The Nature and Practice of Human Resource Management in Organizations: Internet Recruitment

1.0  Introduction

Strategic Human Resource Management is a way by which employees are managed and entails planning which an aim of meeting the objectives of an organization. A major concern in strategic human resource management is developing employees and performing recruitment and selection through various recruitment processes and techniques. Modern recruitment techniques have been developed and are utilized by human resource managers in order to get highly qualified and talented employees who would help them realize their goals.

The many advantages brought by advancement in technology have made many organizations adopt it in most of their processes. Technology has made organizations to be effective and efficient in serving clients. Human resource practices also incorporate technology to enable human resource managers performs their practices efficiently and effectively. Today, since advent of internet technology, the world has become a global village. Many organizations operate globally and perform most of their management function over the internet. Human resource managers utilize the internet to recruit employees all over the world.

 

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2.0  Internet Recruitment

Internet recruitment involves the use of internet to recruit and select employees. The internet is a fast, simple, cheap, and convenient way of reaching thousands of people who are qualified to perform specific jobs all over the world 24 hours a day the whole year. It also provides immediate response whose performance can be monitored. Organizations and job seekers recruit employees in various ways. Some organizations post their jobs in their websites under careers section, while others use websites of recruitment agencies to post their vacancies.

3.0  Interview

Interview is an interaction between potential employers and job applicants in order to identify their suitability for a job. Through interview, human resource managers are able to identify specific characters or talents from job applicants and establish whether they suit to occupy positions in their organizations.

Interview enables human resource managers highly predict potentials of job applicants to perform in vacant positions in organizations and shows many factors that are relevant for the job, including cognitive ability, oral skills, social skills,and person-organization fit.

3.1.Interview Evaluation

A good interviewing panel should identify what they want from employees and prepare questions that would reveal the capability of the candidate in the specified area. This can be done by either providing each person in the panel with the topics to ask or allowing one panelist, usually the chairperson, to ask candidates all the structured questions. In light of structuring the interview process, organizations’ human resource management usually use various types of interview that can positively impact their strategic human resource management strategies. The following are the types of interviews they normally use to recruit and select applicants:

a)      Structured interview

Prior planning is not necessary in structured interview and is applicable where there is a need for an employee to occupy a position as fast as possible. Though the questions asked are always flexible, interviewers should possess specific skills that would enable them identify qualities from applicants that are applicable to a job position.

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b)      Semi-structured interview

Semi-structured interview requires preplanning of the questions that would be asked in the interview and specific persons to ask the questions. The interviewing panel should possess skills that would enable them probe further to get what they want from interviewees but follow the strategic human resource management best practices.

c)      Structured interview

Structured interview requires the panel to take an approach which is standardized and not flexible. The interview panel prepares related questions in advance and does not disclose them to anybody until during the interview. This kind of interview seems easier for applicants since they always stick to what was prepared earlier.

Employers or interviewing panel use the following types of interviews to select suitable employees:

a)      Interviews that Relate to Previous Jobs

This kind of interview tends to get information regarding the behavior of job applicants in their previous jobs. In this regard, interviewing panel normally assume that applicants can carry with them the behaviors they did in the past to their future jobs.  To identify the behaviors, interviewing panel usually concentrate on applicants’ behavior in specific areas.

b)      Situational Interviews

When performing this kind of interview, employers normally questions that relate to specific situations and requires input from highly experienced panel.  The panel asks interviewers questions relating to their past actions and behaviors and rates them to identify candidates with potential to the jobs.

c)      Psychological interviews

This kind of interview tries to find out personal traits of interviewers to determine if they can psychologically cope with the demands of the jobs they are interviewed for and is usually done by a psychologist.

d)     Competency interviews

This kind of interview identifies unique traits such as interpersonal skills, leadership, and teamwork from interviewers.

The outcome of an interview is highly dependent on the structure and presentation of questions. The kind of competencies and skills required for a job opening is determined by the depth of questions asked by interviewers. If not structured well, some interview questions might allow an interviewer to provide broad answers while the panel searches for specific answers. Effective interview questioning develops good relationship between the panel and interviewers and provides them with better employees.

Interview questions should be brief and to the point, more so at the beginning of an interview to develop positive rapport with the interviewers and enable them provide answers that would enable the panel to choose better applicants. The questions should be of high quality and should be tested using some scale.

4.0  Psychometric Testing

Psychometric testing concentrates on testing applicants’ mental ability to perform in an advertised job. It usually provides employers with selection methods that enable them to hire or promote employees who would be able to cope with the high mental demands in a job position. These tests are basically designed to provide interviewers with a reliable method of selecting the most suitable job applicants or candidates for promotion. It is normally performed after candidates have applied and selected for job positions.

These tests enables employers identify the intelligence of applicants, their aptitudes, and personality. It also brings out how applicants relate with other people, their ability to cope with strict deadlines, and their ability to deal with stress from inside and outside the organization.

 Psychometric tests measures two things:

1. Ability of people to perform in different tasks; and

2. Ability of people to interact with other people in organizations and/or outside organizations.

4.1  Psychometric perspective

Psychometric perspective measures reliability and validity of applicants. It aims at identifying the applicants’ cognitive ability, knowledge in the job, social skills, and organizational fitting. This approach provides some risks however; when the interviewer is asked to provide his perception concerning the organization for example, he or she would just compare it with prototype.

5.0  Internet Recruitment and Selection Process in Barclays Bank Ltd

5.1  Job Advertising

Barclays bank uses either its website or those for recruitment agencies to post its job advertisements. When it post their job advertisement in their corporate website, potential candidates know about it through job search using search engines like Google and Opera, they click on the career link on the website, look at the available vacancies, and follow instructions on the modes of application. The bank allows people to apply using their website. Some organizations provide email addresses for receiving applications while others direct applicants to the manual application process involving mail.

While organizations use corporate website for various business purposes, recruitment and selection has not gained widespread usage. About 66% of organizations’ website is used for marketing, advertising, and public relations while only 2% is used for recruitment and selection processes. Some organizations use online job boards. They subscribe and post their job vacancies to the job boards where potential candidates and apply through the job boards.

Some potential applicants post their resumes in the job boards where organizations search and select candidates that can fill their vacant positions. Some online job boards inform organizations through their registered e-mail of the number of people who have applied for a certain job post. The online job boards also encourage job seekers to register their emails and fields of interest with them so that they are notified of any job post related to their areas of interest.

Though not commonly used, some organizations recruit candidates that are not actively searching for a job. They use recruitment sourcing strategies to find potential candidates for their job posts. Some of them, for example, use personal webpages or professional webpages to find professionals with the qualifications they want and hunt for them offering attractive packages to attract them. This is usually used to recruit highly experienced candidates who have made great contributions in their areas of expertise.       

5.2  Online application form and ability tests

In this stage, the organization asks candidates to enter their details in their online application form at their websites. The potential candidates complete the organization’s business questions and attach their resumes. It is usually advisable to go through the questions as they may provide hints of what is expected during the interview.