Recruitment Industry

It falls under the top ten fastest growing industries around the world. In current times small to big
corporations are dependent on the Recruitment Agencies in search of reliable and efficient human
resource of all types, right from full time to part time and even on contracts.

The recruitment industry in itself plays a vital role in the economic development of the countries
worldwide as it positively affects efficiency of client’s activities by taking care of its non-core HR activities
and providing it with right manpower. It helps organizations in finding right people, for the right
positions at the right time and location. With increasing competition in the landscape the importance of
this industry has increased manifold.

How does recruitment Industry work?

Employers hire recruitment agencies to find job candidates. Agency recruiters do this by researching the
open roles, identifying qualified people, screening the candidates, and providing support to the
employer during selection of the new hire.

Recruitment agencies structure their services and fees in several ways, including:

 Contingency recruitment, with a salary-based fee paid only if a hire is made

 Retained or executive search, with an up-front fee paid for assistance filling a role

 On-demand recruitment, with an adjustable level of support at an hourly rate

 Recruitment process outsourcing, which completely replaces the employer’s internal recruiting
function

Why work with an agency?

Different companies work with recruitment agencies to fill different needs. Typical reasons include:

 Providing support to hiring managers if there is no internal recruiting or human resources team

 Identifying hard to find or highly-specialized talent

 Finding job candidates from outside the company’s own networks of people

 Assisting in-house recruiter during a hiring spree or growth spurt

 Maintaining confidentiality during a sensitive search

 Replacing altogether the need for an in-house recruiting function

Recruitment Process
It is a process of finding and attracting the potential resources for filling up the vacant positions in an
organization. It sources the candidates with the abilities and attitude, which are required for achieving
the objectives of an organization. It involves identifying the jobs vacancy, analyzing the job
requirements, reviewing applications, screening, and shortlisting and selecting the right candidate.

The recruitment process comprises of five stages:-

1) Recruitment Planning: - Recruitment planning is the first step of the recruitment process, where
the vacant positions are analyzed and described. It includes job specifications and its nature,
experience, qualifications and skills required for the job, etc.

A structured recruitment plan is mandatory to attract potential candidates from a pool of

candidates. The potential candidates should be qualified, experienced with a capability to take
the responsibilities required to achieve the objectives of the organization.

Identifying Vacancy
The first and foremost process of recruitment plan is identifying the vacancy. This process begins
with receiving the requisition for recruitments from different department of the organization to
the HR Department, which contains −
 Number of posts to be filled
 Number of positions
 Duties and responsibilities to be performed
 Qualification and experience required
When a vacancy is identified, it the responsibility of the sourcing manager to ascertain whether
the position is required or not, permanent or temporary, full-time or part-time, etc. These
parameters should be evaluated before commencing recruitment. Proper identifying, planning
and evaluating leads to hiring of the right resource for the team and the organization.
Job Analysis
 Job analysis is a process of identifying, analyzing, and determining the duties, responsibilities,
skills, abilities, and work environment of a specific job. These factors help in identifying what a
job demands and what an employee must possess in performing a job productively.
Job analysis helps in understanding what tasks are important and how to perform them. Its
purpose is to establish and document the job relatedness of employment procedures such as
selection, training, compensation, and performance appraisal.
The following steps are important in analyzing a job −
 Recording and collecting job information
 Accuracy in checking the job information
 Generating job description based on the information
 Determining the skills, knowledge and skills, which are required for the job
The immediate products of job analysis are job descriptions and job specifications.
Job Description
Job description is an important document, which is descriptive in nature and contains the final
statement of the job analysis. This description is very important for a successful recruitment
process.
Job description provides information about the scope of job roles, responsibilities and the
positioning of the job in the organization. And this data gives the employer and the organization
a clear idea of what an employee must do to meet the requirement of his job responsibilities.
Job description is generated for fulfilling the following processes −
 Classification and ranking of jobs
 Placing and orientation of new resources
 Promotions and transfers
 Describing the career path
 Future development of work standards
A job description provides information on the following elements −
 Job Title / Job Identification / Organization Position
 Job Location
 Summary of Job
 Job Duties
 Machines, Materials and Equipment
 Process of Supervision
 Working Conditions
 Health Hazards
Job Specification
Job specification focuses on the specifications of the candidate, whom the HR team is going to
hire. The first step in job specification is preparing the list of all jobs in the organization and its
locations. The second step is to generate the information of each job.
This information about each job in an organization is as follows −
 Physical specifications
 Mental specifications
 Physical features
  Emotional specifications
 Behavioral specifications
A job specification document provides information on the following elements −
 Qualification
 Experiences
 Training and development
 Skills requirements
 Work responsibilities
 Emotional characteristics
 Planning of career
Job Evaluation
Job evaluation is a comparative process of analyzing, assessing, and determining the relative
value/worth of a job in relation to the other jobs in an organization.
The main objective of job evaluation is to analyze and determine which job commands how
much pay. There are several methods such as job grading, job classifications, job ranking, etc.,
which are involved in job evaluation. Job evaluation forms the basis for salary and wage
negotiations.

2) Strategy Development: - Recruitment strategy is the second step of the recruitment process, where a
strategy is prepared for hiring the resources. After completing the preparation of job descriptions and
job specifications, the next step is to decide which strategy to adopt for recruiting the potential
candidates for the organization.

While preparing a recruitment strategy, the HR team considers the following points −

Make or buy employees

Types of recruitment

Geographical area

Recruitment sources

The development of a recruitment strategy is a long process, but having a right strategy is mandatory to
attract the right candidates. The steps involved in developing a recruitment strategy include −

 Setting up a board team

 Analyzing HR strategy
 Collection of available data
 Analyzing the collected data
 Setting the recruitment strategy
3) Searching:-It is the process of recruitment where the resources are sourced depending upon the
requirement of the job. After the recruitment strategy is done, the searching of candidates will be
initialized. This process consists of two steps −

 Source activation − Once the line manager verifies and permits the existence of the vacancy, the
search for candidates starts.

 Selling − Here, the organization selects the media through which the communication of
vacancies reaches the prospective candidates.

Searching involves attracting the job seekers to the vacancies. The sources are
broadly divided into two categories: Internal Sources and External Sources.

Internal Sources
Internal sources of recruitment refer to hiring employees within the organization through −

 Promotions
 Transfers
 Former Employees
 Internal Advertisements (Job Posting)
 Employee Referrals
 Previous Applicants
External Sources
External sources of recruitment refer to hiring employees outside the organization through −

 Direct Recruitment
 Employment Exchanges
 Employment Agencies
 Advertisements
 Professional Associations
 Campus Recruitment
 Word of Mouth

4) Screening: - Screening starts after completion of the process of sourcing the candidates. Screening is
the process of filtering the applications of the candidates for further selection process.

Screening is an integral part of recruitment process that helps in removing unqualified or irrelevant
candidates, which were received through sourcing. The screening process of recruitment consists of
three steps −Reviewing of Resumes and Cover Letters, Conducting Telephonic or Video Interview,
Identifying the top candidates.

Reviewing of Resumes and Cover Letters

Reviewing is the first step of screening candidates. In this process, the resumes of the
candidates are reviewed and checked for the candidates’ education, work experience, and
overall background matching the requirement of the job
While reviewing the resumes, an HR executive must keep the following points in mind, to
ensure better screening of the potential candidates −

 Reason for change of job

 Longevity with each organization
 Long gaps in employment
 Job-hopping
 Lack of career progression

Conducting Telephonic or Video Interview

Conducting telephonic or video interviews is the second step of screening candidates. In this
process, after the resumes are screened, the candidates are contacted through phone or video
by the hiring manager. This screening process has two outcomes −
  It helps in verifying the candidates, whether they are active and available.
 It also helps in giving a quick insight about the candidate’s attitude, ability to answer interview
questions, and communication skills.

Identifying the top candidates

Identifying the top candidates is the final step of screening the resumes/candidates. In this
process, the cream/top layer of resumes are shortlisted, which makes it easy for the hiring
manager to take a decision. This process has the following three outcomes −

 Shortlisting 5 to 10 resumes for review by the hiring managers

 Providing insights and recommendations to the hiring manager
 Helps the hiring managers to take a decision in hiring the right candidate

5) Evaluation and Control: - Evaluation and control is the last stage in the process of recruitment. In this
process, the effectiveness and the validity of the process and methods are assessed. Recruitment is a
costly process; hence it is important that the performance of the recruitment process is thoroughly
evaluated.

The costs incurred in the recruitment process are to be evaluated and controlled effectively. These
include the following −

 Salaries to the Recruiters

 Advertisements cost and other costs incurred in recruitment methods, i.e., agency fees.

 Administrative expenses and Recruitment overheads

 Overtime and Outstanding costs, while the vacancies remain unfilled

 Cost incurred in recruiting suitable candidates for the final selection process

 Time spent by the Management and the Professionals in preparing job description, job
specifications, and conducting interviews.

Recruitment sources
There are two types of recruitment sources commonly used:

1) Internal Sources:

 TRANSFERS: Based on efficiency of employees.

  PROMOTION AND DEMOTION: Based on performance of employees.
 The dependents and relatives of DECEASED OR DISABLED EMPLOYEES are also recruited by
many companies.
 RETIRED AND RETRENCHED EMPLOYEES In case of shortage of qualified personnel or
increase in load of work.

2) External Sources: Some of the external sources are:

a) Campus Recruitment: It is one of the most popular methods of recruitment in which companies
visit Technical and Professional Institutes in an attempt to hire young intelligent and smart students
at sources.

Some of the benefits of campus recruitment are:

 Companies get the opportunity to choose from and select the best talent in a short span of
time.
 Save a lot of time and efforts that go in advertising vacancies, screening and eventually
selecting applicants for employment.

b) Job Fair: it is a collection of employers at a particular place and time frame who have mostly
more than one opening in their respective organization and are keen on closing these positions.
Some Job Fairs are held by a single organization while others are hosted by colleges campuses for
corporate recruiters looking to fill internship or entry-level jobs.

The objectives of Job Fairs are:

 The main objective of any job fair is to connect prospective employer and candidates.
 It is about the employers looking for new hires, and job hunters hoping to be hired. Unlikely
more conventional job search methods, job fairs guarantee a receptive audience for
prospective jobseekers.
 For job seekers it is a way to explore potential employment opportunities and learn about
companies who are hiring.

c) Online Job-oriented Websites : A job-oriented website, also known as a career portal, is a

modern name for an online job board that helps applicants find jobs and aids employers in their
quest to locate ideal candidates. An uncountable number of websites are available across the
internet who intends to advertise job openings; however their real business model is providing
genuine talent and experience to companies that are why these sites are where thousands of
candidates’ resumes come from. Websites like Naukri.com, Monster.com, and indeed.com are
some of the most significant ones.

The benefits of online job-oriented websites are numerous. Some of the biggest plus points are:
  It’s Immediate: Most job posts and replies appear in real time. This can help you either
increase your efforts to attract more candidates, a different set of candidates (early-
instead of mid-career professionals, for example) or even stop candidates from applying
if you’ve already found the right person for the job.
 You Can Reach a Bigger Audience: The internet is a global phenomenon, with more
and more users gaining access every day, while in most developed countries,
internet usage is extremely high. Therefore, you are gaining exposure to a huge
potential pool of applicants.
 It’s Durable: Newspapers and other forms of printed media have a very limited
lifetime, dependent on their publishing cycle. Most classified publications have a
biweekly publishing cycle, meaning that your ad will only be seen for that
relatively small amount of time. Online job posts, on the other hand, will stay live
until the author or the host website removes it.

MY FUTURE ASPIRATIONS

In future I want to become a Human Resource Business Partner (HRBP) of an organization. As

I’m very much interested in Human Resource Management field which can be defined as
handling the issues faced by employees in an organization. This is one of the basic components
of an organization. It is vital for the business to not simply develop individual leadership, but
instead develop collective leadership for better growth of the company. Now HR manager act
as a strategic business partner by reviewing the organization’s competencies, reward system,
governance, and learning and leadership structures. So to become a good HRBP in future I want
to understand the business in depth that mean who makes the money and how. What are the
organization business goals? And what levers need to be pulled to help the organization achieve
them? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the business compared to the competition? Most
importantly, I need to learn how the dynamics of the business work, and how a change in one area will
affect other areas.