Home

The Employment Office
Must Find the Right People to help
Propel the Organization to Success

It must recruit the right people in terms of qualifications, competence and skills, experience and personality.

The selected candidate must fit the vacant job.

Simply put, the recruitment must identify an employee who is the right person who can perform the job and the job is the right one for the employee. The aim is to ensure that there is no or little disagreement between the two. Your Human Resource recruitment plan is intended to achieve this every time.

We can only understand 'the right job' in its relation to its objectives that can assist in attaining the strategic plan of the organization. The job exists for a certain defined purpose beneficial to the organization and no other.

It is because of this that organizations cannot change the basis or objective of creating the job.

When you make adjustment to the job requirements to fit the employee, he or she is not satisfying the reason or reasons why the job exists. If alteration is made, this does not help your organization in attaining its objectives. The two are pulling in opposite direction.

When you are forced to change the requirements and aims of the job to fit the employee, it indicates that your recruiter had failed to identify the right person during the interview.

If this happens, the recruitment was a waste of time, effort and money.

Your organization may have to spend more money in training the new employee. If he or she proves un-trainable, that is, he or she cannot effectively learn the 'nuts and bolts' of the job, you are stuck with a person who is not contributing at all to the objectives of your organization.

The employment office has failed to satisfy the organization's actual needs.

Positioning of the Employment Office
When we refer to the employment office as the recruiter, then he or she is either positioned in the Human ResourceDepartment or the Administration Department or Corporate Affairs Department in some organization.

It is preferable that this important position is placed in the HR Department. The employment office is normally one of the sections under the supervision of the Human Resource Manager.

Some organizations refer to this office as the 'recruitment section.'

Line managers may carry out the function in the absence of the recruitment office or they are allowed to sit as panel members in the recruitment and selection interview.

In the public sector, employment is the responsibility of the public service commission, an independent government agency. It conducts recruitment for the entire civil service.

In a federalized system, the federal public service commission engages people for the federal public service. Individual state's service commission looks after the needs of the state's civil service.

In most Organizations,
the Human Resource Management Department
is given the Task of Looking for the Right People

The Recruiting Manager ensures that recruitment exercises are carried out properly.

The Training Manager manages the competency, skill and development needs of employees and the organization.

The Compensation Manager looks into staff motivation and retention strategies.

And the Industrial Relations Manager helps in the management of relations between the organization and union or unions.

In the public sector, Government departments do have their own respective human resource department. They look after all other activities under the HR function other than recruitment.

There is a movement away from personnel management to human resource management.

Organizations have started to adopt strategic recruitment in finding the right candidates to fill vacant jobs. They have come to realize the crucial importance of having the right people.

Subsidiaries may employ other employees but always subject toneeds, immediate and future, and the existing policies and standards applicable to the group.

It can happen that the recruitment function is decentralized to strategic business units (SBUs). Here the human resource department provides 'internal consultancy' services to the SBUs. It must have this capability.

Outsourcing the Recruitment Function
Some organizations outsource the recruitment activities.

The Employment Office or Recruiting Section can continue to exist. When the recruitment function is outsourced, one of the main responsibilities of the employment office is to effectively manage the outsourcing contract.

It is true that in outsourcing the recruitment is carried out by professionals but these are third party professionals. They may not have the right in-depth understanding of your organization's employee needs.

The advantage is that they can exercise impartiality and can make recommendations without any emotional attachment.

However, remember that it does not mean that the recruitment agency will recommend the right candidate every time. It is essential that the employment office sees to it that the objective of the recruitment function is achieved every time and all the time.

Effectiveness of the Employment Office
The recruitment section plays a very important role in ensuring that the employee needs of the organization is satisfied.

It follows that the following must exist:

• capability in terms of manpower, budget, systems and procedures to carry out the responsibility of looking after the staffing needs of the organization
• competencies and skills of employees in the section (competence and professionalism)
• understanding of every job and how the job objectives fit into the strategic plan of the organization
• knowledge of the current knowledge and skills of every employee in the organization (skills inventory) to determine the types of skills and development needs required and thus the need for new people with such skills
• recruitment tools such as manuals and guidelines

The recruitment exercise is the first important step in planning for your organization's success.

Once you have recruited the right people, all other plans will or must fall into place.

Ask: "How can the employment office carry out its function effectively in order to contribute to the actual needs of my organization in terms of the number and quality of employees, skills, competencies and capability that can drive productivity?"

It is only when the skills and knowledge gap between the person and the job is bridged can we say that the employment office had played its role well and had contributed positively to the future progress and development of the organization.

To Home Page