Recruiting and Selecting
Employees
In This Section…
• Understand approaches to matching
labor supply and demand
• Weigh the advantages and
disadvantages of internal and
external recruiting
• Distinguish among the major
selection methods and use the most
legally defensible of them to provide
the best ‘fit’ for your firm
• Understand the legal constraints on
the hiring process
Human Resource Supply and
Demand
• Labor Supply
• The availability of workers with the required skills
to meet the firm’s labor demand.
• Labor Demand
• How many workers the organization will need in
the future.
• Human Resource Planning (HRP)
• The process an organization uses to ensure that it
has the right amount and the right kind of people
to deliver a particular level of output or services in
the future.
Human Resource Supply and
Demand (Cont.)
Human Resource Supply and
Demand (Cont.)
Forecasting Supply and Demand
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Quantitative Techniques rely on past data and previous
relationships between staffing and other variables
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Qualitative Techniques rely on experts’ judgments
The Hiring Process
Recruitment
Selection
Socialization
• Process of generating a pool of qualified
candidates for particular job
• Process of making a ‘hire’ or ‘no hire’ decision
regarding each applicant for a job
• Orienting new applicants to the organization
and the departments to which they will be
working
Challenges to the Hiring Process
• Determining the characteristics most important
to performance
• Measuring the characteristics that determine
performance
• The motivation factor:
• performance = ability x motivation
• Who should make the decision?
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing - Recruiting
• Sources of Recruiting
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Current employees
Referrals from current employees
Former employees
Print and radio advertisements
Internet advertising and career sites
Employment agencies
Temporary workers
College recruiting
Customers
Military
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Hiring from Within:
• Advantages
• Foreknowledge of
candidates’ strengths and
weaknesses
• More accurate view of
candidate’s skills
• Candidates have a stronger
commitment to the company
• Increases employee morale
• Less training and orientation
required
• Disadvantages
• Failed applicants become
discontented
• Time wasted interviewing
outside candidates who will
not be considered
• Inbreeding of the status quo
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Finding Internal Candidates:
Job posting
Publicizing an open job to employees (often by literally
posting it on bulletin boards) and listing its attributes.
Rehiring former employees
Advantages:
They are known quantities.
They know the firm and its culture.
Disadvantages:
They may have less-than positive attitudes.
Rehiring may sent the wrong message to current employees about
how to get ahead.
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Finding External Candidates:
•Employee referrals
•Applicants who are referred to the organization by
current employees
•Referring employees become stakeholders.
•Referral is a cost-effective recruitment program.
•Referral can speed up diversifying the workforce(but
could also cause EEO problems)
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Finding External Candidates:
•Advertising
•The Media: selection of the best medium depends on the
positions for which the firm is recruiting.
•Newspapers (local and specific labor markets)
•Trade and professional journals
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Finding External Candidates:
Recruiting via the Internet - More firms and
applicants are utilizing the Internet in the job search process
•Advantages of Internet recruiting:
•Cost-effective way to publicize job openings
•More applicants attracted over a longer period
•Immediate applicant responses
•Online prescreening of applicants
•Links to other job search sites
•Automation of applicant tracking and evaluation
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Finding External Candidates (Internet):
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Employment agencies:
• Public agencies operated by federal, state, or local
governments
• Agencies associated with nonprofit organizations
• Privately owned agencies
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Employment agencies:
•Reasons to Use:
•When a firm does not have an HR department and is not geared
to doing recruiting and screening.
•The firm has found it difficult in the past to generate a pool of
qualified applicants.
•The firm must fill a particular opening quickly.
•There is a perceived need to attract a greater number of minority
or female applicants.
•The firm wants to reach currently employed individuals, who
might feel more comfortable dealing with agencies than with
competing companies.
•The firm wants to cut down on the time it is devoting to
recruiting.
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Temporary Workers
• Benefits
• Paid only when
working
• More productive
• No recruitment,
screening, and payroll
administration costs
Costs
•Fees paid to temp
agencies
•Lack of commitment to
firm
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Recruiting a Diverse or Nontraditional Workforce
•Single parents
•Providing work schedule flexibility.
•Older workers
•Revising polices that make it difficult or unattractive for
older workers to remain employed.
•Recruiting minorities and women
•Understanding recruitment barriers.
•Formulating recruitment plans.
•Welfare-to-work
•Developing pre-training programs to overcome
difficulties in hiring and assimilating persons previously
on welfare.
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.)
Recruiting a Diverse or Nontraditional Workforce
•Minority student associations
•College organizations of students with disabilities
•Targeted radio announcements
•Professional organizations
•Minority organizations
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection
Selection tools (tests, interviews, etc.)
must meet criteria for:
•Reliability = consistency of measurement, usually
across time, but also across judges
•Validity = extent to which scores on a test, interview
or other selection process correspond to actual job
performance
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Two types of validity:
•Content validity = degree to which the content of the
selection method (test) is representative of the job content
•Empirical (criterion related) validity = The extent to
which the technique measures the intended knowledge, skill, or
ability. In the selection context, it is the extent to which scores on a
test or interview correspond to actual job performance.
•Concurrent: correlation between selection and performance when
measured at the same time
•Predictive: extent to which selection scores correlate with performance
scores when performance is measured later in time
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
A organization must be able to prove:
•That its tests are related to success or failure on the job
(validity)
•That its tests don’t unfairly discriminate against minority or
non-minority subgroups (disparate impact).
EEO guidelines and laws apply to all selection
devices, including interviews, applications, and
references.
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
•Letters of recommendation:
•Not highly related to job performance (too positive)
•Can look at traits letter writer attributes to the job candidate
•Application forms
•Ability tests:
•Cognitive
•Physical/mechanical
•Emotional intelligence
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
•Personality Tests (Big Five)
•Extraversion
•Emotional stability/neuroticism
•Openness to experience
•Agreeableness.
•Conscientiousness
•Conscientiousness most related to job performance and is a valid
indicator
•Myers-Briggs (MBTI)
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Honesty tests
•Psychological tests designed to predict job applicants’
proneness to dishonesty and other forms of counter
productivity.
•Measure attitudes regarding things like tolerance of
others who steal, acceptance of rationalizations for
theft, and admission of theft-related activities
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews:
•Most common selection tool
•Criticized for poor reliability and low validity
•Interviewers don’t agree
•Bias
•Experience is different from candidate to candidate
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – using a structured interview – based
on job analysis, job related questions and consistency
•Situational Interview Questions
•Supervisors and workers rewrite critical incidents of behavior as
situational interview questions then generate and score possible
answers as benchmark
•Job Knowledge Questions
•Assess whether or not candidate has the basic knowledge
needed to perform the job
•Worker Requirements Questions
•Assess whether or not worker is willing to perform the job
under prevailing job conditions
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask…
• Marital Status
• Inappropriate:
• Are you married?
• Is this your maiden or married name?
• With whom do you live?
• Appropriate:
• After hiring, marital status on tax and insurance forms
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask…
• Parental Status
• Inappropriate:
• How many kids do you have?
• Do you plan to have children?
Are you pregnant?
• Appropriate:
• After hiring, asking for dependent information on tax and
insurance forms
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask…
•Age
•Inappropriate:
•How old are you?
•What year were you born?
•When did you graduate from high school?
•Appropriate:
•Before hiring, asking if you are over the legal minimum age for the hours or
working conditions, in compliance with state or Federal labor laws.
•After hiring, verifying legal minimum age with a birth certificate or other ID,
and asking age on insurance forms
•National Origin
•Inappropriate:
•Where were you born?
•Where are your parents from?
•What's your heritage?
•Appropriate:
•Verifying legal U.S. residence or work visa status
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask…
Race or Skin Color
Inappropriate:
What race are you?
Are you a member of a minority group?
Appropriate:
Generally indicate equal opportunity employment.
Asking race only as required for affirmative-action programs
Religion or Creed
Inappropriate:
What religion are you?
Which religious holidays will you be taking off from work?
Do you attend church regularly?
Appropriate:
Contact religious or other organizations related to your beliefs, that you
list as employers or references
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask…
Criminal Record
Inappropriate
Have you ever been arrested?
Have you ever spent a night in jail?
Appropriate:
Questions about convictions by civil or military courts, if accompanied by a
disclaimer that answers will not necessarily cause loss of job opportunity.
Specific convictions, if related to fitness to perform the job. Generally, employers
can ask only about convictions and not arrests, except for law-enforcement and
security-clearance agencies.
Disability
Inappropriate:
Do you have any disabilities?
What's your medical history?
How does your condition affect your abilities?
Appropriate
Ask if you can perform specific duties of the job.
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Assessment Centers:
•Simulated tasks or exercises candidates (usually
managerial) are asked to perform
•Expensive, but a valid indicator
Drug Tests:
•Correlate to job performance
Meeting the Challenges of Effective
Staffing – Selection (Cont.)
Selection tools as predictors for job performance:
Reference Checks – best defense against
negligent hiring
•Background Checks - To verify factual
information provided by applicants, to uncover
damaging information
Legal Issues in Staffing
Discrimination Laws (Best Defense):
•Evidence of the validity of the selection process
•For ADA “essential job functions”
•Knowing what questions to ask and not to ask
Affirmative Action
Negligent Hiring