Recruiting and Selecting Employees

1. Recruiting and Selecting Employees

2. In This Section… • Understand approaches to matching labor supply and demand • Weigh the advantages and disadvantages of internal and external recruiting • Distinguish among the major selection methods and use the most legally defensible of them to provide the best ‘fit’ for your firm • Understand the legal constraints on the hiring process

3. Human Resource Supply and Demand • Labor Supply • The availability of workers with the required skills to meet the firm’s labor demand. • Labor Demand • How many workers the organization will need in the future. • Human Resource Planning (HRP) • The process an organization uses to ensure that it has the right amount and the right kind of people to deliver a particular level of output or services in the future.

4. Human Resource Supply and Demand (Cont.)

5. Human Resource Supply and Demand (Cont.) • Forecasting Supply and Demand • Quantitative Techniques rely on past data and previous relationships between staffing and other variables • Qualitative Techniques rely on experts’ judgments

6. The Hiring Process

7. Challenges to the Hiring Process • Determining the characteristics most important to performance • Measuring the characteristics that determine performance • The motivation factor: • performance = ability x motivation • Who should make the decision?

8. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing - Recruiting • Sources of Recruiting • Current employees • Referrals from current employees • Former employees • Print and radio advertisements • Internet advertising and career sites • Employment agencies • Temporary workers • College recruiting • Customers • Military

9. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Hiring from Within: • Advantages • Foreknowledge of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses • More accurate view of candidate’s skills • Candidates have a stronger commitment to the company • Increases employee morale • Less training and orientation required • Disadvantages • Failed applicants become discontented • Time wasted interviewing outside candidates who will not be considered • Inbreeding of the status quo

10. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Finding Internal Candidates: • Job posting • Publicizing an open job to employees (often by literally posting it on bulletin boards) and listing its attributes. • Rehiring former employees • Advantages: • They are known quantities. • They know the firm and its culture. • Disadvantages: • They may have less-than positive attitudes. • Rehiring may sent the wrong message to current employees about how to get ahead.

11. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Finding External Candidates: • Employee referrals • Applicants who are referred to the organization by current employees • Referring employees become stakeholders. • Referral is a cost-effective recruitment program. • Referral can speed up diversifying the workforce(but could also cause EEO problems)

12. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Finding External Candidates: • Advertising • The Media: selection of the best medium depends on the positions for which the firm is recruiting. • Newspapers (local and specific labor markets) • Trade and professional journals

13. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Finding External Candidates: • Recruiting via the Internet - More firms and applicants are utilizing the Internet in the job search process • Advantages of Internet recruiting: • Cost-effective way to publicize job openings • More applicants attracted over a longer period • Immediate applicant responses • Online prescreening of applicants • Links to other job search sites • Automation of applicant tracking and evaluation

14. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Finding External Candidates (Internet):

15. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) • Employment agencies: • Public agencies operated by federal, state, or local governments • Agencies associated with nonprofit organizations • Privately owned agencies

16. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) • Employment agencies: • Reasons to Use: • When a firm does not have an HR department and is not geared to doing recruiting and screening. • The firm has found it difficult in the past to generate a pool of qualified applicants. • The firm must fill a particular opening quickly. • There is a perceived need to attract a greater number of minority or female applicants. • The firm wants to reach currently employed individuals, who might feel more comfortable dealing with agencies than with competing companies. • The firm wants to cut down on the time it is devoting to recruiting.

17. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Temporary Workers • Benefits • Paid only when working • More productive • No recruitment, screening, and payroll administration costs • Costs • Fees paid to temp agencies • Lack of commitment to firm

18. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Recruiting a Diverse or Nontraditional Workforce • Single parents • Providing work schedule flexibility. • Older workers • Revising polices that make it difficult or unattractive for older workers to remain employed. • Recruiting minorities and women • Understanding recruitment barriers. • Formulating recruitment plans. • Welfare-to-work • Developing pre-training programs to overcome difficulties in hiring and assimilating persons previously on welfare.

19. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Recruiting (Cont.) Recruiting a Diverse or Nontraditional Workforce • Minority student associations • College organizations of students with disabilities • Targeted radio announcements • Professional organizations • Minority organizations

20. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection • Selection tools (tests, interviews, etc.) must meet criteria for: • Reliability = consistency of measurement, usually across time, but also across judges • Validity = extent to which scores on a test, interview or other selection process correspond to actual job performance

21. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Two types of validity: • Content validity = degree to which the content of the selection method (test) is representative of the job content • Empirical (criterion related) validity = The extent to which the technique measures the intended knowledge, skill, or ability. In the selection context, it is the extent to which scores on a test or interview correspond to actual job performance. • Concurrent: correlation between selection and performance when measured at the same time • Predictive: extent to which selection scores correlate with performance scores when performance is measured later in time

22. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • A organization must be able to prove: • That its tests are related to success or failure on the job (validity) • That its tests don’t unfairly discriminate against minority or non-minority subgroups (disparate impact). • EEO guidelines and laws apply to all selection devices, including interviews, applications, and references.

23. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Letters of recommendation: • Not highly related to job performance (too positive) • Can look at traits letter writer attributes to the job candidate • Application forms • Ability tests: • Cognitive • Physical/mechanical • Emotional intelligence

24. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Personality Tests (Big Five) • Extraversion • Emotional stability/neuroticism • Openness to experience • Agreeableness. • Conscientiousness • Conscientiousness most related to job performance and is a valid indicator • Myers-Briggs (MBTI)

25. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Honesty tests • Psychological tests designed to predict job applicants’ proneness to dishonesty and other forms of counter productivity. • Measure attitudes regarding things like tolerance of others who steal, acceptance of rationalizations for theft, and admission of theft-related activities

26. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews: • Most common selection tool • Criticized for poor reliability and low validity • Interviewers don’t agree • Bias • Experience is different from candidate to candidate

27. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – using astructured interview – based on job analysis, job related questions and consistency • Situational Interview Questions • Supervisors and workers rewrite critical incidents of behavior as situational interview questions then generate and score possible answers as benchmark • Job Knowledge Questions • Assess whether or not candidate has the basic knowledge needed to perform the job • Worker Requirements Questions • Assess whether or not worker is willing to perform the job under prevailing job conditions

28. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask… • Marital Status • Inappropriate: • Are you married? • Is this your maiden or married name? • With whom do you live? • Appropriate: • After hiring, marital status on tax and insurance forms 

29. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask… • Parental Status • Inappropriate: • How many kids do you have? • Do you plan to have children?Are you pregnant? • Appropriate: • After hiring, asking for dependent information on tax and insurance forms

30. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask… • Age • Inappropriate: • How old are you? • What year were you born? • When did you graduate from high school? • Appropriate: • Before hiring, asking if you are over the legal minimum age for the hours or working conditions, in compliance with state or Federal labor laws. • After hiring, verifying legal minimum age with a birth certificate or other ID, and asking age on insurance forms  • National Origin • Inappropriate: • Where were you born? • Where are your parents from? • What's your heritage? • Appropriate: • Verifying legal U.S. residence or work visa status

31. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask… • Race or Skin Color • Inappropriate: • What race are you? • Are you a member of a minority group? • Appropriate: • Generally indicate equal opportunity employment. • Asking race only as required for affirmative-action programs  • Religion or Creed • Inappropriate: • What religion are you? • Which religious holidays will you be taking off from work? • Do you attend church regularly? • Appropriate: • Contact religious or other organizations related to your beliefs, that you list as employers or references

32. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Job Interviews – questions can and can not ask… • Criminal Record • Inappropriate • Have you ever been arrested? • Have you ever spent a night in jail? • Appropriate: • Questions about convictions by civil or military courts, if accompanied by a disclaimer that answers will not necessarily cause loss of job opportunity. • Specific convictions, if related to fitness to perform the job. Generally, employers can ask only about convictions and not arrests, except for law-enforcement and security-clearance agencies.  • Disability • Inappropriate: • Do you have any disabilities? • What's your medical history? • How does your condition affect your abilities? • Appropriate • Ask if you can perform specific duties of the job.

33. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Assessment Centers: • Simulated tasks or exercises candidates (usually managerial) are asked to perform • Expensive, but a valid indicator • Drug Tests: • Correlate to job performance

34. Meeting the Challenges of Effective Staffing – Selection (Cont.) • Selection tools as predictors for job performance: • Reference Checks – best defense against negligent hiring • Background Checks - To verify factual information provided by applicants, to uncover damaging information

35. Legal Issues in Staffing • Discrimination Laws (Best Defense): • Evidence of the validity of the selection process • For ADA “essential job functions” • Knowing what questions to ask and not to ask • Affirmative Action • Negligent Hiring