Effective Recruitment and Selection

Before you read this article, try your hand at the first activity. Though all of us have our own sets of experiences and opinions, we must not place our organizations in a situation of liability due to our individual biases, as they may not be strategically aligned with the organization's best interests. You must learn to work through personal perceptions and make strategic business decisions when recruiting and selecting human capital.

Specifying Job and Person Requirements

Initial Assessment

To find the right person for the job, you need to have an accurate idea of the job itself and of the particular skills and attributes it demands. This can be carried out in a series of stages, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Stages of Job and Person Analysis

Figure 1: Stages of Job and Person Analysis

However, before – or indeed after – the job analysis you might consider whether the vacant job needs to be filled at all. Reallocation of work, internal promotion or temporary transfer could be used to cover the tasks associated with the vacancy. Ask yourself whether the job needs to be changed, updated or filled at all before going any further. An apparent vacancy provides a real opportunity to consider the way work is organized and the skills the organization needs to secure its future success; you might wish to consider aspects of person-organization fit to help develop the job.

Assuming you decide to go ahead and recruit to the existing or changed post, you now need to analyze exactly what the job entails.