The resource capability of any organization
or a business will define that strategic capability of the business to sustain
in the environment as well as to gain a higher competitive advantage which the
rational for resourcing has emerged. On the other hand, the important and most
valuable capabilities and resources of any organization are those hard to replicated,imperfectly transferable,tough to
identify and understand, durable and having the ownership with a controlling
ability by the organization where such resources need to be protected by the organization since such will have an essential role in generating a higher competitive
advantage through strategies that made to use such resources and capabilities
with a higher efficiency and effectiveness (Grant, 1991). From a resource base view, human resources
of any firm are vital for the firm since human resource considered to be the
most important and valued resource that any firm has among all other resources
of the firm which will enhance the capabilities of the organization to gain a
higher competitive advantage as well as a higher sustainability. The increased
competitive pressures for firm due to globalization human resource has
identified as a main source that generates a higher competitive advantage
whereas together with changes in the labor force demographics a higher
management concern has given to attracting best talents for the firms and such
has become one of the main concerns of the firms as well as managements (Anderson
& Witvliet, 2008).
Further with the use of new technology developments attracting applicants has
not become any issue for the organizations whereas the primary concern has
become recruiting the beat talents and the right applicants (Sackett & Lievens,
2008).
Thus the resourcing strategy of any organization in strategic human resource
management should focus on attracting higher capable people to the firm and
retain them better than its competitors and employing such attracted people in
a highly effectively manner to gain a higher competitive advantage (Armstrong,
2009).
Therefore, resourcing approach in human resource management is considering on matching organizational requirements to the resources as well as more radically
considering the skills, competencies, and behaviors that required for the
future development of the organization to gain a higher competitive advantage
in the business environment (Armstrong, 2009). It is not
sufficient for the firms to just recruit and select employees or resources as
required whereas it has become very challenging to retain such employees with
the organization while development them to meet future challenges in the environment
to gain a higher competitive advantage.
The recruitment and selection process
starts with the human resource planning process which defines as the process
which identifies the human resource requirements of the organization and
generating plan to acquire such human resource requirements (Bulla & Scott,
1994).
Another definition for human resource planning was it’s a process which firms
try to identify the demand for labor in the organization and evaluate the
nature of human resource requirement, size and the source which acquire the
said requirement to meet the demand of the company (Reilly, 2003). By discussing human
resource planning Armstrong (2009) has stated that the process includes many
activities including scenario planning which includes a proper forecasting on
the present and future changes that can happen in the environment which will
have an effect for the requirement of additional human resources for the organization demand forecasting which include identifying the requirement of
human resources and skills for the organization to face the forecasted changes
in the environment, supply forecasting which include the ability of the organization to supply such skill and human requirement through the company as
well as need of the company to employee new staff from the labor market which
further include identifying the labor market trends, demand for the labor in
the given environment and the demand for labor and the available talents and
skills in the market, forecasting requirements which include the analysis of
the deficit of human resources based on the demand and supply that has been forecasted,
and finally, action planning that the firm required to plan propose actions to
find required human resources for the organization. Further he stated that
though the activities were discussed separately all the activities are closely
related as well as interrelated to each other which the organizations need to
consider the real requirement of the organizations to recruit and select the talents
that the company need (Armstrong,
2009).
Employee recruitment was defined as
attracting the potential skills and talents for the company who likes to work
for the company and creating a pool of talents that the company can select the
best out of the said pool (Taylor, 2007). Further the selection
was defined as sleeting the best talent out of the recruited talent pool with
the right knowledge, skills, competencies and attitudes (Taylor, 2007). Thus, though
recruitment and selection has defined separately it has become very important to
consider both recruitment and selection together. The recruitment and selection
process consisting with four steps whereas the first step is requirement
defining whereas tis includes preparation of role profiles, person profile and
employment conditions. The preparation of role profile engages with identifying
the requirement of the company, the role that the selected employee must conduct
as well as reporting channels whereas person profile is involving identifying
the knowledge, skills, and abilities that the person should have to perform in
the identified role. And the next step is defining the terms and the conditions
such as the maximum salary, designation, and employment terms such as probation, time of confirmation or weather the employment is under permanent or
temporary basis. The second step is planning recruitment campaign whereas this
includes that the strategies that the organization will consider attracting all
the possible talents for the company or to communicate the message of the firm
to the beast possible target skills in the market. Further, this required a
better analysis by the organization to identify which techniques or strategies
that they organization will consider in recruiting applicants whereas formal and
informal techniques can be considering by the firms. Job centers, employment
agencies, and newspaper advertisements are the main formal recruitment methods
that practice by most of the organizations and referral by the current employees
of the organization or word of mouth can consider as informal recruitment
practices that mostly use(Carroll, et al., 1999). Through a research
it was identified that informal methods in recruitment produce better results
than formal recruitment techniques in terms of quality of the workers and their
commitment (Zottoli & Wanous,
2000).Though
few variances were identified it was identified that newspaper advertisements,
agencies, and informal recruitment techniques such as referral by friends and
employees as most popular ways that companies recruit employees in Scotland (Scholarios
& Lockyar, 1999)
and with an research in 201 large scale US companies it was identified that referrals,
recruiting for the colleges, and recruiting through agencies as top ranked
recruitment techniques out of nine recruitment techniques that were consider
for the study (Terpstra, 1996). A study conducted
with the manufacturing organizations in Malaysia it was found that most of the
companies are using paper advertisements as the main recruiting technique which
follow by referrals and agencies (Jusoh & Kok Ai,
2002)
that indicates that different countries and different companies are using
different methods in recruiting and with the popularity of internet both the
job seekers and the companies who recruit people are using internet and an
increase in using internet as a recruitment technique has increased during last
few years (Arthur, 2008). Through a research
conducted it was found that internet as the beast platform to advertise
managerial positions of the organizations and such has generated a higher productivity
for the organizations in finding better talents including professionals whereas
local newspapers were fund to be the best media for advertising non-managerial
vacancies which the recruitment process indicated a higher effectiveness while national
papers also considered as better media to advertise managerial vacancies of any organization in USA (Rioux & Bernthal,
1999).
Further it was researched and found that over 90% of US large organizations are
highly depending on web advertisements in recruiting their employees whereas
mostly depending on own website by introducing careers section in the company
website whereas the higher success on such is due to the companies are proactively
recruiting candidates which will help them to identify the best talents in the
market and produce better efficiencies in recruitment (Lermusiaux, 2003).
The third step of recruitment and selection
is attracting candidate whereas this is the final step in the recruitment
process in which the companies should identify the strengths and the weaknesses
of the recruitment process as well as recruitment techniques that they have
used whereas such will help the companies to reconsider their recruiting techniques which
they could not attract a considerable higher talents of pool which considering
other techniques to attract best talents of the available vacancies.Recruitment
is affected by many factors one of the main factor that the recruitment process
affected was the labor market conditions in any given market. One of the
factor that affect the recruitment is that the labor force population whereas
higher the labor force population resulting the companies to attract more
applicants to the company whereas lesser the labor force population will
reduce such applicants (Lee, 2005) in which at the
situations where a market that has lower labor force population, companies
need to consider very strong recruitment techniques in order to attract more
applicants for a given vacancy that the company has a higher chance to select
the best talent on the market. On the other hand, becoming an employer of
choice is another strategy that the firms can adopt to attract more applicants
for the organizations to have a successful recruitment process (Purcell, et
al., 2003)
in which the employee value propositions of the organization will help to
become an employee of choice. Employee value propositions has defined as the
financial and non-financial offerings by the company to its employees where
such value propositions are consisting with salary, other financial benefits
and non-financial benefits such as work life balance equal treatment (Armstrong,
2009).
Further through their researchers Purcell, et al. (2003) has identified six
employee value propositions and Ramlall (2003) has identified 12 employee value
propositions that can attract more applicants at the recruitment stage. Employer
brand is another factor that will affect the effectiveness of recruitment
process whereas higher the employer brand will encourage more candidates to
apply for a vacancy that publish by the organization. Employer branding is
defined as creating the organization unique in its culture and working experience
to the employees from other organizations while promoting the organization as a
better place to work and inviting others to work for the company which further
producing the employee value propositions (Walker, 2007). Further, employer
branding as defined as a process in building positive image in the minds of the
current employees and the outsiders about the firm (Mathis & Jackson,
2008).
Such build image about the organization will motivate candidates to apply for
the job vacancies as self-motivators(George, et al., 2004) whereas employer
branding can consider as an effective strategy that can attract more talents
that the organization required from the labour market (Wilden, et al., 2010). Thus, all the
communications by the organization will have an impact on the brand of the
company including their advertising and branding in marketing as well where
such will have an influence on the candidates to consider the organization as a
better employer and all such communications to the outside of the organization
in any form may affect to the image of the organization to become an employer
of choice. This was evident by many researches whereas a study has identified
that upper level college students who were looking for jobs has consider the organizations
as better employer mainly due to the organizations official web site consisted
with videos of current employees whereas the companies just has texts and
pictures were rate low as better employer by them due to the fact that the believing
of the at the companies who spent on creating a video will have less
consideration on reducing the costs and such companies will spend more in
employees (Walker, et al., 2011). On the other hand,
through a primary study it was identified that best performing organization has
37% higher concentration in developing systematic employee value propositions,
32% higher concentration on regular and continuous assessment of employee value
propositions and such companies have used media 28% more in employer branding
than low performing organizations (BCG & WFPMA, 2015) which evident that
employee value propositions as well as employer branding has very important in
generate better performances which will create through the best attracted and
selected candidates.
Selection was defined as the process which picking
the best talent or talents whom can perform best in the position with required knowledge,
skills, and abilities out from the talent pool that already has recruited (Mathis
& Jackson, 2008).
Further it was argued that the selection process should consist with five
generic standards called reliability, validity, generalizability, utility and
legality (Noe, et al., 2012). The reliability of the selection
process indicates that the consistency of the process of selection and the
degree of the process to be conduct in random errors (Noe, et al., 2012). The validity represents the ability of
the process to measure all the relevant characteristics that required to
perform the job and only the relevant aspects of performing the job whereas
generalizability is the ability of the process to analyze all the contexts of
the validity (Noe, et al., 2012). Utility refers to the degree which the
information that has gathered from the selection process enhance the
effectiveness of the selecting the best person for the organization and the job
to be performed whereas legality is the confirmation of all the selection
methods are according to the laws and regulations of the country. Selecting the
best suit candidate is very important for any organization whereas the performances
of the organization is depending on the performances of the sleeted employee.
Further it has become very important to select the candidates who can work in
the environment of the organization or to identify the candidates who can adopt
for the culture of the organization where selecting a wrong candidate will
result lower performances by the employee as well as him to resign from the job
which the organization need to another recruitment and selection cycle to
higher another employee which costs a lot for the company.
With reference to the multinational
companies, they need to operate in many destinations that are different from
each to another. Thus, the main issue such companies face is the difference in
the cultures and legal systems in the countries whereas the labor market
conditions which are differs from each country to the other also create a
significant effect for the recruitment and selection process of the company.
One of the issue that the multinationals need to face is that the recruitment
techniques that they should use whereas though it was identified through a
study that 90% of the recruitment in USA was through internet the companies
could not practice same in south Asian countries whereas in south Asia the
highest computer literacy was produced from Sri Lanka which is low as 25% in
which the companies that use internet as a recruitment technique only can
address and focus only 25% of the total market and even for the lower grades
the ability of the message to reach the required people may lower than that. Even
in employer branding, there can be differences in different destinations since
the factors which attract the potential employees may differ destination to
destination. Higher masculinity societies are target oriented and femininity
cultures are considering the quality of life (Hofstede, 1980). Thus, in masculinity cultures the
candidate are attracted for the challenges that the employer offers to them and
in femininity cultures like Sri Lanka the candidates are attracted for the life
quality that they can obtain from the employer where the employer branding of
the companies should consider such to gain a higher success. Further the
employer branding communications should also consider such cultural differences
whereas the cultures with higher individualism many prefer the organizations
that will offer higher targets and the low individualized cultures will prefer
to see more team work where the multinational organizations should consider on
employer branding to attract more candidates to the organization. On the other
hand the power distance is also very important factor in different cultures
that the multinationals should consider specially with the managerial employees
whereas in countries like Sri Lanka which has a higher power distance in
culture, the managerial candidates could be attracted for the communication that
offer a higher authority whereas such will not be a concern in a culture that
has a lower power distance.
In conclusion, it was identified the human
resource planning is an important process for the organizations to consider
having a better recruitment and selection process whereas the recruitment
process will affect by many factors such as labor market condition, brand of
the employer and employee value propositions. Further with respect to the
multinational companies it has become essential to understand the cultural
differences of the country or the destination that they operate whereas such
will have a higher effect for the recruitment and selection process of the
company specially the companies need to have different employee value
propositions as well as an employer brand that has communicated to the target
candidate based on the cultural differences to attract them. Further the other
conditions such as the computer literacy, intellectual capacities, and
perception on the media channels of the candidates also create a significant
effect for the recruitment and selection process of the company whereas such
need to be closely monitor by the multinational companies when developing their
strategies in attracting candidates for the organizations and selecting the
beat talent for the organization that will help them to gain a higher
competitive advantage.
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