Introduction
The process of staffing involves a combination of recruitment, selection, training, appraisals, delegation, reassignments, and finally retirement. This means that staffing will be the function of managing the workforce in a company. The workforce in a company may make it run either smoothly or roughly. Whenever a company sets to obtain a workforce, it needs to obtain the best it can and the workforce obtained must be qualified and competent so as to help in meeting the goals and objectives of the organization.
The process of employment and staffing starts with attracting potential candidates and only ends when competent staff is recruited and oriented. The company should look at competence in every post and a job analysis is necessary so that the employer may obtain all that is required in terms of duties, responsibilities, required skills, expected outcomes, and work environment regarding the vacancy (Arthur, 2006 p.52).
The data will make it easy to obtain a job description that will make it easy in the recruitment process once the post is advertised. The job description will be important in establishing the relatedness of the job and other procedures involved such as; training, selection, compensation, and appraisals for the newly recruited individuals. This will make it easy for the employer to outline the duties and tasks, environment, tools and equipment, requirements, and relationships for the job when advertising or giving guidelines to recruitment firms. For this to happen, the employer must use different techniques such as; interviews and/or questionnaires, process analysis, self-reports, participation, critical indent technique, or repertory grid to collect the information required to facilitate in describing the job to be done and not the person doing the work.
The advertisement must include the duties and tasks expected to be done efficiently, and the specific qualities of the jobs. This will be in terms of frequency, effort, duration, complexity, skills and standards. The employer should be careful enough not to underestimate or overestimate the duties in order to get the suitable candidate. The payment package for the company should be commensurate to the work done and the employer should seek not to underpay the employee. This gives the advantage to the company since most competent candidates will tend to apply for the job; thus ensuring that the employer chooses the very best.
Recruitment
Employers may opt to take the initiative of the recruitment process themselves or they may transfer the process to a recruitment firm. Recruitment firms save time since they take time to scrutinize many candidates which the employer may consider time-wasting. Whichever way the employer takes, it should guarantee him competent staff in his company.
When recruiting, the employer must first consider some things including; the need for the position, how to carry out the work, development and prioritization of core roles of the position, the company’s position financially to pay the staff, and the timeframe required to complete the process of recruitment (Heathfield, N.d). When all these conditions are in place, the employer can develop a recruitment and selection plan that seeks to expand employment sources, pioneer the recruitment practices and give pragmatic job previews.
Recruitment is made of three phases including; the applicant generation phase, the maintaining application status phase, and influencing jobs choice phase. The applicant generation phase involves knowing what applicants need for the job. The basic information is very important in this phase, such as the title of the vacancy and the candidates’ interests. This means that, for example, if the position is for web designing only candidates with knowledge of web designing are to apply. The second phase gives preference to the candidate who remains in the process (Arthur, 2006, p.58).
The individual must prove his competence when given the goals of the company. The individuals must pass through an initial selection interview, and a competence interview. The final phase includes the accepting or rejecting the offers. The job can be made objectively, subjectively or by contract and when the individual states the terms, the company agrees or disagrees with him/her. The company can also modify the terms to fit the application or negotiate the terms.
Organization’s plan for recruitment sources
Recruitment means that the company takes a wild guess to get the right candidate. The organization must however take the guess if the job is to be done. In order to take the guess, many options are at hand and the employee will make the step according to the plans and the situation at hand. Basically, the organization may opt for an internal recruitment exercise. This will mean that the employer posts an internal advertisement for the position to the existing employees through memos or the bulletin board, or even email. This will mean that the qualified internal candidates will apply and will be an easier process since the human resources will work with what they already know and the employees will not feel left out by seeing an outsider fill the position while they were qualified. A special internal form for the position should be filled by the qualified staff so that the evaluation process may begin. The process will involve aptitude tests, oral interviews and questionnaires to screen the qualified candidate. Other plans for recruitment plans are contingent firms, job fairs, targeted minority, interviewing walk-ins, clients and customers, direct mails, human resource files, research firms and use of government employment services (Arthur, 2001, p.81).
When there are no qualified internal candidates, the organization has another option for external candidates. External candidates may be informed about the vacancies through the internal employees especially when a position is urgent in order to avoid huge number of applications. The internal applicants may spread through the word of mouth to qualified friends or associates (Arthur, 2001, p.79). Indeed, developing a candidate pool is the main goal for the organization.
The organization can also advertise through the media such as newspapers and magazines. This means that a huge number of applicants are expected and the organization must design effective measures and dedicate time to scrutinize all the applications received. The organization can also transfer the whole process to a recruitment firm. This involves paying a recruitment firm to undertake the process and come up with the best candidate. Finally, the company can also post vacancies on their website where people can access them.
Proactive and reactive recruitment
Proactive recruitment is the evaluation of all necessary skills required by the company. This is opposed to reactive recruiting which is recruiting the person available immediately to fill the position without evaluating the qualifications just because the need has arisen. Proactive recruitment is advantageous since it evaluates all the candidates equally and keenly though it takes a lot of time. In proactive recruitment, there are three components involved which are; planning, execution and results. All these are not present in reactive since it is an abrupt session recruiting that only guarantees filling the position.
Traditional and innovative recruitment
The traditional method can be described as a passive method. According to Arthur (2001, p.96), the traditional method is reactive. Basically, the management has to wait for the need to arise and then the vacancy is posted to get the right candidate. When the candidates apply then management hastily goes through few resumes to identify the right person. The companies may even shift the process to a hiring firm to hasten the move. The sources for traditional recruitment include; employee referrals and newspaper advertisements.
Innovative recruitment involves being readily prepared for any vacancy. The internet has revolutionized recruitment since people can create profiles with the company and the company will scrutinize all the profiles and keep the data in a database so that it does not have to abruptly announce any arising posts but will select the right candidate from the database.
Competency-based interviewing
Competency-based interviewing is situational and behavioral evaluation to evaluate the competence of the individual. It is generally used when the interviewing team finds it hard to evaluate technical qualities. The employer tests basic things that identify the interviewee’s special unique qualities that are outstanding which may be in terms of teamwork, responsibility, commitment to career, commercial awareness, career motivation, decision making, communication, problem-solving among others.
Every position or career has its own competency-based questions; this makes the interviewer analyze the character of the individual. For instance, when interviewing a teacher, there must be questions of problem-solving teamwork and decision making which links the career to cultural fit. This means that the qualities and the job match to a good degree. Culture fit is used by the organization to identify the individual’s congruency and measure it to other employees in the organization.
Many high-ranking jobs have a high likelihood of using competency-based interviews; these will help to identify intelligence and high-ranking skills on the interviewee (Arthur, 2006, p.85). Competence-based questions included will mainly involve the initiative in problem-solving, the achievements and the difficult situations encountered by the interviewee.
Importance of competency-based questions
Competency-based questions are always objective and purposeful. They are generally used to illustrate the situation of the tasks required of the interviewee, the action that is to be taken in any situation and the results of any action taken. They are very important since the competence of the individual is gauged effectively. People may be qualified but not competent hence this will eliminate the qualified incompetent individuals (Margery, 2008).
The competence questions describe the strengths of the person, the personality, and other interesting relevant factors needed in the job. This will help the organization identify the right and competent individuals for the job.
Interview preparation
The employee must be the one to take the initiative. The interview venue and time should be arranged effectively and communicated to the interviewees within reasonable time. The place should be conducive and convenient to both parties. The interviewer should set up a panel of eminent persons who already know the needs of the organization. This means that they will easily identify the right candidate for the job.
The interviewers must get a copy of the job description that was done by the organization. This will help them set the interview questions correctly and objectively. They need to know how the interviewee can handle the situations whether competently or incompetently. To be able to perform the task effectively, one must know what is expected on the job to avoid the common situations where many employers find themselves at crossroads when a task in the organization has not been performed and no one takes responsibility for the mess (Arthur, 2006 p.104). In every organization, there must be proper guidelines that give a clear description of all the responsibilities and the person responsible for all of them.
When the interviewer knows the duties, responsibilities, required skills, expected outcomes, and work environment involved, his questions will not be ambiguous but objective. This will also help the panel to answer the questions that interviewers ask relating to the job and other procedures involved e.g. training, selection, compensation, and appraisals. Job analysis will be useful in determining training needs where they identify or develop the training needs, i.e. the training content, assessment aptitude tests to gauge whether training is effective, the equipment used during the training, and the methods used in training which can be numerous such as groups, presentations, videos, and teaching.
Job analysis will also be important in compensation to identify and determine the level of skills, compensation, the job hazards, and the skills needed to improve it. It also identifies the required education level, graduate, and post-graduate, doctoral or casual. This will indirectly reflect on the amount of salary that the job requires (Henderson, 2005, p.38).
Job analysis identifies the expected probation time for the individual that is recruited to establish if he is competent in the job when he is given the duties. It also helps to check the duties and evaluate them accordingly and establish whether they have failed or performed as required. When it comes to performance reviews, job analysis will help in developing the major goals and objectives for the position once the post is occupied. It will also help to identify the performance standards of the job, and give the evaluation criteria. Human resource planning can forecast the requirements needed by the departments and indicate the hierarchy of commands i.e. both lateral and vertical. It helps in the smooth running of the company especially where the supervisor has to reassign duties of an absent employee.
Conclusion
Employment and staffing in every organization is a long and involving process especially if the correct, competent and right person is to be identified for a given job. Since staffing does not only include recruitment but also selection, training, appraisals, relegation, reassignments and finally retirement, the management through the human resource department should remain active and involved during the process to ensure that it is successful. Once the organization identifies the competent individual, it should try to develop an organizational culture and atmosphere that ensures that the individual performs as per the required standards.
Close orientation to ensure that the person fits in the organization and training should be offered before the individual assumes office. Supervision and mentorship by the seniors are also necessary for that the competence of the new hired employee stays on course with the organization’s goals and objectives. Only then will the company boast of success in employment and staffing.
References
Arthur, D. (2006). Recruiting, interviewing, selecting & orienting new employees. Ed.4. New York, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Web.
Arthur, D. (2001). The employee recruitment and retention handbook. New York, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Web.
Heathfield, S. M. (N.d). Hiring Employees: A Checklist for Success in Hiring Employees How to Recruit and Hire the Best. 2010. Web.
Henderson, R. L. (2005). Compensation Management in a Knowledge-Based World. Ed.10. New York, Prentice Hall. Web.
Margery, M. (2008). Personalities & Performance. Training, Vol. 45, Issue 7. Web.