Human Resource Management

By Dr. Debashish Sengupta

Recruitment

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CHAPTE
R

Human Resource Management

Key Terms

Descriptive Statistical
Methods
Employability
Employer Brand
Factors Affecting
Recruitment
Inferential Statistical
Methods
Internal Factors
Political and Social
Environment
Technological Environment

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Recruitment
Recruitment is defined as a set of activities which helps in
preparing a pool of candidates from which the right
candidates can be selected. The pool must have right
match, retainable talent and must have been prepared at
minimum cost. Hiring is on a high and most sectors and
companies are looking to have more people on-board.
Blame it on the positive market indicators. But what is also
significant to note here is that - the higher attrition in these
buoyant times in the market is also playing its role in
increasing these hiring numbers. This is where hiring
assumes higher significance in todays context. Hiring is not
just about increasing headcount but also finding, attracting
and roping-in right candidates who are more retainable.
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Species of Candidates to be Avoided

Recruiting wrong candidates and then thinking
ways and means to retain them is not going to
work. Let us have a look at some species of
candidates whom recruiters should give a miss:
a. Paper Tigers: Recruiters generally weed-out
the visibly over and under qualified candidates but
they often fall into the tarp of paper tigers. These
are those candidates who have qualifications and
degrees on their resumes however lack real
knowledge and skill. They may turn turtle when it
comes to real job performance.
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b. Money Grubbers: These are candidates who

use the new job offers
to bargain with their
current employers. Such candidates shall always
show too much enthusiasm on the package even
before the selection process has begun. These
money grubbers are better avoided.
c. Ever-seekers, Never-keepers: Frequent jobhoppers are a dangerous species as although
they may have worth on paper, their loyalties shift
over-night. These candidates cannot be trusted.
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Recruitment Objectives
Recruitment, a precursor to selection has not only
been the objective of making itself more productive
but also to maximize the efficiency of the selection
process. The primary recruitment objectives are as
follows:
1. To maximize the pool of applicants so as to
provide sufficient choice at the time of selection.
However care should be taken to enlarge the pool
justifiably and to a feasible level. The pool size
should be determined keeping in mind the human
resource planning and job-analysis data.
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2. To create this pool of applicants at a minimum

cost possible. This is not to suggest cutting corners but
keeping the cost under control, always keeping an
eye on cost per hire.
3. To create a pool of applicants who are right
retainable.

and

4. To ensure that all recruitment procedure

adhere
to the policy of no discrimination against caste,
creed, ethnicity, colour of skin, language, gender etc.,
and provide an equal opportunity to all.

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5. `To ensure that the recruitment procedures and

steps have clarity, validity and consistency in
application.
6. To ensure that the recruitment policy is in line
with the legal requirements of the land and also
meets the various social obligations of the firm.
7. To train the pool of applicants so as to maximize
their chances of selection and hence improve the
success rate of the selection process.

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Various Factors Affecting Recruitment

The factors that affect recruitment can be broadly
classified into External and Internal factors.

External Factors
The factors external to firm affecting recruitment are
classified under external factors. They are:
1. Labour Demand and Supply: Demand and
supply situation of labour in the market is bound to
have an impact on the recruitment. If
the supply of
labour is in shortage, the firm tends to look within
(internal recruitment) to
fulfil its demand. Shortage
of labour may
also increase the price which a firm
is ready to pay to acquire labour from outside.
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2. Employability: The shortage is always not only in

terms of headcount but also in terms of skill-gap i.e.,
the labour largely lack the skill
required in the
industry despite being educated. This reflects lack of
employability. Skill shortage
puts additional
pressure on the recruiting firm to either make their
internal resources better for
the new roles or to
even launch training
programs for their fresh
recruits-to-be after the firm identifies them as
recruitment source but before the firm contemplates
final offers.

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3. Employer Brand: The image of the firm at large

especially in the eyes of the probable candidates
has an impact on the recruitment of the firm.
Companies with strong employer brands are able to
attract more and better candidates. Hence a strong
employer brand has a positive
impact on the
recruitment function.

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4. Political and Social Environment: Politically

the
state or regional governments are
dedicated to increase the prosperity of their
state/ region. There are companies who enter into
MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the
state/regional governments to reserve x
percentage of the total vacant positions for the
persons, domicile of the respective state/region.
The firms must honour such commitments.
Similarly, there are companies whose recruitment
is impacted by the social obligation that they feel
for themselves.

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5. Technological Environment: The rate of

technological obsolescence in a particular industry
has a direct impact on recruitment as the
recruitment function must not only find people with
new skills but also proactively keep on doing
the
same. New skills are not easy to recruit and
companies may at several times have a problem
with employability.

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6. Legal Environment: Legal considerations have

to be kept in mind while recruiting for the
firm. For
example, in India there is reservation
where a
particular percentage of the jobs are reserved for the
people belonging to the caste of people traditionally
left-out in the development
process. The
government firms must honour the
same and
private firms have limited impact of the same.

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7. Unemployment Rate: Higher unemployment

rate in a country definitely outs the supply on the
surplus side and stimulates a firm to look for
cheaper options.
8. Competitors Strategy: The companies generally
are affected by the recruitment strategy adopted by
the competing firms.

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Internal Factors
The factors specific to the firm are referred to as
internal factors. They are:
1. HRP or Not: Companies who have proper
human resource planning in place are able to do a
full forecasting and estimation of future demands
and supply of human resources. Their recruitment
is mostly proactive and targeted at fulfilling future
demands.

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2. Size of the Firm: The size of the firm also impacts

recruitment. If the size of the firm is small
then the
recruitment is mostly reactive in nature where it is mostly
targeted towards fulfilling present demands. Smaller size
firms also would look for more conservative sources of
recruitment rather than the ones which offer more costly
ones.
3. Recruitment Policy of the Firm: Every firm has its
own recruitment policy by which it determines the timing,
cost and process of recruitment that it shall follow. For
instance, the choice between internal and external
sources, e-recruitment or not, temp-hiring or not,
window shoppers or planned hires, etc.
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Sources of Recruitment
A. Internal Sources
Internal sources of recruitment relate to the
existing employees of the firm. The company may
get recruits for certain positions through transfers,
promotions, re-deployment or through successionpanning. All of them shall qualify as internal
recruits.

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B. External Sources
The external sources of recruitment may be classified
broadly under two types: the traditional and
non-traditional sources of recruitment.
a. Traditional Sources: The traditional sources
of recruitment include the following:
i.
Recruitment Advertisements: Most
common source of recruitment. However, a
company decides the reach, frequency and
consequently the cost of such ads vis--vis the
benefits accrued in terms of recruitment.
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ii. Employee Referrals: These are candidates

who are referred to the companies by their own
employees.
iii. Campuses: Freshers are often recruited from the
educational campuses. The companies have an
opportunity thus to catch the university graduates
young.
iv. Recruitment Consultants: Variety of
recruitment consultants flood the market and they
provide the firm with variable recruitment options.

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b. Non-traditional Sources
i. Boomerangers: These are those workers
who used to work for a particular firm
sometime
back,
then
left
and
are
now
eager to comeback to the fold. This may
be a win-win situation for both parties as
both
would
have
learnt
from
each
other
mistakes and also may have realized each
others value. A boomeranger is likely to
be more retainable.

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ii. Retired not Hurt: These are retired people who

have much steam left in themselves.
iii.
Re-entry Workers: These are those
categories of workers who used to work before and
left due to certain reasons but now with toughening
economic situation are eager to come back to work.
iv. Students & Housewives: Part-time workers who
are eager to make some money in their spare time
come in such forms.

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Recruitment Function

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Recruitment Process
The recruitment process starts with determination of
demand and nature of demand of human resource
i.e., number and type of people required by the firm.
An estimation of the possible sources of supply and
also the sufficiency of such sources is done to find out
whether the firm can meet its human capital needs or
not. Such activities are covered under the broad head
of human resource planning (HRP).

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Recruitment Advertisements More

than a Vacancy Announcement
Communication has that power to transform peoples
perception and ignite their energies. Mark Antonys
famous
funeral
speech
Friends,
Romans,
Countrymen in the epic play Julius Caesar by
Shakespeare is another classic example of strategic
use of communication.
Today, recruitment advertisements have changed
from a plain announcement of vacancy to a strategic
corporate communication tool. They do much more
than merely announcing a vacancy. On careful study,
it is found that recruitment advertisements use the
marketing principle of positioning.
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Career Positioning: The advantage with this type of

positioning is that the prospective applicant does not
only look at the job at hand, but is also attracted by
the career opportunities that a company promises.
Employee Positioning: Through depiction of
photographs or interviews of present employees, a
kind of image about the kind of people who work for
the company and the experiences they had working
for the company is created.

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Workplace Positioning: Todays employee does not

only look at the job or its remunerative aspects alone.
The work culture and workplace environment also
plays a critical role in decision-making. This
explains the need for workplace positioning.
Corporate Positioning: A famous detergent
advertisement of yesteryear depicted a lady quizzing
how her friends sari is whiter than her. Comparison is
at the core of human tendencies. When competitive
jobs are on offer, candidates often compare the
corporate brands and image. Hence corporate
positioning plays a crucial role.
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Recruiting the Right One

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Mimobile

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Aktwoods

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e-Recruitment Advertisements
Companies are focusing on finding more
cost-effective ways of conducting operations. Hiring is
not untouched by the same. Companies are resorting
to cost-effective hiring by using strategies like
just-in-time hiring, hiring in relatively small numbers,
etc. Experts suggest that during these times of
cost-cutting, recruitment advertisements remain a
major concern because of the cost associated with
them.

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Advantages of e-Recruitment
Advertisements
e-Recruitment
advertisements
have
certain
advantages as compared to ads in the traditional
media. Some of them are:
Reduced Costs
Research shows that e-recruitment advertisements
are 80% cheaper than newspaper advertisements
and about 10 times cheaper than hiring consultants.
According to a survey by Monster India, a job portal,
the average cost per hire using traditional media
varies from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 100000 for senior
position.
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Reduced Time to Hire

e-Recruitment advertisements can be accessed from
anywhere, anytime. They are geographically
independent, time-zone independent and ensure
independent access. The responses can also be
immediate. This speeds up the entire hiring process.
Increase Efficiency of the Process
e-Recruitment advertisements can be combined with
data warehousing and data mining tools, online
screening and testing tools, which increase the
efficiency of the process.

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SWOT Analysis of e-recruitment

Advertisements
Strengths
According to the latest data released by Internet
Governance Forum, India as on 31 March 2012 had
121,000,000 (Twelve Crore Ten Lakh) internet users,
out of its total population of 118,917,906 (nearly 119
Crore), which is 10.2% of the population. India ranks
third in the world in terms of number of internet users.
The number of Internet users has grown from about 5
million in the year 2000 to 121 million in March 2012,
which is a phenomenal growth.
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Weaknesses
While the number, 121 million Internet users looks
huge, it represents only 10.2% of the population,
which definitely is very small. In US, around 78.3%,
and in Japan 80% of the population uses the
Internet).
The number 121 million users also include occasional
Internet users. Hence the number of active Internet
users may actually be quite low.

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Opportunities
In emerging markets like India, the average annual
growth rates are
expected to be between 10-20%
in the coming few years. It is also estimated that by
2015, with more than 300 million users, India will be
ranked second in the world after China on the
parameter of Internet usage.
The recent launch of a translator that can instantly
translate an English webpage or document into 47
Indian regional languages will definitely attract many
more users.
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Threats
Lack of awareness of Internet as a medium
among a large section of the population.
Overall low comfort level with the English
language, especially in smaller cities and villages.
The number of cyber cafes in the country has
come down due to tightened security measures
and thinner profit margins. (IMRB international).

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Social Media Recruitment

Social Media is revolutionising the world in a big way
and recruitment is not untouched by the same.
Companies are using the Web 2.0 applications
including social media/networking sites (Face book,
Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn, MySpace), blogs, podcasts
(Podcast Alley, iTunes), video sharing sites (YouTube,
Ted, FlickR), mobile apps etc for recruiting people.
Social Media recruitment not only widens reach but
helps segmentation, targeting and positioning of
potential job seekers.

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Defining RPO
What talent acquisition activities are organizations
referring to when they say they use RPO? Our study
found a general consensus that RPO is the selective
outsourcing of some recruiting activities. Results
reveal that 73 percent of responding organizations
believe that RPO is the outsourcing of some or most
recruiting processes, while only 16 percent define
RPO as the outsourcing of all recruiting activities for,
at least, some levels of employees

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Why Use RPO?

Now that we know how users define RPO, the next

question is: Why do they use RPO? It is unlikely that
the decision to turn over parts of such a key talent
management process (recruiting) to a third-party
service provider is taken lightly.

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What Recruiting Practices Drive RPO

Today?
Before determining the specific recruiting practices
included in most RPO programs today, we sought to
discover which practices organizations viewed as
most critical. Figure 5.9 clearly shows that most
organizations agree or strongly agree that all of the
major practices presented are important. Even the
lowestranked practice - permanent hiring services was viewed by most respondents as 21 critical part of
their talent acquisition program.

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Linking Strategic Priorities and

Recruiting Practices
Strategy & Analysis
Talent strategy development/consulting, employer
branding, talent research, and measuring success of
recruitment process (metrics)
Tactical

Recruiting: Active recruiting, passive

recruiting, and applicant tracking management.
Skill-based: Skill training and skill assessment.
Staffing Services: Permanent hiring services and
temporary and contingent staffing services.

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RPO - Challenges and Opportunities

Results from the survey point to key challenges in the
use of RPO in the future. The first challenge is the
need to address strategic, rather than tactical,
priorities with RPO. Three recruiting practices that
comprise the core of a strategic approach to talent
acquisition - talent strategy development/consulting,
employer branding, and measuring success of
recruitment process (metrics) - currently are the least
likely practices to be outsourced.

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Conclusion
Our study confirms the findings of other recent
reports on RPO (Recruitment Process
Outsourcing). For most organizations, RPO
means the outsourcing of selected recruiting
activities for selected levels of employees - the
definition used by 73 percent of our surveys
respondents, Given that definition, we found that
RPO is an important component of most talent
acquisition processes today, with 59 percent of
organizations currently outsourcing some or all of
their recruiting services.
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