Sarah had made special arrangements with the Telecom company to rent additional lines for the period of the advertising campaign and these lines were manned according to the strength of the expected response. Two of the lines had a direct switch to the homes of two employees. From the telephone calls, the recruitment team placed the applicants details onto a database and the source of their response. This was downloaded on e-mail to the home of the employee returning from maternity leave who printed out the appropriate letter and stuffed the information packs. Twice a day, the packages were collected by courier to be posted.
For most of the vacancies, applicants were asked to complete standard two-page application forms but, for the call centre team posts, an add- itional supplementary form was necessary to capture their match with the required competencies. Applicants were discouraged from simply send- ing in CVs given the volume of applications that needed to be processed. Three-thousand calls were taken in total over the campaign and 95% of the information packs were sent out within 2 days (a case of mumps causing a short delay for the other 5%!) 900 application forms were received through the advertisements and the other sources.
When, later on, Sarah carried out the evaluation of what was essentially a very successful campaign, she found that the advertisements produced the highest response to selection ratio and the job centre and open days the lowest response. However, in cost–benefit terms, without counting processing time, the reverse was true so she felt that it was worth the
additional effort. The radio advertisements prove to be quite unsuc- cessful but she was not sure whether this was due to her rather half- hearted approach in this case. Twelve positions were filled through being referred by existing employees.
Summary
■ There are many alternatives to filling a vacancy by recruiting a replacement for the person who has left. These include re- organisation the work, re-designing the job and contracting out the work.
■ Job descriptions can be task oriented, accountability oriented or designed as a broader profile or statement.
■ Person specifications are crucial to the recruitment process but contain pitfalls, especially in the area of equal opportunities.
■ Organisations are increasingly using competency frameworks that can be utilised for recruitment, amongst other important areas.
■ Third parties are increasingly used in the recruitment process, chiefly because of their expertise and their knowledge of the market.
■ Technology is developing to assist the recruitment process, especially through the Internet.
Student activities
1 In groups of two or three, select two job advertisements from a national newspaper and produce a short comparative report on how the advertisements meets Armstrong’s three criteria. 2 Individually design a job specification for a university lecturer
in marketing, then compare results in groups of five. Produce a final version taking the best parts of each of your efforts. 3 As a class, list the possible sources when recruiting the follow-
ing: a labourer in a sawmill; a laboratory technician for a hospital; a manager for a retail shop; a design engineer for a car compon- ent company.
4 Compare the Abbey national Job Statement with a conven- tional job description. In what ways does it differ and how valuable may it prove for the employee?
5 In the Meteor Case Study, pick out three examples of innovative practices, explain why Sarah decided to use them and identify any difficulties she could have encountered in using them. 6 Consider this scenario: you have a vacancy which you know can
be filled internally by a suitable candidate but they may not be interested. Is it ethical to try to encourage them to apply and, if so, how would you go about doing so?
7 Read the article on Cable and Wireless and draw up a list of advantages and disadvantages of recruiting on the web.
8 Read the Redman and Matthews article on recruitment advertis- ing. What major conclusions can you draw from their research?
References
Armstrong, M. (2003) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 8th edition, Kogan Page.
Burke, K. (1998) Automatic choices? Personnel Today, 22 August, 27–28. City Research Associates (1988) The Price Waterhouse Recruitment Advertising
Survey. Price Waterhouse.
Clark, T. (1993) Selection methods used by executive search consultancies in four European countries: a survey and critique. International Journal of
Selection and Assessment, 1(1): 41–49.
CIPD (2003a) Recruitment and retention survey 2003. CIPD. CIPD (2003b) Labour turnover 2003. CIPD.
Cooper, D., Robertson, I., Tinline, G. (2003) Recruitment and Selection: A
Framework for Success. Thomson Learning.
Czerny, A. (2004) Not so quick and easy. People Management, 26 February, 14. Dulewicz, V. (2004) Give full details. People Management, 26 February, 23. Fowler, A (1990) How to write a job advertisement. Personnel Plus, October, 31. Fowler, A. (1997) Writing Job Descriptions. IPD.
Hutchinson, S., Wood, S. (1995) ‘The UK experience’, In: Personnel and the Line:
Developing the New Relationship. IPD London.
Merrick, N. (1999) Super hire way? People Management Review, 15 July, 34–37. Mills, E. (1999) The Mr. Big of crime comes clean. Sunday Times, 4 April, 5. Munroe-Fraser, J. (1954) A Handbook of Employment Interviewing. Macdonald and
Evans.
Parker, S., Wall, T. (1998). Job and Work Design. Sage.
People Management (1998) CV Deception Warning. 25 June, 12.
Redman, T., Allen, P. (1993) The use of HRM consultants: evidence from manu- facturing companies in the north-east of England. Personnel Review, 22(2): 39–54.
Redman, T., Matthews, B. (1993). Job marketing: an evaluation of managerial recruitment advertising practice. Human Resource Management Journal, 4(4): 14–29.
Sappal, P. (1998) The changing face of recruitment. Human Resources, March/April, 19–24.
Stredwick, J., Ellis, S. (2005) Flexible Working Practices. CIPD. Taylor, S. (2002) People Resourcing. CIPD.
Tulip, S. (2003) A flying start. People Management, 7 August, 38.
Welch, J. (1997) Forced job losses still the norm. People Management, 18 December, 17.
Welch, J. (1998) Internet technology lets firms filter out students. People
Management, 28 May, 14.
Welch, J. (2003) In the hiring line. People Management, 26 June, 30–31.
Further reading
Job analysis/job design.
For more detailed examples of Job Design and Empowerment, see:
Crandell, N., Wallace, M. (1998). Work and Rewards in the Virtual Office. Amacom. Manz, C., Sims, H. (1993) Business Without Bosses: How Self-managing Teams are
Building High Performance Companies. Wiley. Advertising and recruitment
Roberts, G. (1997) Recruitment and Selection: A Competency Approach. IPD. Kerrin, M., Kettley, P. (2003) e-Recruitment: Is it delivering? IES Report 402.
Web sites
http://www.u-net.com/bureau/employ/
UK Business Employment & Recruitment pages from the Business Bureau. http://www.fres.co.uk/
C H A P T E R
Selection
5
Objectives
When you have read this chapter and carried out the activities, you will be able to:
■ Explain the aims of the selection process.
■ Identify the different methods employed in the selection process.
■ Understand the purpose, value and drawbacks of the interview.
■ Carry out an interview and review its success.
■ Demonstrate the difference between ability and personality tests.
■ Assess the value of references and understand the circum- stances where they may be successful.
Before we move into these areas in detail, let us examine, as a snap- shot, the research carried out by Mike Smith and his colleagues at
Assessment centres Psychometric testing Effective ways of working Reward strategies Induction Equal opportunities Selection Interviewing Biodata
UMIST on the predictive accuracy of various selection methods. This is set out in Figure 5.1.
It can be seen straight away that the traditional approach using unstructured interviews and references come out of this research very badly. (Incidentally, early research published in 1989 showed the con- ventional interview at an even more lowly 0.18!) Testing in one form or another achieve much better results. Having said this, it is worth reflect- ing on the fact that even the best methods achieve success in only around three out of four cases. We will look at each of these methods in this chapter except astrology and graphology, which will not be mentioned again.