BUSS 3082: SP2- The Full Recruitment and Selection Campaign

Recruitment and Selection Campaign

Introduction

Recruitment and selection, often considered the most critical, is one of the essential processes of any business. It is the course by which an organization acquires and sources its most valuable asset, its people (Compton et al., 2014). The process is fraught with dangers when conducted hastily; however, it can be the most significant investment Waterworld would make if done with skill. Recruiting the right sales assistant means Waterworld will get the right blend of knowledge, behavior, and abilities.

An effective recruitment campaign is considered one that appeals to suitably experienced and qualified candidates who are appointable. The response size should be big enough to provide comparison and choice. Therefore, a practical approach that provides clear guidance on workforce planning, job analysis, recruitment, selection, appointment, and organizational socialization can contribute to the campaign’s effectiveness by concentrating the resources and focusing on the message.

Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is Waterworld’s approach to ensure it has the current and future access to the human capital required to carry out its operations efficiently. According to Compton et al. (2014), human resource planning is a continuous process to ensure that a company’s goals are attained by acquiring the accurate quality and quantity of workers at the right time, with a practical skills mix. To this end, the staffing plans by Waterworld in recruiting a sales assistant should be consistent with and derive from both the company’s long and short-term objectives and goals. Therefore, the plan adopted in the current campaign should inform the functions of Human Resource Management (HRM), such as performance administration, human resource development, recruitment and selection, and job design.

In implementing workforce planning in the proposed campaign, the HRM department in Waterworld must expand its scope of activities beyond the traditional functions and tasks of HRM. They need to enter a partnership with employees and managers. Working in collaboration will provide the employees and managers with a better knowledge of HRM issues (Goodman et al., 2015). Similarly, the HRM staff will become more informed concerning the needs of the sales department and the employees. The HRM department needs to facilitate the partnership by creating a human resource planning task force comprising managers and staff from different departments.

The task force should also include the HRM staff, who are accountable for identifying the challenges and trends that will impact the organization. Employees seeking their observations and input should also be involved. HR management can achieve this through the use of needs assessment, agency publications, focus groups, and surveys (Goodman et al., 2015). The task force will receive information and prioritize the most critical issues. In brief, this will lead to effective planning, which will directly influence the selection techniques, the choice of recruitment strategies, and the job description.

Job Analysis

Job analysis entails various activities designed to document and discover the essential nature of the sales assistant’s work. Goldstein et al. (2017) argued that the two primary outcomes of job analysis are a list of job specifications and a job description. In this respect, a job description is a statement that Waterworld HRM managers must compile of the responsibilities, duties, and tasks that the sales assistant position entails. In contrast to the job description, which emphasizes the activities of the work, job specification comprises the attributes of the worker. As such, the job specification by the Waterworld HRM team should describe various characteristics, including abilities, skills, and knowledge that an employee should possess to perform the sales assistant job successfully.

In the framework of recruitment and selection, job exploration is the primary basis of data concerning the characteristic of the individual desired to fill it and the position to be filled. More so, it is a system that can be utilized to decide whether there is a need for a job and whether there is, in fact, a need to recruit anyone (Compton et al., 2014). The Waterworld HRM staff needs to conduct a job analysis for various reasons. The three major ones include the human resource functions of employee compensation, training, and selection. First, information about working conditions and knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAO) derived from the job description will be helpful in decisions concerning compensation, such as determining the starting salary.

Second, there is the aspect of training. In this regard, the information regarding tasks the sales assistant job involves that an applicant is not expected to have mastered before hiring is required to create a training program to facilitate mastery of these tasks. Lastly, concerning employee selection, having information regarding the KSAOs an applicant should possess is vital (Goldstein et al., 2017). Therefore, job analysis is an essential determinant of performance and organizational effectiveness.

Recruitment

In the human resource planning context, Waterworld must match up the supply of labor (both external and internal) with future workforce requirements. By determining the suitable type of employee required to fill the sales assistant position to meet the organizational objectives, the next step by the management would be to evaluate their likely sources. There are a variety of specialist and general labor pools within the firm and its external environment (Hay, 2014; Humburg and Van der Velden, 2015). Recruits must be carefully selected, attracted, and sought out to ensure suitability for the sales assistant position. Conversely, existing employees can be promoted, transferred, redeployed, developed, and trained for the skills needed for the job in question (Compton et al., 2014). The proposed campaign, in this respect, should consider the internal selection system. The reason for this is that compared to external selection processes, the internal ones have better data on the employees.

Furthermore, the internal selection process is suitable for the current campaign because it has better access to a first-hand account of candidate performance and capability and performance review material. However, during the recruitment and selection campaign for a sales assistant, Waterworld HRM staff must consider various laws, including one for discrimination. The state and federal legislation offer all-encompassing protection against discrimination of people based on sexual preference, mental and physical disability, religion, marital status, race, sex, and many other grounds, which the firm needs to consider (Goldstein et al., 2017; Nieto, 2014). There is also the law on privacy, which is based on the 1988 Privacy Act, and it is applied to workers in Australian Privacy Principle (APP) entities. Therefore, during the process of recruitment and selection, the exemption of the employees does not extend to an applicant because they are non-employee of a firm.

Selection

Developing the selection process concerns Waterworld HRM staff analyzing all the candidates and classifying the ones to go through to the next level. Before starting, the administrators must design a selection strategy centered on the best method to identify the best applicant. In essence, this should be shaped by an organizational requirement in the case of the job fit and the job’s KSAOs. Two steps should be involved in the development of the selected plan. First, the HRM managers should create a list of KSAOs needed for the job, which will inform the specification and description of the work. Secondly, by being aware of the relative significance and range of KSAOs, they need to work out a process of selection that analyses the quality of the KSAOs’ of a candidate.

Another crucial step in the selection process would be to work on sample testing, which transpires after short-listing. Such action is vital because the selection process aims to choose the ideal applicant for a position (Jabbour and de Sousa Jabbour, 2016; Ogunyomi and Bruning, 2016). The objective of this step would be to get independent and better information on the applicant’s competence. In this respect, the HR manager should the situational judgment tests and work sample testing. The focus, in this regard, is on the candidate explaining how they would handle a situation; the emphasis is on approach, not behavior. The administrator should be interested to understand their methods of solving a problem and their judgment.

Appointment and Onboarding

Waterworld needs to realize that talent retention begins during the hiring process. Consequently, the window of opportunity to impress and impact the sales assistant employee will come within the first six months of employment (Goldstein et al., 2017). The company will achieve this by establishing formal onboarding programs. Onboarding is different from orientation in two ways. First, it allows socialization to the beliefs, norms, and values held by others in the company. Secondly, it assists the recruit in familiarizing themself with other employees, the company, its policies, and its roles. Thus, the process in question is vital to the new employee’s success, and it is the step that must follow the selection process. Onboarding has many goals, including allowing the new employee to ask for assistance, providing an atmosphere of happiness, inspires enthusiasm, excitement, and pride (The Balser Group, 2015). It, therefore, encompasses different innovative processes and programs designed to work together to meet these objectives (Reed, 2015). Making onboarding effective requires strategies, such as specifying the responsibilities and roles, performance management, and accentuating career and professional development.

Organizational Socialization

Socialization is the process in which the selected candidate for the sales assistant position will acquire the knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes needed to take part as an organizational member successfully. Through socialization, the chosen applicant will find their place in the organization and learn to adapt to the work relationships. It is an approach that assists new workers in determining the company’s way of doing things (Robbins et al., 2014). Waterworld HRM staff should, in this stage, carry out the necessary efforts to gradually expose the new workers to the prevalent organizational culture. The company can achieve this by facilitating the employees to learn the relevant attitudes, beliefs, and values (Jex and Britt, 2015). The socialization process will become simple when the employees’ organizational culture and pre-acquired values are similar. This is because it can quickly assist the selected worker in assimilating the corporate values and culture.

Conclusion

A systematic recruitment and selection promotion for a sales assistant position at WaterWorld involves workforce planning, job analysis, selection, appointment, and onboarding, as well as organizational socialization. Therefore, such a campaign has the principal benefit of ensuring that the company has adequate workers with the necessary abilities, understanding, and skills to efficiently generate the services and goods needed to attain organizational goals. Through the campaign, HR managers can predict labor supply, forecast staffing requirements, and guarantee the efficient incorporation of all human resource operations. In brief, effective recruitment and selection campaign is directly linked to higher degrees of HR outcomes, which eventually result in higher financial and operational performance.

References

Compton, R., Morrissey, W. and Nankervis, A., 2014. Effective recruitment & selection practices. North Ryde, NSW: CCH Australia.

Goodman, D., French, P.E. and Battaglio Jr, RP, 2015. Determinants of local government workforce planning. The American Review of Public Administration, 45(2), pp.135-152.

Goldstein, H., Pulakos, E., Passmore, J. and Semedo, C., 2017. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of recruitment, selection and employee retention. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Hay, N. 2014. Your complete guide to the recruitment process. Cork: BookBaby.

Humburg, M. and Van der Velden, R., 2015. Skills and the graduate recruitment process: Evidence from two discrete choice experiments. Economics of Education Review, 49, pp.24-41.

Jabbour, C.J.C. and de Sousa Jabbour, A.B.L., 2016. Green human resource management and green supply chain management: Linking two emerging agendas. Journal of Cleaner Production, 112, pp.1824-1833.

Jex, S. and Britt, T., 2015. Organizational psychology: A scientist-practitioner approach. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.

Nieto, M., 2014. Human resource management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ogunyemi, P. and Bruning, N.S., 2016. Human resource management and organizational performance of Nigeria’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(6), pp.612-634.

Reed, S., 2015. PHR / SPHR professional in human resources certification deluxe study guide. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons.

Robbins, S., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. and Coulter, M., 2014. Management. Sydney: Pearson Education Australia.

The Balser Group., 2015. Mandated benefits. New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Bus.

Appendices

Appendix One – Job Advert

Sales Assistant

WaterWorks, a renowned and respectable irrigation firm in the McClarenvale region, is seeking to recruit an aggressive sales assistant to join the company’s dedicated team. The sales assistant must be competitive in that they should be capable of assisting clients in identifying and purchasing their desired products. Their duties will include merchandising, restocking, and selling. The objectives include but are not limited to increasing revenue and the company’s growth through sales maximization and providing high-class customer service.

Apply now to kick off your profession as a sales assistant in the irrigation sector!

For more information about this opportunity, please call XXX on (08) 8XXX XXXX.,

You can, alternatively, email XXX@mci.com.au to request a comprehensive job depiction.

Appendix Two – Job Description and Job Specification

As a sales assistant, you will work for a local organization where you will be tasked with liaising with clients to ensure a transaction goes smoothly. You will be responsible for helping consumers choose between the different types of goods and services the company provides, maintain a high level of customer service, and process payments.

The job requirement of the sales assistant is as follows:

• Handing clients to management or handling their complaints
• Providing customers with information on the availability of products and pricing
• Promoting special offers or store cards
• Ensuring the excellent maintenance of stock levels
• Advising and serving customers