather guide against this by requesting their consultants to supply them with
evidence of the job-relatedness of the test they use whiles no one is yet thinking of employment
discriminative lawsuit against them. Such evidence is also important because it enables
management to be certain that job applicants recruited by their consultants will actually do well
on the job. I repeat that management must ask the consultants to demonstrate the job-relatedness
of the tests they use! Again, management must ensure that the consultants carrying out the
employment testing are trained in the design and use of tests. In this regard, I recommend
consultants with background in industrial/organizational psychology and education or any
consultant for whom measurement and evaluation of human attributes formed an important part
of their studies. Management should not be intimidated by consultants who would tell them
about their experience in employment testing and the fact that “big” company clients of theirs
have never demanded that; there is a difference between doing the wrong thing for a long time
without detection and doing the right thing for the same period of time. Management must insist
because it is their right to know! Similarly, if management decides on in-company mass testing
they must also establish job-relatedness of the tests and have their HR personnel trained in
measurement and evaluation of human attributes. This must be done for the same reasons that
management must demand evidence of job-relatedness of tests and skills from consultants.

Usually, interviews are unstructured and questions asked are not job-related. That is, most
interviewers ask just any question and still score interviewee’s response to the question. What
has knowledge of current affairs got to do with performing successfully as a nurse? Unless such
knowledge is an essential part of the job interviewers must not score responses to such questions.
Such questions should rather be used to calm interviewees who are nervous. In this regard,
management should use more structured interview schedules (set of questions) that are job-
related. Questions that require interviewees to demonstrate how they handled in their previous
jobs or would handle challenges that are usually part of the job they are applying are
recommended.

With the assessment centers, the only advice is that management should ensure that the corporate
executives who participate in the assessment of managerial potential of job applicants are trained
in how to conduct objective and error-free assessments. I say this because senior executives may
decide to include particular executives in the assessment as a pecks; I suggest that such
executives must still receive the training. Frame-of-reference training in which participants are
taught how to identify the spectrum of behaviors that represent the attributes of interest is
recommended. Finally, management must include external consultants as assessors; however, the
external experts should undergo the same training as the company executives serving as
assessors to develop a common frame of reference as the company executives.
I sincerely hope the recommendations offered here would truly help corporate Ghana move its
common hiring practices to the status of best practices.

Note: All comments and feedback about this paper should be directed to:
oppon.seth@gmail.com