HR Planning and Recruiting

PART TWO                                                               RECRUITMENT AND PLACEMENT
CHAPTER	Five
HR Planning  and Recruiting	5
Lecture Outline
Strategic Overview Planning and Forecasting Forecasting Personnel Needs Forecasting the Supply of Internal Candidates Forecasting the Supply of External Candidates Effective Recruiting Organizing the Recruitment Function Measuring Recruiting Effectiveness       The Recruiting Yield Pyramid Internal Sources of Candidates Finding Internal Candidates Rehiring Succession Planning External Sources of Candidates Advertising Employment Agencies Temp Agencies and Alternative Staffing Offshoring/Outsourcing Jobs Executive Recruiters On-Demand Recruiting Services College Recruiting Referrals and Walk-ins Recruiting via the Internet Developing and Using Application Forms Purpose of Application Forms Alternative Dispute Resolution Using Application Forms to Predict Performance Recruitment Practices in Asia	In Brief:  This chapter explains the process of forecasting personnel requirements, discusses the pros and cons of eight methods used for recruiting job candidates, describes how to develop an application form, and explains how to use application forms to predict job performance. Interesting Issues:  The Internet has changed the face of recruiting, particularly in advertising for applicants.  Employers can now reach more potential applicants in less time, and less expensively.  However, this tool has generated some challenges. Employers may get too many applicants, or fail to reach certain segments of the population.

ANNOTATED OUTLINE

I.          Planning and Forecasting

            A.  Forecasting Personnel Needs –Forecast revenues, then estimate the size of the staff required to achieve this sales volume.

                 1.    Trend Analysis means studying a firm’s employment levels over a period of years to predict future needs.

                 2.    Ratio Analysis means making forecasts based on the ratio between (a) some causal factor, like sales volume, and (b) number of employees required, like number of salespeople.

                 3.    The Scatter Plot shows graphically how two variables (such as a measure of business activity and a firm’s staffing levels) are related.

                 4.    Using Computers to Forecast HR Requirements – The use of software programs can enable employers to quickly translate projected productivity and sales levels into forecasts of personnel needs, while estimating how HR requirements will be affected by various productivity and sales levels.

                  5.   Managerial Judgment

            B.  Forecasting the Supply of Internal Candidates

                 1.    Manual Systems and Replacement Charts – Simple manual devices can be used to keep inventories and development records to compile qualifications information on each employee. Personnel replacement charts show the present performance and promotability for each position’s potential replacement.  Position replacement cards can also be created for each position to show possible replacements as well as their present performance, promotion potential, and training.

                 2.    Computerized Information Systems are used to track the qualifications of hundreds or thousands of employees. The system can provide managers with a listing of candidates with specified qualifications after scanning the database.

                 3.    The Matter of Privacy – Employers must balance an individual’s right to privacy while making HR information legitimately available to those in the firm who need it.

           

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Educational Materials to Use

C.    Forecasting the Supply of External Candidates – This may involve considering general economic conditions and the expected rate of unemployment. Helpful sources include Bangkok Post (Thailand), New Straits Times (Malaysia), Straits Times (Singapore), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong). For regional information, leading newspapers and magazines are useful. They include Asian Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Fortune, Newsweek and Time.

Government reports on the labor market and employment conditions provide useful information.

II.         Effective Recruiting

Recruiting is a more complex activity than most managers think it is.  Recruitment efforts should make sense in terms of the company’s strategic plans. Some recruiting methods are superior to others, depending on who you are recruiting for and what your resources are. The success you have with your recruiting actually depends on non-recruitment HR issues and policies. 

Know Your Employment Law:  Pre–Employment Activities.  The key question in all recruitment procedures is whether the method limits qualified applicants from applying.  It is generally best to avoid limiting recruitment efforts to just one recruitment method; use multiple sources to reach out as widely as possible.

            A.  Organizing the Recruitment Function – Companies make a choice to centralize their recruiting efforts or to decentralize to various locations.  Advantages of centralizing are that it is easier to apply the company’s strategy priorities company-wide.  In addition, it reduces duplication, makes it easier to spread the cost of new technologies over more departments, and builds a team of recruitment experts, and makes it easier to assess the effectiveness of the function.  However, if divisions are autonomous or needs are varied, decentralization is a more sensible choice. 

1.   Line and Staff Cooperation – Since the recruiting HR manager is seldom responsible for supervising the performance for the vacant position, he/she must communicate with the supervisor to find out exactly what the job entails.

B.    Measuring Recruiting Effectiveness – Assessing the quality of each recruitment source will help HR managers to determine where the most cost effective recruiting sources are and thus determine where they want to direct their recruiting dollars.

C.   The Recruiting Yield Pyramid – is used by some employers to calculate the number of applicants they must generate to hire the required number of new employees. Figure 5-6 illustrates the pyramid.

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Educational Materials to Use

III.        Internal Sources of Candidates

A.   Finding Internal Candidates – To be effective, promotion from within requires using job posting, personnel records, and skill banks.

B.    Rehiring – There are pros and cons of rehiring former employees.  On the positive side, they are known quantities and are already familiar with the organization. On the other side, former employees may return with negative attitudes, and also sends a message to current employees that the way to get ahead is to leave and come back.

C. Succession Planning – The process of ensuring a suitable supply of successors for senior or key jobs. It can include the following activities: determining the projected need for managers and professionals by company level, function, and skill; auditing current executive talent to project the likely future supply for internal sources; planning individual career paths based on objective estimates of future needs and assessments of potential; career counseling based on the needs of the individual and the firm; accelerated promotions, with development targets against the future needs of the business; performance-related training and development; planned strategic recruitment to fill short-term needs and to provide people to meet future needs; and actually filling the positions.

           

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IV.  External Sources of Candidates

            A.   Advertising

                 1.    The Media – The best medium should be selected based on the positions for which you are recruiting.

                                               

                 2.    Constructing the Ad – Many experienced advertisers use a four-point guide called AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to construct their ads.

                 3.    Employment Advertising’s Effectiveness – recent studies show that it pays for employers to formulate marketing campaigns aimed at making themselves more attractive to potential recruits.

            B.   Employment Agencies

                 1.    Government and Non-profit Agencies – Every country has a government employment service agency as part of its department of labor or manpower. Many professional institutes and public welfare agencies have units that try to help their members or people in special categories find jobs.

                 2.    Commercial Agencies charge fees for each applicant they place.  Typically, market conditions determine whether the candidate or employer pays the fee.

            C.  Temp Agencies and Alternative Staffing

                 1.    Benefits and Costs – The benefits of using temporary staff include increases in overall productivity, and time and expenses saved by not having to recruit, train, and document new employees.  The costs include fees paid to agency and individuals’ psychological reference to their place of employment.

                       

2.     Know Your Employment Law: Contingent Workers – Temp workers can pose legal risks to the employer. The basic prescription is to treat the temp employee in all ways as if the agency is in fact his employer.

3.   Alternative Staffing refers to the use of nontraditional recruitment sources.

D.   Executive Recruiters, also called headhunters, are special employment agencies retained by employers to seek out top-management talent for their clients.

1.   Pros and Cons – Recruiters can be useful and can save a manager’s time, but they can be more interested in persuading you to hire a candidate than in finding the one who will really do the job.

2.   Guidelines – Make sure the firm is capable, meet the individual who will handle your assignment, and ask how much the firm charges.

            E. Campus Recruiting involves sending employers’ representatives to campuses to prescreen applicants and create an applicant pool of management trainees, promotable candidates, and professional and technical employees.

                 1.    Recruiting Goals – are: a) to determine whether a candidate is worthy of further consideration, and b) to attract good candidates.

                 2.    On Site Visits – are usually extended to good candidates.

                 3.    Internships – are a recruiting approach that can be a win-win situation for the employer and the student.  For employers, interns can make useful contributions while being evaluated for possible full-time employment.  For students, they are able to hone business skills, check out potential employers, and learn more about their likes and dislikes.

G.  Referrals and Walk-Ins are alternatives for identifying potential candidates.

 

H.  Recruiting via the Internet – More and more people are going online to look for jobs.  This can be a cost effective method of finding qualified candidates.

1.      Applicant Tracking – Web based ads often produce so many applicants that many firms must use applicant tracking software.

2.      Using an E-Recruiting Applications Tracking ASP – Applications service providers, such as Recruitsoft.com, are strategically partnering with HR departments of many companies to streamline the recruiting process.

3.     Designing Effective Internet Recruiting Programs – It is a mistake to take newspaper ads and transpose them to the Web. Instead, when posting on job sites such as Monster.com, use compelling keywords which provide good reasons why candidates would want to work for your company. See Figure 5-12 for examples of ineffective and effective web ads.

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Educational Materials to Use

V.         Developing and Using Application Forms

            A.  Purpose of Applications Forms – Application forms are good ways to quickly collect verifiable and fairly accurate historical data from the candidate.

Box – Know Your Employment Law:  Equal Opportunity and Application Forms – Employers should carefully review their application forms to ensure they comply with equal employment laws.

            B.   Using Application Forms to Predict Job Performance – Some firms use application forms to predict which candidates will be successful and which will not by conducting statistical studies to find the relationship between (1) responses on the application form and (2) measures of success on the job.

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Educational Materials to Use

RECRUITMENT PRACTICES IN ASIA

1)     China

a)     Changes brought about by economic reforms

b)    Foreign representative offices help foreign companies to recruit

c)     Wholly foreign-owned enterprises have more autonomy

d)    May recruit from overseas Chinese communities

e)     Recruit from Chinese student studying abroad

2)     Hong Kong

a)     Has anti-discrimination laws

3)     Indonesia

4)     Malaysia

a)     Government has bumiputra policy of proportionate racial mix

b)    Popular recruitment method: advertisements in newspaper

i)      Preferential treatment for Multimedia Super Corridor project

5)     Philippines

a)     Recruitment for Overseas Filipino Workers

i)      support from Philippine Overseas Employment Administration

6)     Singapore

a)     Helping retrenched workers to find jobs

b)    Attracting overseas talents

7)     South Korea

a)     Labor Standard Act: cannot discriminate

b)    Equal Employment Act: equal treatment from recruitment to retirement

c)     Abolish restraint on skilled foreign workers

8)     Thailand

a)     recruitment through newspaper not as effective

b)    foreign-educated Thai graduates in great demand

c)     recruiting Thai workers for overseas work

9)     Vietnam

a)     recruitment of expatriate difficult (hardship posting)

b)    many local staff lack necessary qualification or experience

c)     Foreign Service Corporation – state-owned recruitment agency

KEY TERMS

employment or                         The process of deciding what positions the firm will have to fill,

HR planning                             and how to fill them

trend analysis                          Study of a firm's past employment needs over a period of years to predict future needs.

ratio analysis                           A forecasting technique for determining future staff needs by using ratios between sales volume and number of employees needed.

scatter plot                               A graphical method used to help identify the relationship between two variables.

computerized forecast              The determination of future staff needs by projecting a firm's sales, volume of production, and personnel required to maintain this volume of output, using computers and software packages.

qualifications inventories         Manual or computerized systematic records, listing employees' education, career and development interests, languages, special skills, and so on, to be used in forecasting inside candidates for promotion.

personnel replacement             Company records showing present performance and promotability

charts                                       of inside candidates for the most important positions.

position replacement               A card prepared for each position in a company to show possible

cards                                        replacement candidates and their qualifications.

recruiting yield pyramid           Calculating and using the historical arithmetic relationships between recruitment leads and invitees, invitees and interviews, interviews and offers made, and offers made and offers accepted.

job posting                              Posting notices of job openings on company bulletin boards is an effective recruiting method.

succession planning                The process of ensuring a suitable supply of successors for current and future senior or key jobs.

application form                       The form that provides information on education, prior work record, and skills.