Define Recruitment – Discuss the Sources of Recruitment in Detail

Before talking about the sources of recruitment, let’s define what is recruitment? Recruitment is defined as the process through which potential job applicants are attracted by the available labor force.

It is essential for every organization to attract enough quantity of potential job applicants who possess the required aptitudes & abilities that can be helpful for the organization to accomplish its objectives. An effective recruiting process is followed by the selection of effective employees.

If the best candidates are not included in the group of job applicants, then the organization is deprived off from such potential employees.

Other functions of human resources are also influenced by the recruiting process like compensation, training & development, performance evaluation, employee relations, etc. Therefore recruiting is considered to be one of the main functions of Human Resource Management.

When the organization plans for the recruiting process, then the first thing is to consider the required number of applicants that should be recruited.

There are possibilities that some applicants would not accept the job offers or many of them may not be qualified enough, so it is important to recruit a higher number of applicants than expected to hire. One method of ascertaining the required number of recruiting employees for every job is through yield ratios.

These ratios provide the relationship between the applicants that stand at one step of the recruiting process & the number of applicants that would proceed to the next step of the process.

Sources of Recruitment

There are two main methods/sources of recruitment which are as follows.

• Internal Recruitment
• External Recruitment

He organizations have two options to fill the vacant posts of the upper-level management by either hiring employees from outside of the organization or by promoting the existing lower-level employees. Both ways have some advantages & disadvantages.

Internal Sources of Recruitment

When there come job vacancies in the organization, the first priority that an organization focuses on is a replacement from the internal environment of the organization. The existing employees of the organization think that they should be preferred for the vacant job position of the organization because they are already serving the organization with potential & commitment.

Also, the recruiting manager of the organization has access to the records of its existing employees in order to determine which employee has the potential to bear the higher-level responsibilities. Another feature of recruitment from the internal environment is that it is much cost-effective.

The following are some of the main forms of internal recruitment.

• Promotion from within
• Job Posting
• Contacts & Referrals

Promotion from Within

Many organizations prefer to promote their entry-level employees to the higher-level positions and therefore such organizations maintain the human resource planning system. The human resource planning system uses the replacement charts & succession plans to point out & promote employees to higher-level positions.

The performance appraisals are reviewed for the purpose of identifying the employees that have potential & desire to be promoted. The internal recruitment increases the motivation among existing employees for effective work & this would finally enhance the morale of employees.

Job Posting

The job posting is also used for internal recruitment by the organizations. The organization informs its employees about the new job opening through publications, bulletins & personal letters. The main reason for job posting is to communicate with the employees about the vacant posts.

The following are guidelines for effective job posting.

• Job posting must be prominent
• The job specifications should be communicated clearly so that the employees can ascertain by themselves that either they are eligible for the post or not.
• All the applicants must be informed about the decisions made by the management.
• The working of the job posting system is quite well.

Contacts & Referrals

Many organizations conclude that their employees can support the recruiting process. The employees can refer to the applications of their friends & associates. The organization supports its existing employees to attract the applications of their friends & relatives for the vacant posts.

In this way, the employees refer their associates & friends to apply for the posts which is a much cost-effective & quick process of recruitment. However, there are certain problems associated with hiring relatives & friends of existing employees like favoritism, etc.

Advantages of Internal Recruitment

The advantages associated with internal recruitment are as follow.

• The existing employees of the organization are more motivated to perform well.
• There are greater career planning & development opportunities for the existing employees of the organization.
• The abilities of the existing employees are better assessed by the opportunities for internal recruitment.
• The morale of employees along with loyalty to the organization is enhanced.
• The employees can perform well with little loss of time.

Disadvantages of Internal Recruitment

The following are the main disadvantages of internal recruitment.

• Internal recruitment promotes stale ideas & narrow thinking.
• The competition among the employees enhances effective performance due to pressure.
• The workforce of the organization remains homogenous.
• There is a probability of the loss of external better outside talent.
• In some cases, special management development programs are employed to train for advanced technology.

External Sources of Recruitment

There are several ways of external sources of recruitment. The organization must clearly determine the types of positions that need to be filled along with the best-recruiting methods so that favorable results would be generated.

The organization is concerned with external recruitment in order to fill the low-level posts, acquire different background employees with unique ideas & obtaining of required skills that existing employees do not possess. The following are the sources of external recruitment.

• Vocational & High Schools
• Community Colleges
• Colleges & Universities
• Competitors & Other Organizations
• Unemployed
• Older Individuals
• Military Personnel
• Self Employed Workers

1. Vocational & High Schools

Organizations contact with the vocational & high schools for the recruitment of employees for the post of entry-level & operative.

2. Community Colleges

Community colleges serve as sources for the external recruitment of employees for the relatively higher posts. There are graduates that are passed from these colleges and who possess marketable skills.

3. Colleges & Universities

Many organizations contact colleges & universities for the search for potential new employees related to the technical & managerial areas. Many universities publish their booklets that contain information about the qualification & potential level of their students so that the organizations searching for fresh employees are facilitated.

4. Competitors & Other Firms

The job positions that require experience and skills can be filled effectively by contacting the employees of competing organizations.

5. Unemployed

Unemployed persons are also an important source of external recruitment.

6. Older Individuals

The old age persons or retired person can also become effective employees for the organizations.

7. Military Personnel

This source seems to be attractive to many organizations because military people have proved a record of motivated, flexible & drug-free work.

8. Self Employed Workers

Self-employed workers are also regarded as an important source of external recruitment in the areas of technicians, administration or management, etc.

External Recruitment Methods

Recruitment methods are defined as a particular means of attracting potential employees towards the organization. The following are the main external recruitment methods.

1. Advertising

One effective method to communicate about the vacant posts of the organization is through advertising in which newspaper, television, radio, internet & industry publication media are used to inform the general public. In some cases the organizations involved in the blind advertisement in which the recruiting organization is not identified. There are many reasons for the application of blind advertisement like:

• The organization tries to cover the low level of applicants & to discourage the irrelevant traffic of applicants.
• The organization may have a bad image or reputation that prevents enough applicants.
• When the purpose of the advertisement is test marketing only.

2. Employment Agencies

Employment agencies are also organizations that not only assist the organizations in the recruitment of the employee but also facilitate the persons to find a suitable job. There are two kinds of employment agencies which are as follows.

• Public Employment Agencies
• Private Employment Agencies

Both kinds of agencies facilitate the organizations & individual persons to coordinate for the recruitment of jobs. In return for their services, these agencies charge a specific fee. In some cases, the employment agencies specialize themselves in only specific areas of jobs like engineering, computer programming, human resource, etc.

3. Recruiters

The recruiters are associated with colleges, universities, vocational & technical schools, community colleges, etc.

4. Special Events

In this method of external recruitment, special effort is made by a single or group of employers to attract & interview a large number of applicants.

5. Internship

In this method, a student is placed at a post on a temporary basis. The organization has not any responsibility to convert the internee as a permanent employee & similarly the student is also free to accept or reject permanent employment. This method is more similar to training than to the recruitment but however, these internship programs are helpful for the organizations in recruiting potential & knowledgeable employees.

6. Executive Search Firms

These firms are also called “head hunters” and these are concerned with the provision of top executives or highly experienced professionals. An organization that needs special type of person as employee contacts these searching firms which would provide the required person to the organization.

7. Professional Associations

In certain business professions like marketing, finance, human resource, etc. there are associations that give the services of recruitment & replacement for their members. Professional associations provide a bridge that connects professionals with their related jobs. Most professional associations post the jobs through the advertisement on newsletters, trade publications & annual general meetings. The annual general meeting of these associations provides a chance for professionals to know the opened posts of jobs & also the employers of the posted jobs to interview the professionals.

8. Unsolicited Walk-In Applicants

The organization that has a good reputation for the working employees receives a lot of unsolicited applications from the prospective applicants. In such cases, the organization does not exercise much effort on recruiting process.

Besides these methods, there are also some other methods of external recruitment like open houses, virtual job fairs, cyber recruiting, etc.

Advantages of External Recruitment

The following are some of the advantages of external recruitment.

• The new ideas are obtained with the new employees along with the new insights.
• The diversity among the workforce is promoted which helps to accomplish EEO goals through affirmative action.
• The rapid growth of the organization is effectively handled through external recruitment.
• The employees of the organization remain up-to-date in the field of relevant knowledge & training.

Disadvantages of External Recruitment

External Recruitment as also faced with some disadvantages which are as follows.

• One of the main disadvantages of external recruitment is that it is much more time consuming and expensive for the organization.
• The existing employees lost the incentives of promotion.
• There are more chances that the recruiting management makes mistakes because applicant assessment is a difficult task & if it is failed than it results in wastage of resources.