Page 225 - Introduction to Business

CHAPTER 6 Human Resources Management 199

Organizational Staffing

LEARNING OBJECTIVE 3
Discuss the process of recruiting and selecting employees for an organization.
Recruiting
Recruiting is the process of attracting qualified job applicants for jobs as they come recruiting Attracting qualified job
open. At the heart of recruiting is the development of an applicant pool, which is applicants
the pool of people applying for a particular job or jobs. Some companies put a high applicant pool The pool of people
applying for a particular job or jobs
priority on developing very large applicant pools, taking the viewpoint that one
never knows where there might be a diamond in the rough. In recent years South-
west Airlines has, on average, solicited and received well over 100,000 job applica-
5
tions per year for a few thousand or so new hires. Other organizations, however,
solicit and recruit job applicants more narrowly, perhaps focusing on job applicant
sources that worked well for them in the past.
Internal recruiting means considering present employees (internal supply) as internal recruiting Considering present
candidates for available positions. Such situations may involve promoting current employees as candidates for available
jobs
employees to higher-level positions or transferring them from one position to another
at the same level. Internal opportunities for both promotion and transfer may help
increase employee morale and lessen turnover (employees leaving the organization).
In many cases such opportunities for internal promotion or transfer are open, with the
position being publicly posted and all applications encouraged. In some cases,
though, internal staffing moves are made in a more closed manner, with managers
deciding which employee will be considered for the job promotion or transfer.
External recruiting involves reaching outside the organization for new employees. external recruiting Considering
Numerous different means are available for external recruiting ranging from Internet individuals outside the organization as
candidates for the job
sites to union hiring halls to executive search firms to campus interviews. The means
of external recruiting used will likely turn in significant measure on the type of job
involved. For better or worse, word-of-mouth recruiting, that is, referrals from current
employees or other individuals well known to the organization, can play a very impor-
tant role in hiring. Aggressive external recruitment may cause resentment among cur-
rent employees in certain situations, such as where they feel there are well-qualified
employees within the organization who could be promoted to the position.

U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
recruiter Doug Fuller (left) talks to
Leslie Lang during a recent job fair
held at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, New Jersey. The IRS is
actively recruiting college business
students.

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