Personnel Planning and Recruiting

 The Recruitment and Selection Process

1. Decide what positions to fill, through workforce/personnelplanning and forecasting.

2. Build a pool of candidates for these jobs,by recruiting internal or external candidates.

3. Have candidates complete application forms and perhaps under go initial screening
interviews.

4. Use selection tools like tests,background investigations, and physical exams to screen
candidates.

5. Decide who to make an offer to, by having the supervisor and perhaps others
interview the candidates.

Explain the main techniques used in employment planning and forecasting.

 The process of deciding what positions the firm will have to fill, and how to fill them.

 Its aim is to identify and address the gaps between the employer’s workforce
today,and its projected workforce needs.

Strategy and Workforce Planning

 workforce/employment planning is best understood as an outgrowth of the firm’s

strategic and business planning.
  For example, plans to enter new businesses, to build new plants, or to reduce activities
will all influence the number of and types of positions to be filled.

 At the same time, decisions regarding how to fill these positions will impactother HR
plans, for instance, training and recruitment plans

Employment plans are built on forecasts

1. employment forecasts: one for personnel needs (demand),

2. one for the supply of inside candidates,

3. and one for the supply of outside candidates

Forecasting Personnel Needs (Labor Demand)

 How many people with what skills will we need? For example, the public-sector-
undertaking (PSU) banks are expected to face high levels of natural retirement in the
coming years.

 Anticipating this, the Bank of Baroda intensified its entry-level recruitment initiative.
The bank also approached the open market to recruit experienced employees.

 A firm’s future staffing needs reflect demand for its products or services, adjusted for
changes

 the firm plans to make in its strategic goals and for changes in its turnover rate and
productivity.

 Forecasting workforce demand therefore starts with estimating what the demand will
be for your products or services.

 Short term, management should be concerned with daily, weekly, and seasonal
forecasts

1. The basic process for forecasting personnel needs is to forecast revenues first.

2. Then estimate the size of the staff required to support this sales volume. However,
managers must also consider other factors.

3. These include projected turnover, decisions to upgrade (or downgrade) products or

services, productivity changes, financial resources, and decisions to enter or leave
businesses.

4. The basic tools for projecting personnel needs include trend analysis, ratio analysis,
and the scatter plot.

3 types of analysis;

TREND ANALYSIS

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Study of a firm’s past employment needs over a period of years to predict future needs.

 PROS AND CONS

 Trend analysis can provide an initial rough estimate of future staffing needs.

 However, employment levels rarely depend just on the passage of time. Other factors
(like productivity and retirements, for instance), and changing skill needs will
influence impending workforce needs.

RATIO ANALYSIS

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

means making forecasts based on the historical ratio between

(1) some causal factor (like sales volume) and

(2) the number of employees required (such as number of salespeople).

Like trend analysis, ratio analysis assumes that things like productivity remain about the
same. If sales productivity were to rise or fall, the ratio of sales to salespeople would change.

THE SCATTER PLOT

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

 Drawbacks

(1) Historical sales/personnel relationships assume that the firm’s existing activities and
skill needs will continue as is.

(2) They tend to reward managers for adding employees, irrespective of the company’s
needs.

(3) They tend to institutionalize existing ways of doing things, even in the face of change.

Computerized systems and Excel spreadsheets

 help managers translate estimates of projected productivity and sales levels into
forecastable personnel requirements.

 Computerized forecasts enable managers to build more variables into their personnel
projections.

MANAGERIAL JUDGMENT

 Few historical trends, ratios, or relationships will continue unchanged into the future.

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 Judgment is thus needed to adjust the forecast.

 Important factors that may modify your initial forecast of personnel requirements include
decisions to upgrade quality or enter into new markets;

 technological and administrative changes resulting in increased productivity; and

financial resources available, for instance, a projected budget crunch.

Forecasting the Supply of Inside Candidates

Personnel replacement charts

Another option, particularly for the firm’s top positions. They show the present performance
and promotability for each position’s potential replacement.

As an alternative, with a position replacement card you create a card for each position,
showing possible replacements as well as their present performance, promotion potential, and
training.

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 Larger firms obviously can’t track the qualifications of hundreds or thousands of employees
manually. They therefore computerize this information, using various packaged software
systems such as Survey Analytics’s Skills Inventory Software.

Skills inventory systems enables employers to collect and compile employee skills
information in real time via online employee surveys.

Skills inventory programs help management anticipate staffing and skills shortages, and
facilitate workforce planning, recruitment, and training.

They typically include items like

 work experience codes,

 product knowledge,

 the employee’s level of familiarity with the employer’s product lines or services,

 the person’s industry experience,

 formal education,

 industry experiences,

 foreign language skills,

 relocation limitations,

 career interests,

 and performance appraisals.

The usual skills inventory process is for the employee, the supervisor, and human resource
manager to enter information about the employee’s background, experience, and skills via
the system.

Then, when a manager needs someone for a position, he or she describe the position’s
specifications (for instance, in terms of education and skills). The computerized system then
produces a list of qualified candidates. As the user of one such system said, “The [SumTotal]
platform allows us to track and assess the talent pool and promote people within the
company. ... The succession module helps us to identify who the next senior

MARKOV ANALYSIS

 Employers also use a mathematical process.

 Markov analysis involves creating a matrix that shows the probabilities that
employees in the chain of feeder positions for a key job (such as from junior engineer,

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 to engineer, to senior engineer, to engineering supervisor, to director of engineering)
will move from position to position and therefore be available to fill the key position.

Forecasting the Supply of Outside Candidates

If there won’t be enough skilled inside candidates to fill the anticipated openings (or you
want to go outside for another reason), you will turn to outside candidates.

(1) what’s happening in his or her industry and locale

(2) labor market analyses, economic and employment projections

(3) applicants may lack basic skills such as math, communication, creativity, and
teamwork. workforce and training plans.

(4) Such needs, too, get factored into the employer’s workforce and training plans.

Matching Projected Labor Supply and Labor Demand

 Workforce planning should logically culminate in a workforce plan. This plan lays
out the employer’s projected workforce and skills gaps, as well as staffing plans for
filling these gaps.

 For example, the plan should identify the positions to be filled; potential internal and
external

 candidates or sources for these positions; the training and promotions moving people
into the positions will entail; and the resources that implementing the plan will require
for example, in recruiters fees, the expenses will include estimated training costs,
relocation costs and interview expenses.

 Why Effective Recruiting is Important

Finding and/or attracting applicants for the employer’s open positions.

External Factors Effecting Recruiting:

 Supply of workers

 Out-sourcing of white- collar jobs

 Fewer qualified candidates

Other Factors:

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  Consistency of recruitment with strategic goals

 Types of jobs recruited and recruiting methods

 Non recruitment HR issues and policies (e.g., pay)

 Successful prescreening of employees

 Public image of the company

RECRUITIG YIELD PYRAMID

Name and describe the main internal sources of candidates.

 Filling open positions with inside candidates has advantages.

 First, there is really no substitute for knowing a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses,
as you should after working with him or her for some time.

 Current employees may also be more committed to the company.

 Morale and engagement may rise if employees see promotions as rewards for loyalty
and competence. And inside candidates should require less orientation and (perhaps)
training than outsiders.

 Most Indian firms, particularly the PSUs, strictly followed the principle of filling
positions from internally upto the very senior levels.

 There are other advantages. External hires tend to come in at higher salaries than do
those promoted internally,

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  and some apparent “stars” hired from outside may turn out to have excelled more
because of the company they came from than from their own skills.

DRAWBACKS

 Inbreeding is a potential drawback The process of posting openings and getting inside
applicants can also be a waste of time, since often the department manager already
knows whom he or she wants to hire.

 Rejected inside applicants may become discontented; telling them why you rejected
them and what remedial actions they might take is crucial.

Finding Internal Candidates

job posting
Publicizing an open job to employees (often by literally posting it on bulletin boards) and
listing its attributes, like qualifications, supervisor, working schedule, and pay rate.

Rehiring former employees, someone who left your employ has pros and cons. Former
employees are known quantities (more or less) and are already familiar with how you do
things. On the other hand, employees who you let go may return with negative attitudes.

Finding Outside Candidates

 Recruiting via the Internet

 Advertising

 Employment Agencies

 Referrals and Walk-Ins

Employee Referrals

o Referring employees become stakeholders.

o Referral is a cost-effective recruitment program.

o Referral can speed up diversifying the workforce.

o Relying on referrals may be discriminatory.

Walk-ins

o Seek employment through a personal direct approach to the employer.

o Courteous treatment of any applicant is a good business practice.

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  On-Demand Recruiting Services

 College Recruiting

 Recruiting a More Diverse Workforce

RECRUITING VIA INTERNET

 Advantages
 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
 Disadvantages
 Exclusion of older and minority workers
 Unqualified applicants overload the system
 Personal information privacy concerns of applicants
 Applicant tracking systems

Advertising for Outside Candidates

(1) The Media Choice

 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: specialized employees

 Internet job sites: global labor markets

(2) Constructing (Writing) Effective Ads

 Create attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA).

 Create a positive impression (image) of the firm.

(3) Employment Agencies

(1) public agencies operated by federal, state, or local governments;

(2) agencies associated with nonprofit organizations;

(3) privately owned agencies.

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Avoiding problems with employment agencies

 Give agency an accurate and complete job description.

 Make sure tests, application blanks, and interviews are part of the agency’s selection
process.

 Review candidates accepted or rejected by your firm or the agency for effectiveness
and fairness of agency’s screening process.

 Screen agency for effectiveness in filling positions.

 Supplement the agency’s reference checking by checking the final candidate’s

references yourself.

College recruiting sending an employer’s representatives to college campuses to

prescreen applicants and create an applicant pool from the graduating class—is an
important source of management trainees and professional and technical employees.

Executive Recruiters (Headhunters)

 Contingent-based recruiters

o Retained executive searchers

o Internet technology and specialization trends

 Guidelines for Choosing a Recruiter

o Make sure the firm is capable of conducting a thorough search.

o Meet individual who will handle your assignment.

o Ask how much the search firm charges.

o Make sure the recruiter and you agree on what sort of person you need for the
position.

o Never rely solely on the recruiter to do reference checking.

Developing and Using Application Forms

(1) First, you can make judgments on substantive matters, such as whether the applicant
has the education and experience to do the job.

(2) Second, you can draw conclusions about the applicant’s previous progress and
growth, especially important for management candidates.

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 (3) Third, you can draw tentative conclusions about the applicant’s stability based on
previous work record (although years of downsizing suggest the need for caution
here).

(4) Fourth, you may be able to use the data in the application to predict which candidates
will succeed on the job.

Educational
achievements

Housing
Arrest record
arrangements
Areas of
Personal
Informatio Notification in
Marital status case of
n emergency

Physical Membership in
handicaps organizations

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