Recruitment and Selection
Session 7 - February 26
“What’s difficult about hiring people?”
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Suppose you work for a company and in
charge of hiring new employees.
Consider these problems:
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What if you somehow you don’t seem to attract
the right employees (or too few)?
What kind of questions to ask during an
interview? Applicants only give socially desirable
answers: they are team players, hard working etc.
Agenda
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Recruitment
Selection
Difference Recruitment and Selection
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Recruitment: the process through which the
organization seeks applicants for potential
employment.
Selection: the process by which the
organization attempts to identify applicants
with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities
and other characteristics that will help the
organization to achieve its goals.
Recruitment
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Recruitment is necessary to:
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Fill vacancies created by departures (vacancy chain)
Staff new positions generated by growth
Recruitment however may not be perfectly matched
to positions available
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Analysis of labor needs (HR planning) and over-recruit
current situation
Recruit when openings occur
Promote internally
Recruiting Yield Pyramid
50
100
150
200
1,200
New Hires
Offers Made (2 : 1)
Candidates Interviewed (3 : 2)
Candidates Invited (4 : 3)
Leads generated (6 : 1)
Yield Ratios
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Applied to screened 6:1
Screened to interviewed 4:3
Interviewed to offered 3:2
Offered to accepted 2:1
Overall yield ratio
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144:6 or 24:1 or 1200:50
Yield Ratio
How many will be hired in a pool of 300
applicants? Is this pool size enough if there are
three vacancies?
 Different sources may have different yield
ratios
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Evaluating Recruiting Sources
Table 5.3
Your Experience?
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How did you learn about your current or past job?
a. Advertisement in newspaper
b. Referral from friend or relative
c. Internet search
d. Signs posted on workplace or elsewhere
e. Called by a recruiter
f. Other
Pros and Cons
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Referrals
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Eases burden on recruitment process and cheap
Likely to have a better fit
Con: sometimes associated with nepotism
Advertising in newspapers
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Large pool of applicants, which can make
selection process complex.
Difficult to target to particular segments.
Pros and Cons
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Online recruiting
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Cheap and can be done either on the company’s
website or at a career website (e.g.
Monster.com.hk)
But may be difficult to target to particular types
of applicants
For more specific target groups:
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Executive search firms (headhunters)
Universities
Agenda
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Recruitment
Selection
Selection
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Will provide information that is reliable and
valid and can be generalized to apply to the
organization’s group of candidates
Should measure characteristics that have
practical benefits for the organization
Must meet legal requirements in effect where
the organization operates
MGTO 121 Revisited!
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Decision-making biases
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Halo effect
Horn effect
Contrast effect
Similarity-attraction
Primacy and recency effects
All these biases could affect personnel
selection
Some solutions to assessment bias
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Three different approaches of solution based
on different definitions of bias have been
proposed
Unqualified individualism
 Quota
 Qualified individualism
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Unqualified Individualism
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Use test to select the most qualified individuals they
could find
The goal is to predict those who would perform best
on the job or in school
If race or gender was a valid predictor of performance,
the unqualified individualist would see nothing wrong
with using these variables for assessment and
selection
Quota
Explicitly equalizing race and gender
differences
 Population has 20% minority groups, then
20% of the employees or students must be
from the minority groups
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Qualified Individualism
Compromise between unqualified
individualism and quota
 It selects the best qualified people
 But it does not take information about race,
gender, and religion into consideration for
assessment and selection
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Legal Issues: Equal Opportunity
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Qual.
Core Principle: Recruitment and selection need to be
undertaken without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin.
Applicants with better qualifications should have a higher
chance of getting the job.
Qual.
Female
Qual.
Male
Female
Male
DISCRIMINATION
Male
Female
REVERSE
DISCRIMINATION
AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION ?
Example: Johnson case
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Both Paul Johnson and Diane Joyce applied for the
position of road dispatcher, a job dominated by
males.
Both had about 4 years of work experience, but
Diane Joyce’s experience was a bit more recent.
Paul Johnson scored 75 on an graded oral interview,
Diane Joyce scored 73.
Diane Joyce got the job, and Paul Johnson claimed
reverse discrimination.
Court ruled it was lawful because never before had a
woman held the position of road dispatcher.
Equal Opportunities Commission
(EOC) in Hong Kong
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Established in 1996
Goals
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To work towards the elimination of discrimination on the
grounds of sex, marital status, pregnancy, disability and
family status.
To eliminate sexual harassment, and harassment and
vilification on the ground of disability.
To promote equality of opportunities between men and
women, between persons with and without a disability and
irrespective of family status
Equal Opportunities Commission
(EOC) in Hong Kong
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EOC implements three Ordinances to achieve
these goals
Sex Discrimination Ordinance Full text
 Disability Discrimination Ordinance Full text
 Family Status Discrimination Ordinance Full text
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Some of the laws are highly relevant to the HR
context
Relevant sections SDO: S7, S8, S11, S12, S13, S18, S19, S20, S23, S24.
Relevant sections DDO: S11, S12, S13, S18, S 19, S20, S22, S23, S83.
Relevant sections FSDO: S8, S9, S14, S15, S16, S20.
Interviews
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Nondirective interview
 The interviewer has great discretion in choosing
questions to ask each candidate
Structured interview
 Consists of a predetermined set of questions for the
interviewer to ask
Interview Types
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Situational interviews
 The interviewer describes a situation likely to arise on the
job, then asks the candidate what he or she would do in that
situation
Behavior description interview
 The interviewer asks the candidate to describe how he or
she handled a type of situation in the past.
Pros and cons of each?
Interviewing
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Advantages
 Can provide evidence of communication and interpersonal
skills
 Most valid when they focus on job knowledge and skills.
Disadvantages
 Can be unreliable
 Low on validity
 Costly
 Subjective/biased
How Organizations Select Employees
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Multiple Hurdles
 Establishing a minimum score for each employment test
thereby gradually narrowing the candidates down
 Example, passing scores are:
 Math test - 70%
 Conscientiousness test - 90%
 Interview - 80%
 Applicant A: Math 80%, Conscientiousness, 92%,
Interview 85% = Eligible to Hire?
 Applicant B: Math 60%, Conscientiousness, 95%, Interview
95% = Eligible to Hire?
Selection at Goldman Sachs
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“It begins in the recruitment process, long before a
formal offer is extended. Brains are not enough. The
first couple of interviews determine whether a
candidate meets the firm’s intellectual standards; the
remainder, where far more candidates stumble, are
used to determine “fit”. It is a grueling process that
tests endurance as well as aptitude. Those candidates
who do not evince a scorching ambition, total
commitment, and an inclination for teamwork are
quickly weeded out”.
From: Endlich, L. (1999), Goldman Sachs: The
Culture of Success. New York: Simon and Schuster.
How Organizations Select Employees
 Compensatory
approach
 Scores on all predictors are added together, allowing a higher
score on one predictor to offset a lower score on another
predictor.
 Example, Total points must equal 200:
 Applicant A: Math 60, Conscientiousness 100, Interview
90 = 250 points
 Applicant B: Math 95, Conscientiousness 75, Interview
80 = 250 points
 Applicant C: Math 50, Conscientiousness 65, Interview
80 = 195 points
 Who is eligible to hire?
Other ways of selecting employees
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Competitions!
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Main prize: A position at Microsoft Shanghai
Google case (end of Chapter 6, p. 203)
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Hot Seat Case Introduction
Diversity in Hiring:
Candidate Conundrum