Chapter 5

PERSONNEL PLANNING
AND RECRUITING
  Main techniques used in
employment planning and
forecasting.
 External sources of candidates.
Agenda  Effective recruitment of
candidates.
 Internal sources of candidates.
 Recruitment of a more diverse
workforce.
  Decide what positions you’ll have
to fill through personnel planning
and forecasting.
 Build a pool of candidates for
these jobs by recruiting internal or
external candidates.
The  Have candidates complete
Recruitment application forms and perhaps
undergo an initial screening
and interview.
Selection  Use selection techniques like tests,
background investigations, and
Process physical exams to identify viable
candidates.
 Decide who to make an offer to,
by having the supervisor and
perhaps others on the team
interview the candidates.
Steps in Recruitment and
Selection Process
Planning and Forecasting

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

Succession •The process of deciding how to fill the

planning company’s most important executive jobs.

•Overall personnel needs

What to forecast? •The supply of inside candidates
•The supply of outside candidates
Forecasting Personnel Needs

Trend •The study of a firm’s past employment needs over

analysis
a period of years to predict future needs.

Ratio •A forecasting technique for determining future

staff needs by using ratios between a causal
factor and the number of employees needed.

analysis •Assumes that the relationship between the causal

factor and staffing needs is constant.
The Scatter Plot
Drawbacks to Scatter Plots

Focus on projections and historical relationships, and assume that the firm’s existing
structure and activities will continue into the future.

Generally do not consider the impact the company’s strategic initiatives may have
on future staffing levels.

Tend to support compensation plans that reward managers for managing ever-larger
staffs, and will not uncover managers who expand their staffs irrespective of strategic
needs.

Tend to bake in the nonproductive idea that increases in staffs are inevitable.

Tend to validate and institutionalize existing planning processes and ways of doing
things, even in the face of rapid change.
  Software packages to
determine of future staff needs
by projecting sales, volume of
production, and personnel
required to maintain a volume
of output.
Using  Generates figures on average
Computers to staff levels required to meet
product demands, as well as
Forecast forecasts for direct labor,
indirect staff, and exempt staff.
Personnel
Typical metrics:
Requirements 

 direct labor hours required to

produce one unit of product
(a measure of productivity),
and three sales projections—
minimum, maximum, and
probable.
Forecasting the Supply of
Internal Candidates

 Qualifications inventories
 Manual or computerized records listing
employees’ education, career and
development interests, languages, special
skills, etc
 used in selecting internal candidates for
promotion.
Manual Systems and
Replacement Charts

 Personnel replacement charts

 Company records showing present performance and
promotability of inside candidates for the most
important positions.

 Position replacement card

 A card prepared for each position in a company to
show possible replacement candidates and their
qualifications.
  Human Resource
Information System (HRIS)
 Computerized inventory of
information that can be
accessed to determine
Computerized employees’ background,
Information experience, and skills that
may include:
Systems
 Work experience codes
 Product or service
knowledge
 Industry experience
 Formal education
The Matter of Privacy of HR
Information

 The need to ensure the security of HR

information
 HR information to keep secure.
 Control of HR information can be established
through the use of access matrices that limit
users.
 Legal considerations.
 Factors impacting the supply
of outside candidates
• General economic conditions
• Expected unemployment rate

Forecasting Sources of information

the Supply
of Outside • Periodic forecasts in business
publications
Candidates • Online economic projections
• U.S. Congressional Budget Office
(CBO)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• U.S. Department of Labor: O*Net
• Other federal agencies
Effective Recruiting

External factors affecting Internal factors affecting

recruiting recruiting
• Looming undersupply of • The consistency of the firm’s
workers recruitment efforts with its
• Lessening of the trend in strategic goals
outsourcing of jobs • The available resources, types
• Increasingly fewer “qualified” of jobs to be recruited and
candidates choice of recruiting methods
• Non-recruitment HR issues and
policies
• Line and staff coordination
and cooperation
  Advantages of centralizing
recruitment
 Strengthens employment brand
 Ease in applying strategic
principles
 Reduces duplication of HR
Effective activities
Recruiting  Reduces the cost of new HR
technologies – Builds teams of
(cont’d) HR experts
 Provides for better
measurement of HR
performance
 Allows for the sharing of
applicant pools
 Measuring Recruiting Effectiveness

What to measure and how to High performance recruiting

measure
How many qualified applicants were Applying best-practices management
attracted from each recruitment techniques to recruiting.
source? •Using a benchmarks-oriented
•Assessing both the quantity and the approach to analyzing and measuring
quality of the applicants produced by the effectiveness of recruiting efforts,
a source. such as employee referrals.
 Internal Sources of
Candidates: Hiring from Within

 Advantages  Disadvantages
 Foreknowledge of  Discontented employees
candidates’ strengths and
when failed
weaknesses
 Time wasted interviewing
 More accurate view of
candidate’s skills inside candidates who
will not be considered
 Candidates have a
stronger commitment to  Inbreeding
the company
 Increases employee morale
 Less training and
orientation required
Finding Internal Candidates

 Job posting  Advantages

 Publicizing an open job to  Known quantities and
employees (often by literally qualities
posting it on bulletin boards)
and listing its attributes.  Know the firm and its
culture.
 Rehiring former
employees  Disadvantages
 May have less-than positive
attitudes.
 Rehiring may sent the
wrong message to current
employees about how to
get ahead.
 Succession planning
• The process of ensuring a
suitable supply of successors
for current and future senior or
Finding key jobs.
Internal
Succession planning steps
Candidates
(cont’d) • Identifying and analyzing key
jobs.
• Creating and assessing
candidates.
• Selecting those who will fill the
key positions.
 Finding external candidates

 Advertising
 The Media: 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
 Internet job sites
 Marketing programs

 Constructing an effective ad
 Wording related to job interest factors should evoke the
applicant’s attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) and
create a positive impression of the firm.
 Finding external candidates
(cont’d)

 Types of employment agencies

 Public agencies operated by federal, state, or
local governments
 Agencies associated with nonprofit
organizations
 Privately owned agencies
 Finding external candidates
(cont’d)

 Reasons for using a private employment agency

 When a firm doesn’t have an HR department and is not
geared to doing recruiting and screening.
 The firm has found it difficult in the past to generate a pool of
qualified applicants.
 The firm must fill a particular opening quickly.
 There is a perceived need to attract a greater number of
minority or female applicants.
 The firm wants to reach currently employed individuals, who
might feel more comfortable dealing with agencies than with
competing companies.
 The firm wants to cut down on the time it’s devoting to
recruiting.
 Finding external candidates
(cont’d)

 Avoiding problems with employment agencies

 Give the agency an accurate and complete job description.
 Make sure tests, application blanks, and interviews are part of the
agency’s selection process.
 Periodically review data on candidates accepted or rejected by
your firm, and by the agency.
 Check on the effectiveness and fairness of the agency’s screening
process.
 Screen the agency. Check with other managers or HR people to
find out which agencies have been the most effective at filling the
sorts of positions needed to be filled.
 Review the Internet and a few back issues of the Sunday classified
ads to discover the agencies that handle the positions to be filled.
Temp Agencies and
Alternative Staffing

 Benefits of Temps  Costs of Temps

 Paid only when  Fees paid to temp
working agencies
 More productive  Lack of commitment
to firm
 No recruitment,
screening, and payroll
administration costs
 Concerns of Temp Employees

 Treatment by employers in a dehumanizing, impersonal, and

ultimately discouraging way.
 Insecurity about their employment and pessimistic about the future.
 Worry about their lack of insurance and pension benefits.
 Being misled about their job assignments and in particular about
whether temporary assignments were likely to become full-time
positions.
 Being “underemployed” (particularly those trying to return to the
full-time labor market).
 In general angry toward the corporate world and its values;
participants repeatedly express feelings of alienation and
disenchantment.
Outside Sources of Candidates
(cont’d)

 Executive recruiters, “headhunters”

 Special employment agencies retained by employers to
seek out top-management talent for their clients.
 Contingent-based recruiters: collect a fee for their services
when a successful hire is completed.
 Retained executive searchers are paid regardless of the
outcome of the recruitment process.

 Internet technology and specialization trends

changing how candidates are attracted and
how searches are conducted.
Finding external candidates:
College recruiting

 Recruiting goals
 To determine if the candidate is worthy of further
consideration
 To attract good candidates
 On-site visits
 Invitation letters
 Assigned hosts
 Information package
 Planned interviews
 Timely employment offer
 Follow-up
 Internships
 Finding external candidates:
Employee referrals & Walk-ins

 Referrals  Walk-ins
 Applicants who are  Direct applicants who seek
referred to the organization employment with or without
by current employees encouragement from other
sources.
 Advantages
 Courteous treatment of any
 Referring employees applicant: good business
become stakeholders. practice.
 cost-effective
 can speed up diversifying
the workforce
 Finding external candidates:
Internet

 More firms and applicants utilizing the Internet in

the job search process
 Advantages of Internet recruiting
 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
Examples of Recruitment Web Sites

 Monster Jobs - Job Search, Career Advice &

Hiring Resources | Monster.com
 Find a Job | CareerBuilder
 Manpower – Human Resources and Candidates
 Adecco – Welcome
 Issues in Recruiting a More
Diverse Workforce

 Single parents  Welfare-to-work

 Providing work schedule  Developing pre-training
flexibility. programs to overcome
 Older workers difficulties in hiring and
assimilating persons
 Revising polices that make it previously on welfare.
difficult or unattractive for older
workers to remain employed.  The disabled
 Minorities and women  Developing resources and
policies to recruit and
 Understanding recruitment
barriers. integrate disabled persons
into the workforce.
 Formulating recruitment plans.
 Instituting specific day-to-day
programs.
 Developing and Using Application
Forms

 The form that provides information on education,

prior work record, and skills.
 Uses of information from applications
 Judgments about the applicant’s educational and
experience qualifications
 Conclusions about the applicant’s previous progress and
growth
 Indications of the applicant’s employment stability
 Predictions about which candidate is likely to succeed on
the job