Know about Recruitment & Its Basic Terms

Recruitment

- Recruitment is the process of identifying, screening and hiring the most suitable candidate for a job vacancy. 
- The candidate might be hired internally or from external sources
- The process must be performed in timely and cost effective manner
- It can also be termed as a process linking the employers and the employees.

Sourcing

Sourcing is the process of finding resumes within the recruitment process. Sourcing refers to the initial part of recruiting (actually finding the candidates through a variety of methods.) Some recruiters perform the sourcing function through to placement; other recruiting professionals specialize in only one aspect of the recruitment cycle. Professional recruiters who specialize only in the initial procurement of names and candidates are called sourcers.

Recruitment process

The recruitment process tries to get the best manpower for the organization. It can be considered as the first strategic step towards the success of an organization.

The process consists of following major steps: 

- Identifying the vacancy
- Preparing the job specifications and description of the potential candidate
- Advertising the requirement
- Receiving and managing the applications
- Short listing the candidates
- Arranging the interviews
- Conducting the interviews and deciding on the candidate

Various internal and external sources of recruitment

There can be two kinds of sources of recruitment for organizations - Internal and External. 




Internal recruitment - It means getting the candidate from within the organization to fulfil a vacancy. Internal recruitment can be done by:

- Transfer - transferring an employee from one location/ department to other. 
- Promotion - Taking the employee higher up in the hierarchy
- Ex-employees - These could be the retired or retrenched employees
- Demotion - Lowering the position of an employee in the hierarchy for various reasons

External recruitment - It means getting the absolutely new candidate to the company. The sources of these employees could be many:

- Job notifications in the print/ online media
- College campuses
- Placement agents
- Unsolicited applicants
- Employee referral program
- Employment exchange
- Labour contractors

Purpose and Importance of recruitment

The purpose of recruitment is to: 

- Attract the maximum number of candidates to the organization and encourage them to apply
- Create strong database and select the best candidate for the position
- Ascertain the current and future manpower requirements of the organization
- Make the hiring exercise a cost effective one

Importance of recruitment is: 

- To identify the potential candidates within the organization for future man power requirements
- To identify the outside candidates and hire them to meet the man power requirements
- To establish various sources of candidates
- To help in increasing the success of hiring process

Advantages of outsourcing the recruitment services

Many organizations outsource their recruitment services to the placement agencies. The main advantages of doing so are as follows:

- It allows the organizations to focus on core and strategic activities
- It leads to optimal use of resources and time
- It provides access to the expertise of the placement agents
- Reduction in recruitment cost

Poaching/ Raiding

Poaching in recruitment means hiring the employee of a competitor who is working in the same capacity as desired by you. This is a major challenge faced by the HR managers as it causes the leakage of talent from an organization and effects its productivity.

The employee is usually hired by offering him better salary and perks.

E-Recruitment techniques

E-recruitment means using internet for the recruitment services.

Three main techniques used in e-recruitment are:

- Advertising on job portals
- Building a recruitment section on company's website.
- Screening the database of candidates on job portals

The advantages of e-recruitment are:
- Lower cost of advertising the job openings
- Helps in saving time
- Large pool of candidates to choose from
- Day in - day out access to the database
- Screening the database brings in only relevant candidates
- Paper less process - more organised

Differentiate between Recruitment and Selection

- Recruitment aims at searching for the talent and promoting the candidates to apply for the position while selection is the process of screening the candidates to fill a position with the most suitable candidate.

- Recruitment process get a pool of candidates for the selection process to work and choose the best one.

- Recruitment encourages more and more people to apply while selection eliminates unsuitable candidates to zero down on the best one.

- There is no contractual agreement between the employee and the employer in the recruitment process while after the selection a contract is agreed upon by the employee and the employer.