How businesses recruit people

When recruiting people a business will need to follow a specific process to find the best candidates and choose who to employ. In a large business, this job will often be left for the human resources department to carry out as they will be experts in analysing what the business needs and then finding a person that has the skills required to improve the company. A business may need new staff for a variety of reasons such as expansion and the need for more staff to help with this, existing members of staff leaving their position and needing to be replaced, or to provide temporary cover while a person is absent (for example during maternity leave).

Stages in the recruitment process

When looking to hire new staff a specific process should be undertaken. This will ensure that the business works in a way that is structured and finds the best candidate for the job. A business must also ensure that it works to any legal requirements in recruitment that do not allow discrimination against people with specific characteristics. The recruitment process should take the following steps:

• The first stage is to identify which staff members are needed and how many people should be employed by the company. This information is found internally and a review of the requirements of the business will need to be undertaken. The business must think about what experience and qualifications are required, what hours the person is required to work and the specific tasks they will have to do.
• Once the job role is fully understood the business will need to draft a job description and person specification. This will outline the job role and the type of person that is needed.
• The job will now be advertised. This can be done in a huge number of ways such as internally within the company, on job boards, through word of mouth, or through display advertisements. The place where adverts are placed should reflect the job role itself so that the right sort of applicants are attracted.
• Next, applicants will be asked to apply for the job. This may require them to fill in a specific form and send over a curriculum vitae (CV) that will contain information about the applicant. Sorting through CVs can be a very long job for a business as the right people must be selected from a number of CVs. Applicants that are unsuitable will not be asked to continue with their application, but the best candidates will get to the next stage of the recruitment process.
• A shortlist of candidates can now be created who are asked to attend an interview. This gives the opportunity for the employer and the candidate to get to know more about each other and for questions to be asked about the position. Many job interviews are carried out with more than one person and can have a number of different interviews on different days. The length and complexity of the interview process should reflect the level of experience and duties that the job requires.
• Once the interview process has been completed, the interviewers must decide who to employ. In most cases, a letter will be sent out to each applicant that lets them know if they were successful in their application or not. A job offer may depend on references or other criteria being fulfilled, so it can sometimes take a while for an actual job offer to be sent to the successful candidate.

Job descriptions

When a job description is created for a business it must state the title of the job and outline what the person doing this job is required to do. Duties and responsibilities should be explained in depth and targets will often be included as well. If a job role is completely new, the description will need to be created from scratch but an existing position can simply use the same document that has already been created. A job description must be very clear as this will often be used when advertising the role. The description could also be used when conducting appraisals at a later stage once a candidate has been hired.

Person specifications

A person specification is used to explain the qualifications, experience, skills and attitudes that a person must have in order to apply for the job. The characteristics of the person the company wishes to hire should be outlined in detail so that only the right people apply for the role. A person specification is used to screen applicants for a job and will explain which characteristics are ‘essential’ and which are ‘desirable’.

Internal and external recruitment

When recruiting for a new job role, a business has a choice of two different avenues – to recruit internally or recruit externally. When recruiting internally, a person will be found that already works for the company. This person will likely be looking for a promotion within the business and want to move up in their career within the same organisation. There are many benefits for companies when they recruit people internally:

• The process is cheap as it saves on advertising costs
• Applicants already have an understanding of the policies, procedures and culture of the business since they already work for the company
• Staff are more motivated as they can see that the prospects of promotion are very high due to the business recruiting people for higher roles who already work there
• The company will already know the person and their attitude so internal recruitment comes with less risk.

The other alternative for a business is to recruit someone externally. This is where a new person is found who does not currently work for the business. Although this can be more expensive and time-consuming, there are some benefits such as:

• The business will have a larger number of people to choose from
• The new person will have fresh ideas and perspectives that will improve the company

Whenever a business is looking to recruit they must make a conscious decision if they wish to find someone internally or externally. The decision that is made will often depend on the type of role that has become available, what is required by the company and the overall direction that the business is going in.