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CHAPTER 8:
STAFFING

Staffing
• Staffing
– Process of recruiting & selecting prospective employees
– Has significant impact on organization’s bottom line
• Requires staffing process to become strategically focused
– Recruitment & selection activities offer organization numerous choices to find & select new employees
– Staffing decisions need to ensure employees fit organization’s culture
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Recruiting
• Temporary versus permanent employees
– Increase headcount temporarily or permanently should be strategically-driven
– Basis for decisions is HR forecast
– Temporary employees less costly
– Temporary headcount increases can be obtained from specialized agencies
– Headcount increases can be avoided by subcontracting work
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Exhibit 8-1
Advantages & Disadvantages of Internal &
External Recruiting
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Recruiting
• When & how extensively to recruit
– When do recruiting efforts need to begin?
– How large an applicant pool needed?
– Data from past recruiting efforts utilized
• To answer questions where feasible
• Adjust for changed conditions
• Yield ratios
– Offer information on how many applicants eliminated/remain at each step in recruitment process
– Can determine proper or necessary size of applicant pool
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Exhibit 8-2
Recruiting Pyramid
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Exhibit 8-3
Recruiting Timeline
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• Informally or formally
• Internally or externally
• Targeted advertising in selected media
• Recruiting on Internet
• Outsourcing to staffing agencies
• Private Industry Councils (PICs)
• Executive search firms
• On-campus recruiting
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Recruiting on Internet
• One of fastest-growing recruitment methods
• More cost-effective than newspaper advertising
• Low cost, speed, & ability to target applicants with technical skills
• Allows applicants to assess interests & needs with employer’s offerings
• Global exposure to potential applicants
• Can cut search process time by as much as 75%
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– Ensuring security
– Viruses
– Access to unauthorized areas
– Disparate impact against certain protected classes
– Can complicate reporting of data related to compliance with federal & state laws
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– Consistency of measurement
– Screening criteria should elicit same results in repeated trials across time & evaluators
– Reliability influenced by criterion deficiency & contamination errors
– Reliability is prerequisite for validity
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– Degree to which what is assessed is related to actual performance
– Ability to establish job-related validity is crucial to employers in defending themselves in discrimination allegations
– Content validity illustrates that measure or criterion is representative of actual job content or knowledge
– Criterion (empirical) validity demonstrated by relationship between screening criteria & job performance
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Interviewing Process Issues
• Who should be involved?
– Prospective supervisors, peers, subordinates
• Which interview format?
– Individual or group interviews
• Common interviewer errors
– Similarity errors
– Contrast errors
– First impression
– Halo errors
– Personal biases
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Behavioral Interviewing
• Used with experienced & inexperienced applicants
• Asks about situations candidate is likely to face on job
• Candidates can present real-life situations they were involved in & how they handled them
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• Work sample tests
– Ask applicant to complete representative sample of actual work
• Trainability tests
– Measure
• Aptitude in certain areas
• Ability to understand critical job components that firm will teach new hires
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• Realistic job previews
– Make applicants aware of both positive & negative aspects of job
– Decrease likelihood new employee will become dissatisfied
– Increase likelihood of candidate’s self-selecting out of position
• Personality testing is useful in anticipating how applicants are likely to behave
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Exhibit 8-4
The Big Five Personality Dimensions
Personality Dimension
1) Extraversion
2) Agreeableness
3) Conscientiousness
4) Emotional stability
Characteristics of Person Scoring
Positively on Dimension
Outgoing, talkative, social, assertive
Trusting, good-natured, cooperative, soft-hearted
Dependable, responsible, achievement-oriented, persistent
Relaxed, secure, unworried
5) Openness to experience Intellectual, imaginative, curious, broad-minded
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Other Testing Methods
• Personality testing
– Useful to anticipate how applicants likely to behave
– Few, if any, jobs require specific personality type
– Have been successfully challenged in court
• Physical testing
– Restricted under ADA to testing only for specific critical job-related physical performance requirements
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Other Testing Methods
• Honesty testing
– Declined since passage of Polygraph Protection
Act in 1988
• Drug testing
– Challenged in courts as invasion of privacy
• References
– Little information available due to former employer fears of liability for libel, slander & defamation
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Selection for International Assignments
• Reasons for failure on international assignments
– Interpersonal & acculturation abilities
– Rarely technical skills
• Test employees’ adaptability, openmindedness, ability to tolerate uncertainty
& ambiguity & independence
• Interview & screen family members who would accompany employee
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Exhibit 8-4
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Reading 8.1
Hiring for Organization, Not Job
• New model of selection geared toward hiring
“whole” person who fits into organization’s culture
• “Strong situation”
– Intensity of situation suppresses variation in behavior attributable to person
• “Weak situation”
– Allows range of employee responses to work requirements
• In organizations that are “weak situations”
– More important to do good job of hiring right people
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Reading 8.1
Hiring Process for Person-Organization Fit
• Assess overall work environment
– Job analysis
– Organizational analysis
• Infer type of person required
– Technical knowledge, skills & abilities
– Social skills
– Personal needs, values & interests
– Personality traits
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Reading 8.1
Hiring Process for Person-Organization Fit
• Design “rites of passage” for organization entry that allow both organization and applicant to assess their fit
– Tests of cognitive, motor & interpersonal abilities
– Interviews by potential coworkers & others
– Personality tests
– Realistic job previews, including work samples
• Reinforce person-organization fit at work
– Reinforce skills & knowledge through task design & training
– Reinforce personal orientation through organization design
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Reading 8.1
Potential Benefits & Problems with Hiring for Person-Organization Fit
• Potential benefits
– More favorable employee attitudes
– More desirable individual behaviors
– Reinforcement of organizational design
• Potential problems
– Greater investment of resources in hiring process
– Relatively undeveloped & unproven supporting selection technology
– May be difficult to use full model where payoffs are greatest
– Lack of organizational adaptation
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Reading 8.2
Reasons for Expatriate Early Departure
• Not performing job effectively
48.4%
• Received other, more rewarding offer (other co.) 43.7%
• Expatriate or family not adjusting
• Expatriate or family missing home
• Received more rewarding offer (current co.)
• Unable to adjust to deprived living standards
36.6%
31.0%
17.2%
10.3%
• Concerned with problems of safety & health
• Believed children’s education was suffering
10.3%
7.1%
• Feared assignment would slow career advance 7.1%
• Spouse wanted career
• Compensation package inadequate
6.1%
0.0%
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Reading 8.3
Frequently Mentioned Obstacles to Global
Staffing System
• Legal requirements across countries/regions
• Education system across countries/regions
• Economic conditions across countries/regions
• Ability to acquire & use technology
• Labor market variations
• Value differences across cultures
• Availability of off-the-shelf translated tools
• Level of HR experience varies across regions
• Role of HR in hiring varies across regions
• Familiarity with a tool or practice varies
• Misperceptions that something is a cultural difference
• Limited local resources for implementation
• Beliefs about whether a global system is US-centric or imposed
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Reading 8.3
Frequently Mentioned Benefits to Global Staffing
System
• Global database of qualified talent
• Quick identification of candidates to meet needs of specific location
• Provision of consistent message about company to candidates worldwide
• Quality of all hires is ensured
• Better understanding of country/regional needs by all
HR
• Global succession planning is enabled
• Global HR personnel have access to the latest versions of products/tools
• Shared vision of HR globally
• Comparisons of staffing results across locations
• Global database as internal benchmark of achievement in different parts of world
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