Java Corp seeks to extend its supervisory workforce by hiring five new employees in different areas. The specific features of the candidate recruitment and selection process significantly depend on corporate culture and goals. For that matter, the recruiter’s role is to incorporate the factors that are pivotal for the company to plan the recruitment process in a way that yields the best results for Java Corp. It is the recruiter’s responsibility to combine selection methods that would ultimately provide the company with competitive, highly-skilled, agile, and competent personnel for achieving the company’s goals (Hamza et al., 2021). Since Java Corp’s culture heavily relies on limited turnover, employee loyalty, and retention, it is pivotal that the candidates’ personality traits and work ethics comply with organizational vision and expectations. Thus, the recruiter is expected to perform as a linking unit between company management’s goals and the pool of candidates, the best among which should be hired.
The opportunities that the company has in terms of the recruitment and selection process include saving on merely external recruitment due to compatible candidates within the organization. Having eager candidates available internally, Java Corp will limit its efforts in terms of external search. Moreover, the company might recruit employees externally and in such a manner contribute their expertise obtained in competing companies to the advantages of Java Corp. On the other hand, the availability of internal candidates poses a challenge due to the possible insufficient competence of internal employees in managerial and supervisory responsibilities. It might be difficult to find proper ways of objective assessment of internal employees compared to external given differences in the factors validating their fit for the positions. Another challenge is the difficulty of measuring proper personality characteristics to meet the company’s expectations regarding retention priorities. Nonetheless, a well-structured and evidence-based recruitment plan will incorporate all the relevant factors and conduct a high-quality and efficient selection of the best talent.
Recruitment Process
The candidate recruitment process involves several stages of preparation, conducting, and outcome measuring. Overall, the recruitment process is essential for organizational performance since it is “the first step towards making the competitive quality and the strategic recruitment advantage” (Hamza et al., 2021, p. 1). The developed recruitment and selection plan proposed in this document is based on the Elaboration Likelihood Theory. According to this theory, “an organization can hire a person without a wide experience for the job but subject him/her to training programs… for the jobs’ effective delivery” (Charles, B. K., & Florah, 2021, p. 454). The choice of such a theoretical approach is validated by prioritizing not only professional skills but also soft skills and character traits in candidates to ensure that they fit the organizational culture and will be able to contribute to it in the long-term perspective. Therefore, when hiring employees to Java Corp, the recruiter will consider candidates with high scores in personality tests, even if their competency might require training.
The recruitment plan will consist of the following steps:
- Clarifying the positions to be filled.
- Developing descriptions for perfect candidates for each position.
- Identifying the sources of qualified candidates.
- Collecting of CVs; their review; partial candidate selection for employment tests.
- Conducting employment tests; further candidate selection for personal interviews.
- Conducting interviews with the best candidates.
- Choosing the most appropriate hires; sending offer letters.
- Conducting success measurement of the recruitment and selection process.
The suggested process of selecting and hiring proper candidates is best for Java Corp because it meets the needs of an organization to recruit competitive and loyal workers that would fit the environment and contribute to the organization’s competitive advantage. The company has established that it needs one IT manager, one marketing manager, two operations managers, and one security manager. With the descriptions for all of the positions being developed, the next step of the selection process will be the choice of proper sources of candidates. The first is the internal pool of potentially applicable specialists, the second is social media advertising, and the third is the referral program. With such a wide range of sources, the company is more likely to find talented candidates needed for the job.
The CVs of all the applicants should be examined and sorted for matching criteria. The ones that fit the employer’s requirements will be subject to the next step of the selection process, conducted via employment tests. Firstly, the candidates will perform the vocational aptitude tests relevant to their expected responsibilities in the positions they apply for to validate their competence, knowledge, and skills (Charles & Florah, 2021). Secondly, attitude testing will be conducted to “measure people’s attitudes, the purpose of which is to quantify theories beliefs and behaviors to inform decisions” (Charles & Florah, 2021, p. 455). The attitude testing will involve several pivotal components, namely affective, cognitive, social, learning, behavioral, and experience (Charles & Florah, 2021). In addition, candidates’ characteristics will be measured using a personality test in the form of a self-reported questionnaire. Overall, applicants’ psychological characteristics influencing their likelihood to comply with the corporate culture, retention policies, and company loyalty will provide the basis for the recruiter’s informed decision.
Upon the results of such tests, the candidates with the best indicators will be interviewed. Such a multifaceted process of candidate selection will ensure the choice of the best talents for the required positions, which will ultimately benefit organizational performance in the long-term perspective. Such a quality-assurance approach to hiring is validated by Java Corp’s corporate culture focused on retention and minimal turnover of employees. At this stage, the candidates with proper test results will be invited to personal interviews to discuss their competency, expectations, and positions in relation to the job. According to Charles and Florah (2021), during interviews, “candidates are exposed to an artificial environment to stimulate their behavior in one particular circumstance” to assess their capability of performing job responsibilities (p. 457). Thus, the results of the interview will reveal the true potential and fit of each of the candidates. The candidates appropriate for hire will then be contacted and sent offer letters for further training.
To make the positions more attractive, the recruiter might design detailed position descriptions at the stage of the candidate search. It might include the description of the company’s culture, mission, values, and some benefits of working for Java Corp. With the search involving social media as a platform for youth communication and young workforce interaction, social media pages might be created to boost the candidate search.
Legal Considerations
The company is expected to follow the regulations imposed by the relevant employment laws to ensure that the recruitment and selection plan is conducted in a legal manner. The following of the federal and state Equal Employment Opportunity laws is imperative in this regard (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC], n. d.). Within the process of candidate selection and recruitment, the human resource managers should be particularly aware of the legal considerations surrounding the employment procedures. In particular, in the USA, the laws that regulate recruitment and selection emphasize the importance of zero discrimination in the workplace at all stages of human resource management.
When performing its selection and recruitment functions, Java Corp should ensure that there is no gender, race, age, or disability discrimination involved in relation to any of the candidates at any stage of the recruitment process. According to the US EEOC (n. d.), it is illegal to post a job advertisement “that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job” because of the abovementioned characteristics (para. 4). Moreover, at the stage of selecting a candidate, the laws enforced by EEOC (n. d.) prohibit asking for any information about an individual’s medical records, conducting medical tests, or submitting any genetic information. Background checks should only be aimed at the validation of candidates’ professionalism; namely, the requests should include “those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job” (EEOC, n. d., para. 35). Given the provisions of the employment legislation, Java Corp’s recruiting manager will ensure that the procedures of pre-employment will be conducted with the prioritization of legal considerations to promote equal employment opportunity.
Selection and Hiring Success Measurement
For the company to evaluate its internal capability in terms of human resources and ensure that the overall corporate strategy is reinforced through human resource management practices, it should assess its recruitment success assessment. One should use specific metrics for proper results interpretation to measure the success of the conducted selection and recruitment process. According to Marr (2019), companies should not limit their success measuring metrics to simple KPI indicators; instead, they should adjust the recruitment success metrics with organizational strategy and goals. In the case of Java Corp, the company prioritizes competency, efficiency, and loyalty. Thus, the metrics that might be relevant to the organization are as follows:
- Retention rate;
- Time to hire;
- Sourcing channel quality;
- Cost per hire;
- Quality of hires.
Each of these indicators should be measured after the completion of the recruitment process to detect possible drawbacks and ensure proper improvements in the future. Firstly, the measurement of retention rate might be informative to identify an average retention rate per hire and a rate of employee stay in relation to the level of payment (Marr, 2019). Secondly, the time to hire ratio involves calculating the duration between the position vacancy posting and the moment when the position was filled. Thirdly, sourcing channel quality should be measured by assessing the number of successfully hired candidates from each of the used sources to inform further recruitment plans (Marr, 2019). Fourthly, cost per hire will be related to the measurement of the resources spent on each candidate recruited. Finally, the quality of hires will be measured using testing of newly employed workers’ performance over time. Thus, these measurements will allow for making informative and objective conclusions about the outcomes of the performed recruitment and selection process.
References
Charles, B. K., & Florah, O. M. (2021). A critical review of literature on employment selection tests. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 9, 451-469. Web.
Hamza, P. A., Othman, B. J., Gardi, B., Sorguli, S., Aziz, H. M., Ahmed, S. A., Sabir, B. Y., Ismael, N. B., Ali, B. J., & Anwar, G. (2021). Recruitment and selection: The relationship between recruitment and selection with organizational performance. International Journal of Engineering, Business and Management, 5(3), 1-13. Web.
Marr, B. (2019). How to measure recruitment success? Web.
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n. d.). Prohibited employment policies/practices. Web.