UNIT 4

Staffing

4.1 Definition and importance of staffing

Staffing is the process of hiring eligible candidates in the organization or company for specific positions. In management, the meaning of staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills, knowledge and then offering them specific job roles accordingly. Let us find out more about what is Staffing and what it entails along with its functions and characteristics.

Definition: Staffing can be defined as one of the most important functions of management. It involves the process of filling the vacant position of the right personnel at the right job, at right time. Hence, everything will occur in the right manner.

It is a truth that human resource is one of the greatest for every organization because in any organization all other resources like- money, material, machine etc. can be utilized effectively and efficiently by the positive efforts of human resource.

Functions of Staffing

1. The first and foremost function of staffing is to obtain qualified personnel for different jobs position in the organization.
2. In staffing, the right person is recruited for the right jobs, therefore it leads to maximum productivity and higher performance.
3. It helps in promoting the optimum utilization of human resource through various aspects.
4. Job satisfaction and morale of the workers increases through the recruitment of the right person.
5. Staffing helps to ensure better utilization of human resources.

Importance of Staffing

Efficient Performance of Other Functions

For the efficient performance of other functions of management, staffing is its key. Since, if an organization does not have the competent personnel, then it cannot perform the functions of management like planning, organizing and control functions properly.

Effective Use of Technology and Other Resources

Well, it is the human factor that is instrumental in the effective utilization of the latest technology, capital, material, etc. the management can ensure the right kinds of personnel by performing the staffing function.

Optimum Utilization of Human Resources

The wage bill of big concerns is quite high. Also, a huge amount is spent on recruitment, selection, training, and development of employees.  To get the optimum output, the staffing function should be performed in an efficient manner.

Development of Human Capital

Another function of staffing is concerned with human capital requirements. Since the management is required to determine in advance the manpower requirements. Therefore, it has also to train and develop the existing personnel for career advancement. This will meet the requirements of the company in the future.

The Motivation of Human Resources

In an organization, the behaviour of individuals is influenced by various factors which are involved such as education level, needs, socio-cultural factors, etc. Therefore, the human aspects of the organization have become very important and so that the workers can also be motivated by financial and non-financial incentives in order to perform their functions properly in achieving the objectives.

Key Takeaways

1. Staffing can be defined as one of the most important functions of management. It involves the process of filling the vacant position of the right personnel at the right job, at right time. Hence, everything will occur in the right manner.

4.2 Recruitment and its sources

Definition:

Sources of recruitment can be viewed as various means of connecting the job seekers to the organisation which have suitable job openings. In simple words, it serves as a medium for communicating or advertising the vacant positions in the organisation to get a response from the prospective candidates.

The recruiters have to be very careful while selecting any particular source of recruitment. The selection of a specific source of recruitment depends upon the number of personnel to be recruited, the cost involved in each source, accessibility of the applicants, education level of employees to be hired, company’s policy, etc.

Internal Sources of Recruitment

Internal sources of recruitment refer to seeking the employees from within the organisation to fill up the vacant position. Many companies consider internal recruitment as a great option since it is cost-effective, and they tend to hire employees who have a better know how the organisation and its policies.

Internal recruitment can be done through the following means:

Previous Applicants: To fill up the immediate openings, calling up or emailing the candidates who have previously applied to the organisation is the cheapest and quickest source of recruitment.

Present Employees: The recruiter can exercise promotion (to a higher position) or transfer (inter-department or inter-branch transfer) of the current employees instead of recruiting the new employees.

Employee Referrals: Sometimes, the organisation hires the candidates referred by the existing employees assuming that such candidates are more trustworthy and reliable.

Former Employees: Some organisations provide for an option of re-joining to its ex-employees. They even consider the retired employees who are willing to give their full time or part-time services to the organisation.

Advantages of internal recruitment

Hiring internal candidates can be more efficient than recruiting externally, because it can:

• They’re prescreened for culture fit.
• Their track record is easily accessible.
• They may not always need full interviews with managers (for example, if they are moving within their department, the department head already knows the candidate.)

All these reduce the time spent on each hiring stage and your overall time to hire.

• Know how your company operates and most of your policies and practices.
• May be familiar with people in their new team, especially in smaller businesses.
• May already know the content and context of their new roles if they move within the same team or to a similar one (for example, a sales associate becoming a category manager).

Disadvantages of internal recruitment

In any situation, it can be difficult to embrace a new boss. But what happens when the new boss is someone who used to be a peer? Hiring internally can cause hard feelings among co-workers who can’t adjust to the new shift in roles and responsibilities. Those who applied for the job, but didn’t get it, can become bitter over time.

You may also have instances where departments are reluctant to give up good team members to allow them to experience career growth. Interpersonal relationships can be affected when internal hiring isn’t handled with care. Knowing about these possibilities and preparing for them are necessary for a smooth transition.

While internal recruitment is an effective way to fill new roles, it almost always leaves a vacancy. How do you plan on filling the role that the promoted employee left behind? In the end, you could use internal recruitment to fill that role, leaving yet another hole. It’s an endless cycle of shuffling employees that may ultimately end up with you seeking external candidates to stop the swap.

Let’s face it. Your employees, while talented, may not have everything you’re looking for in a new hire. That means you may need to look outside of your company to find someone with very specific or technical skill sets. Not only that but some one from a different industry may be better suited to bring a fresh perspective to a role as well.

If you do business in a quickly-changing industry, like wellness or tech, there are very real dangers that your talent could stagnate. Consider how internal hiring could limit your available options in some scenarios.

One other danger of only hiring from within is that things may get too comfortable for your employees. When groups aren’t refreshed with new faces every now and again, cliques can form and workers may become resistant to change. This type of inflexible culture may bring out the worst in your workspace, because change can be seen as a threat to how they’ve always done things. Consider how to implement new ways of doing things, even with the same people doing the work.

External Sources of Recruitment

External sources of recruitment signify the hiring of those employees who have never been associated with the organisation before.

The organisation needs to include new and fresh talent to become successful and to survive in the competition. Large organisations mostly depend on external sources of recruitment.

Following are the various external sources through which the organisation acquire new resources:

Advertisements: The organisation advertises the job openings in the newspaper, media, company’s bulletin, social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), job portals, etc.

Campus Recruitment: The organisation collaborates with the educational institutes and colleges to hire their students for the available job vacancies, by conducting the recruitment process in the respective college campus.

E-Recruitment: The organisation uses the web-based software as a source of recruitment involving electronic screening of candidates, online skill test, online profile checks and interviews on video-conferencing.

Employment Exchange: The organisation gets itself registered with the employment exchange, i.e. a government-affiliated agency who have a database of many prospective candidates. These candidates register with such employment exchanges in search of better job opportunities.

Outsourcing Consultancies: Some private consultancies are professionally working to recruit employees on behalf of the organisation. The organisation hires such consultants on a commission basis to acquire the desired human resource.

Walk-ins and Write-ins: The organisations without any effort, get random applications when the job seekers submit their CV. Either by visiting the organisation, posting the letter with CV or mailing the CV on the company’s mail id.

Contractors: The organisation hires a contractor who provides casual workers temporarily, especially for a particular project, and such workers have no existence in the company’s records.

Acquisition and Mergers: At the time of the company’s merger or acquisition of another company; it has to lay off some of its employees as well as recruit new talents. The company structure changes drastically.

Professional Associations: Professional associations facilitates the organisation to fill in the vacant position by advertising it in their journal or magazines. It also offers job opportunities to the highly educated, skilled or experienced resources who are experts in their fields and hold a membership with such associations.

Advantages of external recruitment

Disadvantages of external recruitment

When a candidate is selected from an external recruitment process, there is a possibility that the candidate might have less chance of understanding the environment of the company. And this lesser understanding can make a big difference in the future activities of the company.

Therefore, there is some sort of issues with an external process which needs to be rectified for a better understanding of the company environment.

There is a possibility that the candidate selected for the post is not worthy of the position offered and he/she can take advantage of their position in the company.

This type of risk is very much common in an external recruitment process as most of the candidates applied for the job are total strangers to the company. And that is why it is considered one of the higher risk processes of recruitment.

The main disadvantages of external recruitment are that it is time-consuming as most of the companies post an advertisement for their company recruitment drive.

Then there is a quite possible chance of receiving a higher number of applicants for the post and the recruiter need to be very careful with their decision of selecting the best candidate for each round selection process.

These different rounds of selection take a bit longer than the internal recruitment process as it involves a number of processes.

As most part of the external recruitment process mainly deals with complete new candidates then the company needs to come up with a pay scale for that candidate which should value his/her skill and ability.

This can turn things a bit costly for the company as they are in need of new ideas and to get such new and creative ideas from the potential candidate. The company needs to provide him/her with the best possible deal to refuse.

With all these aspects, the company needs to provide intense training for the candidates. Screening a large number of candidates consumes more money.

Key Takeaways

1. External sources of recruitment signify the hiring of those employees who have never been associated with the organisation before.
2. Internal sources of recruitment refer to seeking the employees from within the organisation to fill up the vacant position.

4.3 Selection procedure

The selection process is aimed at finding and hiring the best candidates for job openings. This process is often depicted as a funnel. 50 candidates may apply to a function, five of them are invited for an in-person interview, and one person is selected in the end.

The selection process always starts with a job opening. This job opening should have a clearly defined function profile that includes criteria like minimum years of work experience, educational background, and being proficient in certain skills.

Once this job opening is published and advertised, candidates flow in – hopefully! This is where the selection funnel starts. The funnel consists of seven stages.

After the job opening has been posted, candidates can apply. The amount of people applying depends on the company, the specific function, and the availability of work and workers.

The number of applicants can range between zero and thousands, depending primarily on the size of the company, the type of job and the industry, and on how successful your sourcing strategy and employer brand are. Google, for example, receives around 3 million applications a year. This means that on average more than 400 people apply per job opening.

But the number and type of applicants also depend on your job advert. In fact, the way a job ad is written, meaning the words and language used in it, has a direct impact on the people you attract. A tool like Textio uses data and machine learning to help companies optimize their job adverts and make sure the text reflects not only what they are looking for in a candidate, but also what they are about as a company.

• Resume screening. The most commonly known technique is resume or CV screening. Resume screening helps to assess if candidates comply with the criteria needed for the job. If you require 5+ years of work experience and you see that a college graduate applied, you can easily disqualify this person. Thankfully, there are great tools available that can do the resume screening for you, ranging from built-in resume screening tools that are part of an ATS to resume screeners that use artificial intelligence to predict the quality of hire.

• Phone screening/chatbot. After the resume screening, often a phone screening happens. This helps to align expectations between the candidate and employer. The recruiter can ask the questions they had after screening the candidate’s resume. In addition, the recruiter can walk through a checklist that may include topics like pay expectations, full time or flexible commitment, starting date, and other potential deal-breakers. Since this is a fairly standard procedure, having a chatbot ask these questions is also an option.
   
• Pre-selection. Pre-selection is a powerful screening method that helps to weed out potential mismatches. Pre selection tools provide assessments that can include cognitive testing, a job sample, or other tests that help to predict the quality of the new hire. Sometimes the resume screening is included in these tools. Pre-employment assessment tools often also include a realistic jib preview. This shows both the positive but also the negative sides of the job, resulting in a more truthful description of the good and bad aspects of a given job. This helps to align expectations between employer and employee and leads to better hires.

These pre-selection tests are often used for functions with a high volume of applicants, in other words, for high-volume recruiting. To give an example of such a test, a sales rep might be assessed on their service orientation and how much they smile on video. These screening tools ‘weed out’ the obvious misfits so only the most suitable candidates remain.

The goal of this second phase is to reduce the number of candidates from a large group to a manageable group of between 3-10 people that can be interviewed in-person. Be aware that not all pre-selection tools and screenings are fully accurate.

The third step in the funnel is the best known and most visible of them all: the job interview. The job interview involves the candidate being interviewed by their direct manager or the recruiter to assess how well-suited they are for the job.

The interview offers some insight into a person’s verbal fluency and sociability. It also provides the opportunity to ask the candidate questions related to the job and it presents the opportunity to sell the job to the candidate.

There are two kinds of interviews, the unstructured and structured interview. In a structured interview, a standardized set of questions is used. This provides the interviewer with a uniform method of recording information and standardizing the rating of the applicant’s qualifications.

This method offers a structured way to retrieve information from the candidate. STAR is an acronym for:

•      Situation. Have the candidate describe the situation that they were in.
•      Task. What goal was the candidate working towards?
•      Action. Have the candidate describe in detail what actions they took to make the best of the situation and complete their task.
•      Result. Have the candidate describe the outcome of the action and ask what the candidate learned.

The next step is making the decision and choosing the candidate with the greatest future potential for the organization. Sometimes this means picking someone less qualified at the moment – but who is committed to growing and staying with the organization longer.

The decision is best made based on a data-driven approach. In practice, this means pre-defined criteria on which each candidate is rated during the selection process. The best candidate is then chosen and given an offer.

After the company has made the decision, the selection process isn’t over. The candidate still needs to accept the offer.

At this point, the organization should have all the information that will make the candidate say yes. This has been retrieved during the phone screening and job interview. 

The offer is then made to the candidate. If the offer is accepted a contract is drawn and signed. Only when the employment contract is signed by all parties, will the selection process be completed. 

Key Takeaways

1. The selection process is aimed at finding and hiring the best candidates for job openings.
2. The selection process always starts with a job opening. This job opening should have a clearly defined function profile that includes criteria like minimum years of work experience, educational background, and being proficient in certain skills.

4.4 Distinction between Recruitment and Selection

The process of recruitment involves the development of suitable techniques for attracting more candidates to a position vacancy, while the process of selection involves identifying the most suitable candidate for the vacancy. Recruitment precedes the selection process, and the selection process is only completed when a job offer is created and given to the selected candidate by appointment letter.  

In order to thoroughly understand the difference between recruitment and selection, there are certain points to keep in mind. 

1. Recruitment is the process of finding candidates for the vacant position and encouraging them to apply for it. Selection means choosing the best candidate from the pool of applicants and offering them the job. 
2. Recruitment is a positive process aimed at attracting more and more job seekers to apply. Selection is a negative process, rejecting unfit candidates from the list. 
3. Of the two, recruitment is relatively simpler. Recruitment has the recruiter paying less attention to scrutinizing individual candidates, whereas selection involves a more thorough examination of candidates where recruiters aim to learn every minute detail about each candidate, so they can choose the perfect match for the job. 
4. Recruitment is less time-consuming and less economically demanding, as it only involves identifying the needs of the job and encouraging candidates to apply for them. Selection involves a wide range of activities, which can be both time-consuming and expensive. 
5. In recruitment, communication of vacancy is done so through various sources such as the internet, newspaper, magazines, etc., and distributes forms easily so candidates can apply. During the selection process, assessment is done so through various evaluation stages, such as form submission, written exams, interviews, etc.

Key Takeaways

1. Recruitment is less time-consuming and less economically demanding, as it only involves identifying the needs of the job and encouraging candidates to apply for them. Selection involves a wide range of activities, which can be both time-consuming and expensive. 

4.5 Employment test and type of interview

Employment testing and selection procedures are aptitude tests and examinations that help a business predict the success of a job candidate. In the modern work force, tests, such as psychological screenings, indicate which employees might have undesirable personality traits, such as anger problems.

Personality tests are just one tool available to businesses to screen their applicants. Other common tests include skills and aptitude testing for areas that directly relate to the job, such as reasoning and interpretive tests, and computer knowledge. Credit checks, background investigations and medical examinations are typical and sometimes necessary tests for certain jobs.

Types of interview

Traditional Interview

Although behavioral interviewing (see section below) is being used more frequently, a traditional interview is still very common. The length is usually from a half hour to one and a half hours. You are usually asked many of the questions from the Common Interview Questions section and possibly a few behavioral questions related to the job. After this interview, if you are being considered, you would be invited back for 1-2 more interviews.

Panel Interview

In a panel interview, you will be in the room with several people, usually three to five, but it could be as many as ten. Sometimes each person will ask you a series of questions, and other times a few people will ask questions while the rest listen. The purpose of having many people sit in on the interview is sometimes so several staff members can meet the candidates and also to keep the number of interviews a candidate has limited to one or two. The questions could be traditional, behavioral or a combination.

Serial Interview

This type of interview consists of a series of interviews on the same day. For example, if you are scheduled for an interview from 1-3:30, you may have 5 half-hour interviews with individual people. Each interviewer will most likely ask you different questions. Question types may vary. If your interview is during a mealtime, like 10-2, most likely, someone will take you to lunch. Do not let down your guard; this is still part of the interview. A “lunch interview” (see section below) is more common for upper-level positions or positions in which you would have frequent “lunch meetings” with clients/colleagues.

Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral interviews are designed to provide the interviewer with information about how you think and behave in situations. Hiring managers are interested in your method of thinking and going about doing a task as well as how you respond in difficult situations. An effective way to answer behavioral questions is the to provide the interviewer with four pieces of information known as the STAR Method: Situation, Task, Action, Results.

Interview test

There are six basic types of questions you may face during the course of your interview:

This type of question includes "What is your GPA?", resume verification questions. The purpose is to objectively verify the credentials presented in your background.

This type of question includes "What did you learn in that class?" and "What were your responsibilities in that position?" The purpose is to subjectively evaluate the experiences in your background.

This type of question includes "What would you do in this situation?" and "What is your greatest weakness?" The purpose is to subjectively analyze how you would respond in a series of scenarios.

This type of question includes "Can you give me a specific example of how you did that?" and "What were the steps you followed to deliver that result?" The purpose is to objectively measure past behaviors as a potential predictor of future results.

This type of question includes "Can you give me a specific example of your leadership skills?" or "Explain a way in which you sought a creative solution to a recent problem you needed to solve." The purpose is to align your past behaviors with specific competencies which are required for the position.

This type of question includes problem-solving questions ranging from: "How many gas stations are there in Europe?" to "What is your estimate for the global online retail market for books?" The purpose is to evaluate your problem-solving abilities and how you would analyze and work through potential case situations.

Key Takeaways

1. Employment testing and selection procedures are aptitude tests and examinations that help a business predict the success of a job candidate.
   1. Personality tests are just one tool available to businesses to screen their applicants.

References-

1. Principles & Practices of Management: L. M. Prasad
2. Principles of Management: P. C. Tripathy & P.N. Readdy