PART TWO RECRUITMENT AND PLACEMENT

C H A P T E R T F i v e

Personnel Planning and Recruiting 5

Strategic OverviewPlanning and Forecasting

Forecasting Personnel NeedsForecasting the Supply of Inside

CandidatesForecasting the Supply of Outside

CandidatesEffective Recruiting

Organizing the Recruitment FunctionMeasuring Recruiting Effectiveness

The Recruiting Yield PyramidInternal Sources of Candidates

Finding Internal CandidatesRehiringSuccession Planning

Outside Sources of CandidatesAdvertisingEmployment AgenciesTemp Agencies and Alternative StaffingOffshoring/Outsourcing White Collar & Other

JobsExecutive RecruitersOn-Demand Recruiting ServicesCollege RecruitingReferrals and Walk-insRecruiting via the Internet

Recruiting a More Diverse WorkforceSingle ParentsOlder Workers Recruiting Minorities and WomenWelfare-to-WorkThe Disabled

Developing and Using Application FormsPurpose of Application FormsAlternative Dispute ResolutionUsing Application Forms to Predict Performance

In Brief: This chapter explains the process of forecasting personnel requirements, discusses the pros and cons of eight methods used for recruiting job candidates, describes how to develop an application form, and explains how to use application forms to predict job performance.

Interesting Issues: Despite lots of publicity and widespread knowledge of EEO laws, many organizations still ask questions that are highly suspect, and some questions that are clearly violations of federal regulations. It may be useful to discuss causes of this and the potential consequences of those violations.

I. Planning and Forecasting

A. Forecasting Personnel Needs –Forecast revenues, then estimate the size of the staff required to achieve this sales volume.

1. Trend Analysis means studying a firm’s employment levels over a period of years to predict future needs.

2. Ratio Analysis means making forecasts based on the ratio between (1) some causal factor, like sales volume, and (2) number of employees required, like number of salespeople.

3. The Scatter Plot shows graphically how two variables (such as a measure of business activity and a firm’s staffing levels) are related.

4. Using Computers to Forecast Personnel Requirements – The use of software programs can enable employers to quickly translate projected productivity and sales levels into forecasts of personnel needs, while estimating how personnel requirements will be affected by various productivity and sales levels.

B. Forecasting the Supply of Inside Candidates

1. Manual Systems and Replacement Charts – Simple manual devices can be used to keep inventories and development records to compile qualifications information on each employee. Personnel replacement charts show the present performance and promotability for each position’s potential replacement. Position replacement cards can also be created for each position to show possible replacements as well as their present performance, promotion potential, and training.

2. Computerized Information Systems are used to track the qualifications of hundreds or thousands of employees. The system can provide managers with a listing of candidates with specified qualifications after scanning the database.

3. The Matter of Privacy – Employers must balance an individual’s right to privacy while making HR information legitimately available to those in the firm who need it.

C. Forecasting the Supply of Outside Candidates – This may involve considering general economic conditions and the expected rate of unemployment. Helpful sources include: Business Week, Fortune, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and prepared reports from the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, the regional Federal Reserve banks, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Public Health Service, the U.S. Employment Service, and the U.S. Office of Education.

II. Effective Recruiting

Recruiting is a more complex activity than most managers think it is. Recruitment efforts should make sense in terms of the company’s strategic plans. Some recruiting methods are superior to others, depending on who you are recruiting for and what your resources are. The success you have with your recruiting actually depends on non-recruitment HR issues and policies.

A. Organizing the Recruitment Function – Companies make a choice to centralize their recruiting efforts or to decentralize to

various locations. Advantages of centralizing are that it is easier to apply the company’s strategy priorities company-wide. In addition, it reduces duplication, makes it easier to spread the cost of new technologies over more departments, and builds a team of recruitment experts, and makes it easier to assess the effectiveness of the function. However, if divisions are autonomous or needs are varied, decentralization is a more sensible choice.

1. Line and Staff Cooperation – Since the recruiting HR manager is seldom responsible for supervising the performance for the vacant position, he/she must communicate with the supervisor to find out exactly what the job entails.

B. Measuring Recruiting Effectiveness – Assessing the quality of each recruitment source will help HR managers to determine where the most cost effective recruiting sources are and thus determine where they want to direct their recruiting dollars, Prescreening selection devices shown in table 5-1 are helpful tools to get quick assessments on whether applicants are qualified. An example of GE Medical is described here as a best practice in terms of measurement techniques.

1. A High-Performance Example – GE Medical applies best practices measurement techniques to the job of hiring highly technical workers.

C. The Recruiting Yield Pyramid – is used by some employers to calculate the number of applicants they must generate to hire the required number of new employees. Figure 5-6 illustrates the pyramid.

III. Internal Sources of Candidates

A. Finding Internal Candidates – To be effective, promotion from within requires using job posting, personnel records, and skill banks.

B. Rehiring – There are pros and cons of rehiring former employees. On the positive side, they are known quantities and are already familiar with the organization. On the other side, former employees may return with negative attitudes, and also sends a message to current employees that the way to get ahead is to leave and come back.

C. Succession Planning – The process of ensuring a suitable supply of successors for senior or key jobs. It can include the following activities: determining the projected need for managers and professionals by company level, function, and skill; auditing current executive talent to project the likely future supply for internal sources; planning individual career paths based on objective estimates of future needs and assessments of potential; career counseling based on the needs of the individual and the firm; accelerated promotions, with

development targets against the future needs of the business; performance-related training and development; planned strategic recruitment to fill short-term needs and to provide people to meet future needs; and actually filling the positions.

IV. Outside Sources of Candidates

A. Advertising

1. The Media – The best medium should be selected based on the positions for which you are recruiting.

2. Constructing the Ad – Many experienced advertisers use a four-point guide called AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to construct their ads.

3. Employment Advertising’s Effectiveness – recent studies show that it pays for employers to formulate marketing campaigns aimed at making themselves more attractive to potential recruits.

B. Employment Agencies

1. Public and Nonprofit Agencies – Every state has a public, state-run employment service agency supported by the Department of Labor, in part through grants and other assistance, such as a nationwide computerized job bank. Many professional and technical societies, and public welfare agencies have units that try to help their members or people in special categories find jobs.

2. Private Agencies charge fees for each applicant they place. Typically, market conditions determine whether the candidate or employer pays the fee.

C. Temp Agencies and Alternative Staffing 1. Benefits and Costs – The benefits of contingency staffing

include increases in overall productivity, and time and expenses saved by not having to recruit, train, and document new employees. The costs include fees paid to agency and individuals’ psychological reference to their place of employment.

2. Know Your Employment Law: Contingent Workers – Temp workers can pose legal risks to the employer. In a case with Microsoft, a federal court held that despite their temp titles, these “temps” were actually regular Microsoft employees, eligible for benefits. Temporary workers, like all workers, have significant legal rights. The degree to which the client firm controls temp agency’s employees’ activities determines how many rights these employees have, and the “dual employment” view is espoused by many courts. The basic prescription is to treat the temp employee in all ways as if the agency is in fact his employer.

3. Guidelines for Success: See Figure 5-8. Provide honest information to both temp agencies and temp workers about the length of the job assignment; implement personnel policies that ensure fair, non-discriminatory treatment of temp workers; use independent contractors and permanent part-time employees to complement the conventional temp agency workforce; consider the potential impact on regular full time employees before hiring temp workers; provide the necessary training and orientation for temp workers; and beware of legal snares in payroll decisions.

4. Alternative Staffing refers to the use of nontraditional recruitment sources.

D. Offshoring/Outsourcing White Collar and Other Jobs – Hiring workers abroad is becoming more and more common. There are several specific issues that the HR manager should keep in mind when considering this option.

E. Executive Recruiters, also called headhunters, are special employment agencies retained by employers to seek out top-management talent for their clients.1. Pros and Cons – Recruiters can be useful and can save a

manager’s time, but they can be more interested in persuading you to hire a candidate than in finding the one who will really do the job.

2. Guidelines – Make sure the firm is capable, meet the individual who will handle your assignment, and ask how much the firm charges.

F. On Demand Recruiting Services (ODRS) – This service provides short-term specialized recruiting to support specific projects without the expense of retaining traditional search firms. Basically, recruiters get paid by the hour or project, instead of a percentage fee. Two trends – technology and specialization – are changing the executive search business. Executive recruiters are being more specialized, and large ones are creating new businesses aimed specifically at specialized functions or industries.

G. College Recruiting involves sending employers’ representatives to college campuses to prescreen applicants and create an applicant pool of management trainees, promotable candidates, and professional and technical employees.

1. Recruiting Goals – are: 1) to determine whether a candidate is worthy of further consideration, and 2) to attract good candidates.

2. On Site Visits – are usually extended to good candidates.

3. Internships – are a recruiting approach that can be a win-win situation for the employer and the student. For employers, interns can make useful contributions while being evaluated

for possible full-time employment. For students, they are able to hone business skills, check out potential employers, and learn more about their likes and dislikes.

H. Referrals and Walk-Ins are alternatives for identifying potential candidates.

I. Recruiting via the Internet – More and more people are going online to look for jobs. This can be a cost effective method of finding qualified candidates.

1. Applicant Tracking – Web based ads often produce so many applicants that many firms must use applicant tracking software.

2. Using an E-Recruiting Applications Tracking ASP – Applications service providers, such as Recruitsoft.com, are strategically partnering with HR departments of many companies to streamline the recruiting process.

3. Designing Effective Internet Recruiting Programs - It is a mistake to take newspaper ads and transpose them to the Web. Instead, when posting on job sites such as Monster.com, use compelling keywords which provide good reasons why candidates would want to work for your company. See Figire 5-10 for examples of ineffective and effective web ads.

V. Recruiting a More Diverse Workforce

A. Single Parents – Formulating an intelligent program for attracting single parents should begin with understanding the considerable problems they often encounter in balancing work and family life.

B. Older Workers – Many employers are encouraging retirement-age employees not to leave, or are actively recruiting employees who are at or beyond retirement age by making their companies an attractive place in which older workers can work.

C. Recruiting Minorities and Women – requires employers to tailor their way of thinking and to design HR practices that make their firms attractive to them.

D. Welfare-to-Work – The Federal Personal Responsibility and Welfare Reconciliation Act of 1996 prompted many employers to implement programs to attract and assimilate former welfare recipients.

E. The Disabled – Employers can do several things to tap into this huge potential workforce. The Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy offers several programs, and all states have local agencies that provide placement services and other recruitment and training tools.

VI. Developing and Using Application Forms

A. Purpose of Applications Forms – Application forms are a good way to quickly collect verifiable and fairly accurate historical data from the candidate.

B. Alternative Dispute Resolution – While the EEOC generally opposes the idea, more employers are requiring applicants to sign mandatory alternative dispute resolution forms as a part of the application process.

C. Using Application Forms to Predict Job Performance – Some firms use application forms to predict which candidates will be successful and which will not by conducting statistical studies to find the relationship between (1) responses on the application form and (2) measures of success on the job.

KEY TERMS

employment or personnel planning The process of deciding what positions the firm will have to fill, and how to fill them.

trend analysis Study of a firm's past employment needs over a period of years to predict future needs.

ratio analysis A forecasting technique for determining future staff needs by using ratios between sales volume and number of employees needed.

scatter plot A graphical method used to help identify the relationship between two variables.

computerized forecast The determination of future staff needs by projecting a firm's sales, volume of production, and personnel required to maintain this volume of output, using computers and software packages.

qualifications inventoriesManual or computerized systematic records, listing employees' education, career and development interests, languages, special skills, and so on, to be used in forecasting inside candidates for promotion.

personnel replacement Company records showing present performancecharts and promotability of inside candidates for the most

important positions.position replacement A card prepared for each position in a company

to show possiblecards replacement candidates and their qualifications.recruiting yield pyramid Calculating and using the historical arithmetic

relationships between recruitment leads and invitees, invitees and interviews, interviews and offers made, and offers made and offers accepted.

job posting Posting notices of job openings on company bulletin boards is an effective recruiting method.

succession planning The process of ensuring a suitable supply of successors for current and future senior or key jobs.

alternative staffing The use of nontraditional recruitment sources.on demand recruiting These services provide short-term, specialized

recruiting services usually services (ODRS) paid for by the hour or project, rather than on a

percentage fee.application form The form that provides information on education, prior

work record, and skills.