Chapter 6: Staffing and Human Resource Management

Section 6.2 – Recruitment and Selection

Key Terms

  • Recruitment
  • Selection process
  • Reliability
  • Validity
  • Performance-simulation tests
  • Realistic job preview (RJP)
  • Orientation

Summary

By combining the knowledge gained through job analysis and knowing their current staffing levels, managers can recruit new employees or initiate downsizing or layoff activities. During the recruitment process the concern is locating, identifying, and attracting capable applicants.

Using sources that reflect the local labor market, the type or level of position, and the size of the organization, candidates can be located. Employee referrals generally produce the best candidates but may not increase the diversity and mix of the employees desired. The explanation for this is intuitively logical. First, those employers prescreen applicants referred by current employees. Second, because current employees often feel that their reputation in the organization is at stake with a referral, they tend to make referrals only when they are reasonably confident that the referral won’t make them look bad.

Once a decision is made to recruit new employees, managers go through a selection process to predict which candidate will be the most successful if hired. Using selection procedures that are both reliable and valid reduce the probability of making reject errors or accept errors with increasing the probability of making correct decisions.

Reliability addresses whether a selection device measures the same characteristic consistently while management must also make sure the selection device demonstrates validity as related to successful job performance. More to the point, validity represents a proven relationship between a selection device and some relevant criterion.

Performance simulation tests are selection devices based on actual job behaviors; work sampling and assessment centers. The best-known performance simulation tests are work sampling and simulating real problems one may face on the job. Because of the nature of the content and the methods used to determine content, well-structured performance simulation tests are valid predictors.

The interview, along with the application form, is an almost universal selection device. Interviews can be reliable and valid selection tools, but often they are not. It is important that interviews are structured and well organized, and interviewers are held to relevant questioning.Providing a realistic job preview (RJP) to candidates should increase job satisfaction and reduce turnover. RJP provides both positive and negative aspects of the job and the company during the selection process.

Through orientation and training, new hires become acclimated to the organization’s culture and are trained to perform the job in a manner consistent with the organization’s objectives. Employee training is a learning experience that seeks a relatively permanent change in employees such that their ability to perform on the job improves. The training, for both new hires and current employees, could involve changing skills, knowledge, attitudes, or behavior and may mean changing what the employee knows, how they work, their attitudes toward their job, co-workers, managers, and the organization.

At least four major questions must be answered to determine training needs:

  1. What are the organization’s strategic goals?
  2. What tasks must be completed to achieve organizational goals?
  3. What behaviors are necessary for each jobholder?
  4. What deficiencies do jobholders have?

There are many different types of training methods available. Most are grouped according to on-the-job or off-the-job training programs. Examples of off-the-job training methods include classroom lectures, films and videos, simulation exercises and vestibule training. On the job, training methods include job rotation, understudy and assignments.Training is evaluated based on how much the participants learned; how well they use their new skills on the job; and whether the training program achieved its desired results.

Section Outline

  1. Recruitment and Selection
  2. Where does a manager recruit candidates?
  3. Are certain recruiting sources better than others?
  4. How does a manager handle layoffs?
  5. What are a manager’s downsizing options?
  6. What is the basic method of selecting job candidates?
  7. What is reliability?
  8. What is validity?
  9. How effective are tests and interviews as selection devices?
  10. How do written tests serve a useful purpose?
  11. What are performance simulation tests?
  12. Is the interview effective?
  13. How can you close the deal?
  14. Orientation, Training, and Development
  15. How do we introduce new hires to the organization?
  16. What is employee training?
  17. How are employees trained?
  18. What are some of the typical methods used?
  19. How can managers ensure that training is working?