Strategize your Recruitment Process to get the Right Person for the Right Job

Empowering People to Drive Productivity

People in-charge of employment activities play important roles in staffing activities. Recruitment and retention are too important to leave to chance.

Employment of new employees is done for reasons such as follows:

• An important job has fallen vacant
  
• Your organization has just undergone a re-organization whereby new employees or new skills and talents are urgently required
  
• Your organization has amalgamated with another company
  
• Your organization is venturing into a new business
  
• You are adopting a new approach to human resource management
  
• You are extending the area of operations of your present activities
  

Executives positions are critical positions. Effective interviewing will help you identify the right candidate for these jobs. Search for the right executive.

Chief Executive Officers can either lead organizations to success or down the drain. Getting the right candidate and offering the right terms of appointment are important considerations. See to it that CEO contract of employment is well prepared.

Employment of the right people is closely related to your organization's success.

Recruitment Strategy
You need a strategic plan in order to find and select the right people.

Do the following.

• Carry out a regular inventory of the employment needs of every department, division and section in your organization. Carry out this exercise at least once a year. This provides you with information on the immediate and the short-term needs for additional manpower. This is "manpower needs analysis."
  
• Gather information from your organizational strategic plan. You will find information on the need for additional people and the most likely areas for deployment.
  
• Scrutinize management decisions and interpret them in terms of manpower management and the needs for additional manpower.
  
• Keep abreast of new developments in the industry in which your organization is in, the prevailing market conditions and what competitors are doing. You may need to create new positions.
  

Alertness to important matters occurring within your organization and those in the external environment is essential. This will enable you to review your plan.

For example, during an economic downturn, what are the positions that will become priorities to fill or what are the new positions needed to face the serious situation that the organization finds itself in? Do you stop recruiting for the time being?

What are some of the strategies you can adopt during hard times or for the long-term?

Keeping up-to-date will assist you to take pro-active action.

Always identify the key positions in your organization and ensure that your recruitment strategy can identify the right people for these strategic positions.

You may to redeploy people or recruit new ones. Take steps to ensure the right people are deployed to carry out the duties and responsibilities of strategic positions. These people play crucial roles in your organization's success.

To ensure that every aspect of the HR function are closely inter-related conduct a human resource audit. This plays a crucial role in HR planning. This can strengthen HR as the link to better organizational performance.

Book resource for attracting and keeping your most talented people which is crucial to success.

The Job Interview
An effective interview ensures that you obtain all the essential information that you need to make sound decision in the selection process.

Make adequate preparation for it in accordance with your plan.

Get ready the interview questions based on the job description and job specification. In this way, you will not miss any important matter.

Do you hold the position of Human Resource Manager? If so, you determine the way the interview is conducted.

The other panel members need to play their respective role in order to identify the right candidate. This is especially true if candidates are being interviewed to fill vacancies in their own department or section.

Asking the shorted-listed candidates the right questions will reveal the candidates' suitability for the job. Asking the wrong questions is not only wasteful but it may result, in some countries, in legal suits.

Emotion and irrelevant factors sometimes creep in. Try not to give way to such temptations.

Where necessary, remind the other interview panel members of the true objective of the exercise.

It is necessary to ask the right questions in order to ensure that you get the right information about job applicants.

Job analysis helps you in identifying important aspects of the job. You can use this information to improve and update job descriptions and job specifications.

Do this before every major recruitment exercise.

Selecting the Right Candidate
Identifying the right person for the job at the outset is a sound recruitment strategy.

Competent employees require minimum supervision which can save you valuable time that you can use to perform other tasks. These employees usually do not pose many problems to organizations.

Select a candidate based on the qualification, experience, competence and other attributes required for the job.

For example, female employees have their unique roles in organizations.

Information on the selection process with all the guides that you need is found in your employee recruitment and selection policy.

If there is none, take immediate action to prepare one, have it vetted by senior management, and submit for your board's approval.


Appointment Process
Once the right candidate is identified and selected, prepare the appointment letter as soon as possible. Do not delay this beyond one month.

Select a "reserved candidate" in case the prospective new employee rejects the offer or leaves soon after accepting the offer.

Obtain the agreement of the other panel members on the reserved candidate(s) and have this put on record. This will avoid any disagreement that may arise.

Immediately after the candidate is chosen, issue the appointment letter or prepare the employment contract.
Click here for info on "Sample Appointment Letter"
For a "Sample Employment Contract" click here


Job Re-Assignment
Even with all the preparation, it may sometimes occur that the new employee does not truly fit into the job.

You may decide to re-assign him or her to a different but equivalent job. But do this with care.

By doing this, every employee will contribute to the productivity of your organization.

What Happens to Unsuccessful Candidates?
You have selected the best among many good applicants.

Have the names of the "shortlisted good candidates" entered into your database. You may want to get in touch with some of them when the needs arise in future.

Officially inform candidates who have not been selected as well as applicants who were not short-listed.

This shows the efficiency of your organization. This creates a good impression of a good employer. The applicants will remember your organization and will try their luck again.

Review of Employment Policy and Process
As "an employer of choice", you can attract the right candidate for your vacant jobs.

A well-drafted employment policy can ensure that this happens. In this way, the human resource function contributes to organizational productivity.

If you are the Human Resource Manager, you may want to review your recruitment policy at regular intervals. Line managers and your HR people can assist you with this review.

When you do this you will ensure the effectiveness of your policy, allowing you to find people who have the right qualities to perform well on the job.

Not every person will stay on. If people leave conduct an Exit Interview with a view to improving all relevant aspects of the organization.

You may need some indication on the state of the organization's working environment. Click here for findings on "Workplace Barometer Research" conducted by Chandler Macleod and AHRI


Head-start in Implementing Strategic Human Resource System
There are organizations who fail to conduct their recruitment activities well. The interview panel asks the wrong or irrelevant questions. This is a waste of valuable time, effort and money. It can lead to legal suits.

It is good sense to avoid doing this.

Recruit the right person for the right job from the beginning. It is restated here that this is one of the very important activities under the Human Resource function.

Custom Search

To Home Page