The hiring process in companies can differ from one organization to another depending on the size of the firm, position requirements, and some other different factors. Employees are among the most crucial stakeholders in a company. The hiring process is a core responsibility of the company’s Human Resource Department. This process entails recognizing, attracting, screening, shortlisting, interviewing, selecting, recruiting, and onboarding workers (Bilan et al.,2020). Many firms outsource their hiring needs, while others depend exclusively on advertisements, job boards, and social media channels to hire workers for new positions. This essay highlights the process most companies follow during recruitment to get the most suitable candidate for the advertised position.
An organization’s hiring procedure entails reviewing the candidates’ applications, choosing an appropriate candidate to interview for the position, choosing between the applicants to make an appropriate hiring decision, and conducting various pre-employment tests. Typically, a well-defined hiring process should involve two crucial parts: outlining the role and advertising the position.
The Hiring procedure
Hiring is a company’s activity that entails all the procedures an organization undertakes to identify, attract, and select workers from within or outside the organization. This process entails several activities, such as identifying and attracting potential individuals, examination of the latter, and eventual selection of ideal candidates for the position. In most companies, the human resource department makes the decisions that govern the hiring process.
Employee recruitment
During recruitment, the organization starts the selection process by shortlisting the candidates and ends the process by finally selecting the ideal candidates. Once they make appropriate decisions on the ideal candidates, the employees use different tools to select the most suitable candidate. The tools include application letters, resumes, application forms, recommendation letters, testimonials, aptitude tests, IQ tests oral personality interviews. The types of tools and the type of job at hand differ from one firm to another. However, firms have demonstrated great homogeneity in utilizing these tools. For example, the cover letter and the resume are the basic tools the hiring team uses in shortlisting the candidates for the interviews, undertaking the tests, and presenting their certificates.
To shortlist, the human resource department screens and examines the application details, forms, resumes, and cover letters presented by the applicants with the aim of ascertaining the candidates who attain the minimum job requirements in terms of their abilities, experiences, academic qualification, and other attractive features that are compatible with the specification in the position advertised. Firms have resorted to a highly computerized examination of the application forms to make the shortlisting process more efficient and accurate.
Aptitude test
Aptitude tests are used together with personality and IQ tests to decide the best candidate to fill the position in the company. Significantly, aptitude tests are short questionnaires with different questions that the hiring team administers to the applicants with limited time to test their sharpness, aptness, and cognitive ability in critical thinking and other skills. The questions presented in the test may be structured with choices from which the candidate is to select the answer they feel is more appropriate concerning the question. The questions may also be open to the candidates.
Importance of Hiring
Hiring an ideal individual starts with having a dependable individual who is all-round educated on the company’s needs performing the process. Evaluating the requirements with the hiring director and officials can guarantee they can make a superior educated choice (Richey et al.,2016). Making a wrong choice during the hiring process can induce a lot of additional issues and anxiety that can prevent the development of the company’s operations. A terrible and unqualified employee will willfully affect other workers through false deals, which may cost the company’s growth. By recruiting the ideal individual, the first run-through around the company will move on a positive course and become more fruitful in the future. Entrepreneurs and administrators should understand the effect that a worker can have and consider their influence throughout the entire hiring process.
The Recruitment Process
The recruitment process usually depends on the size of the organization. In a small organization, the owner hires, although in big companies, the Human Resources department, the manager, or the supervisors are responsible for hiring. The human resource department is responsible for recruiting and training workers, meaning it oversees the hiring and selection process, although the supervisor and the manager always participate in the process. Therefore, the human resource manager determines the entire process.
Important problems that organizations face during their hiring processes
The hiring process is the primary tool for selecting the best worker and needs the company’s massive resource investment. Hiring in the contemporary world is a challenge, indeed. It is increasing with leaner budgets and teams but with the same expected outcomes. It is very crucial to be cautious of legal issues to minimize any legal challenges that may result. Health care Human Resource departments must attain legal requirements when making job offers, checking references, advertising jobs, and conducting interviews with potential candidates. For instance, when checking references, the hiring team must avoid asking the candidates illegal questions during the hiring process.
The most challenging part of preparing for hiring by the human resource department is avoiding asking the candidates illegal questions. The company’s reputation lies at stake if the hiring team cannot formulate questions in a way that would not seem illegal. Structuring a question can transform a genuine question into an illegal one; hence the language they use should be emphasized to ensure they do not distort the meaning of the questions during the process. Some questions are also illegal by nature or by the form of answers they expect from the candidates. To some extent, what is crucial for the company to know when asked in a certain method is illegal, for instance, the candidate’s age. Being gender biased or insensitive, concentrating too much on the individual’s privacy, and asking questions that are grounded on an individual’s culture is also illegal. A prospective employer may discriminate against an applicant during pre-employment discrimination. They may discriminate against the candidate based on ethnicity, age, sex, or faith.
The Human Resource Managers experience ethical issues when hiring and selecting candidates for the advertised positions. Some challenges include misleading qualifications for a suitable candidate, misleading ads, exposed to attempting to find ways “around” not recruiting a qualified personnel for discriminatory purpose according to supervisors, and not reviewing candidates based on qualifications. Human Resource managers should learn to be objective, consistent, and honest during the hiring and selection process. Typically, ethics play a very crucial role during hiring.
Furthermore, determining the type of question asked during this process seems to be a nightmare to the human resource departments because they have to ensure that they only ask the appropriate questions. The type of questions should be as simple as possible, and at the same time, they need to bring out the appropriate response which will enable the recruiting team to examine the candidate appropriately.
Controversies that exist during the hiring process
Human resource is the most valued and treasured asset of a company and is majorly responsible for adding value to all other resources of a company. The hiring process seems to be a nightmare for the human resource managers of several companies. Currently, several organizations use different recruitment channels such as their social media platforms such as Facebook, and LinkedIn (Koch et al.,2018).Organizations characterize applicants by their level of qualification such as payroll experience, interpersonal skills etc. The extent of fit between a candidate’s qualities and the requirements of the position should serve as the basis for the hiring decision. Hiring process that follows this procedure will result in desirable human resources outcomes such as attracting qualified and experienced workers, increased staff performance, retention of workers, avoiding dodging, employee satisfaction, and low turnover. A business may experience a high turnover if it does not follow effective procedures in recruiting its employees since there are very high chances that the employed employees may lack appropriate skills for the advertised job(Mohammad et al.,2021). Therefore, the hiring process directly impacts a company’s performance.
Most employers claim to be equal opportunity employers. Some organizations have an equal employer logo on their webpage, and others state that employment is one of their major corporate goals. Diversity is noticeably good for every company. This implies having several workers from various backgrounds could be one of the determinants of a company’s human resource. Employers should avoid discrimination when hiring so that they achieve a workplace diversity. Employment discrimination can begin from the first time one presents his application for the advertised job. The hiring manager can screen the applicants based on several factors such as their religious affiliations. Employes can show biasness based on the applicants’ age, gender, race, accent, and religion. Discrimination is controversial to the hiring process, and it can be costly to the organization since favoritism can result to employing incompetent staff, lower productivity, and high shirking.
Companies institute affirmative action plans to favor individuals from disadvantaged groups so that they correct the past explicit discrimination practices besides avoiding possible future implicit discrimination. Employers who discriminate against a specific group does not obtain all the information about the personnel, or obtaining this information becomes so costly(Zschirnt & Ruedin ,2016). Affirmative action is controversial in the hiring process since it leads to reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination is prejudice against those who belong to a group that is in the majority in a company because it takes into account criteria other than merit (Akintola,2011). With diversity goals and the creation of a diversity group, organizations usually put the affirmative action plans into action.
Hiring involves employing new workers. It is a procedure in the full employee lifecycle and represents the finalization of a successful recruiting process(Sinha & Thaly,2013). The hiring manager should follow the basic staffing model of KSAO(knowledge, skills, and other practices) when hiring the candidates based on merit. This model speculates when the organization needs to hire a candidate for a new position. The candidate is matched with the position using the KSAO model.
Conclusion
Hiring process is vital to the companies since it contributes to improving the human resource of the organization. In fact, the quality of the personnel is a direct result of the hiring and selection process. As such, the hiring process starts with the identification of vacancies in the company until the workers are finally inducted into the company as new workers. The Human resource manager is responsible for the hiring process, although the supervisors, subordinates, and managers contribute to the hiring and selection process. The selection and hiring process, should uphold to the legality of employment and selection including the anti-employment discrimination laws, and equal opportunity policies of contracts
References
Akintola, A. (2011). Hiring discrimination in racially diverse labour markets: A cross country study.
Bilan, Y., Mishchuk, H., Roshchyk, I., & Joshi, O. (2020). Hiring and retaining skilled employees in SMEs: problems in human resource practices and links with organizational success. Business: Theory and Practice, 21(2), 780-791.
John Richey, M. B. A., RHIA, F., & RHIA, K. J. (2016). Hiring for competency: Hiring to not fail vs. hiring to succeed. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 1.
Koch, T., Gerber, C., & De Klerk, J. J. (2018). The impact of social media on recruitment: Are you LinkedIn? SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(1), 1-14.
Mohammad, T., Darwish, T. K., Singh, S., & Khassawneh, O. (2021). Human resource management and organisational performance: The mediating role of social exchange. European Management Review, 18(1), 125-136.
Sinha, V., & Thaly, P. (2013). A review on changing trend of recruitment practice to enhance the quality of hiring in global organizations. Management: journal of contemporary management issues, 18(2), 141-156.
Zschirnt, E., & Ruedin, D. (2016). Ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions: a meta-analysis of correspondence tests 1990–2015. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(7), 1115-1134.
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