BUS303 Week 2 Assignment The Recruitment process

From Job Description to the Assessment in Recruitment.

Name

Lectures name

BUS303: Human Resource Management

14-September-2019

The Recruitment process

Introduction

The functions of management can be split into four main core functions; planning, directing, staffing and controlling. The function of staffing mainly involves ensuring that the right people within the organization undertake the jobs that are most suited to them. However, for organizational efficiency, then the organization will have to decide on how responsibilities will be allocated in a manner that consumes the lowest level of resources. The process of recruitment starts once there is a job vacancy but today organizations have to plan for future vacancies before they actually open up. The key activities involved in recruitment include job analysis, attracting and screening candidates, selection, induction and training employee and finally employee evaluation.

The Function of Job Descriptions

The total employee population should completely and exhaustively tackle all jobs in the organization (Tyler, 2018). Fundamentally, all tasks must be identified and distributed to the employees fairly and justly and compensated accordingly. It is important to state that a job description is what management and employees consider as sufficient responsibility allocation. As such, job descriptions have an important role- they define the balance point. Job descriptions provide a balance between management and employee expectations as well as work and total work. Job description are no longer fixed statements but have evolved into tools that can be used by management to provide direction and control function to the organization. According to Jill Bidwell (2013), everything from recruitment and training to performance evaluations and compensation all stems from job description.

Components of Job Description

In coming up with a job description, it isn’t sufficient to simply link existing responsibilities to the job description. Instead, a proper job description provides a comprehensive understanding of the minimum requirements required from a particular job. One has to identify what is required to pull off the job assigned in terms of Tools and Technology, Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and Education requirements. The job description should not only strive to match the employee to what they do best but also provide challenges and opportunities for learning and development. Eventually, since job description is a form of the implied contract between the employer and employee, then it is a critical tool in performance management. In the modern workplace, Job description need to be constantly updated and used regularly so that the organization can use it for performance management and avoid pitfalls that may arise in the relationship between employee and employer.

Legal Component in Job Description

Discrimination in the workplace can be witnessed in different forms from how work is distributed and managed to how compensation for same work is done (Edenborough, 2007). It is actually involves high level analysis to be able to state that indeed discriminatory practices are taking place in an organization. A job description is expected to be free from the bias of any form unless that bias is critical to the performance of the task. However, if the bias is not critical to the execution of the job, then it is illegal and detrimental to the organization’s culture. Indeed organizations and society today identify diversity as an asset that can be capitalized on to create a competitive advantage. For the organizations that insist on bias and discriminative practices, then they face EEOC which s tasked with stamping out discriminatory practices in the workplace as well as take action against such practices.

1. Tools and Technology, Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and

Education requirements. You listed the components but you did not explain how these components contribute to an effective performance management system.

Assessment Tools: Psychometric Testing and Structured Interviews

Once the job description has been arrived at, the organization decides on the recruitment tools to be used to get the right candidate (W, & C., 2016). Two assessment tools are psychometric tests and interviews. Psychometric testing is used to measure mental activity and from the results of the psychometric testing, the organization has a better understanding as to the potential of the employee. They tend to reduce the risk associated with the wrong selection since the psychometric tests as issued by the organization will use the responses to psychometric testing as a common measure for the employee. The other technique used is structured interviews, which have evolved from interrogation to include focus groups, which allow the organization to uncover substantial information on the candidate as well as their values, traits, and character. In comparing the two assessment methods, structured interviews are preferred in most organizations since the complexity of interpreting the results of psychometric test may not be as straightforward as that of structured interviews. However both methods are critically different in how they are carried out. Whereas the psychometric tests are mainly done individually, it is impossible to interview yourself.

Conclusion

As Edenborough identifies, as the various methods of recruitment unfolded, some developed crossings and some diverged. For example, structured interviews have now began to integrate questions that are similar to those originally used in psychometric tests as a measure of mental activity; on the move. He goes on to state that, organizations will have to reduce the differentiation between different techniques since it results in more separated thinking as opposed to integrated thinking. (2007).

References

Edenborough, R. (2007). Assessment methods in recruitment, selection & performance: a manager’s guide to psychometric testing, interviews and assessment centers. London:

Kogan Page.

Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Job worth Doing: Update Descriptions. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx

W, C. (2016). Best Practices and Emerging Trends in Recruitment and Selection. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 05(02). doi: 10.4172/2169-

026x.1000173