Tracking Down Recruitment Problems
You are to write a 3 page essay. Explain how selection begins in recruitment and what potential selection tests are built into our recruiting models. How can HR leaders (you) work through our recruitment processes to identify potential biases and unnecessary requirements? Remember anything we do to constrain or build a pool of candidates “might” be a test and subject to the more stringent requirements of Title VII. Finally, explain how getting this part right is such an important part of our organizational culture?
ANSWER
Human Resources face a tough challenge to avoid both conscious bias and unconscious bias during the recruitment process. To facilitate this and other issues in human resources recruitment models and selection strategies are implemented in general to the process. The idea of these models is to ensure that amidst the chaos of managing human labour, talent is found and implemented in the organisation for the sake of the general performance of the company. From the moment job positions are sent out, human resource departments receive job applications from candidates who use the job opening description to determine that they would fulfil those job requirements including withstanding the pressure of work and others like being able to communicate and play as a team with other while actively contributing to the success of the company. This essay looks at the recruitment process to observe the potential selection tests build into the recruitment models while at the same time observing some of the common biases and unnecessary requirements.
The application process is followed by selection and pre-selection which is the point most capable of bias as it involves human evaluation of other humans. The screening involves resume screening which looks at the general fit of candidates to the job description. In some organisations, this process has been automated where intelligent systems are able to go through the resumes and establish general fitness to the job of the candidate based on the information they provide (). This process is important because it helps with getting rid of mismatches, weeding out the jokers and narrowing down the voluminous amounts of submissions only to the extremely important and appropriate ones. Pre-selection tests are often applied for high-volume recruiting as a tool that reduces the number to enable the next phase which is interviewing.
Interviews move past the candidate’s academic achievements and prior accomplishments into a test of verbal fluency and sociability. An organisational manager actively engages with prospective employees to establish their suitability for the job available. Some interview tests are structured while others are unstructured. According to Schmidt et al (1998), “structured interview has proven to be almost twice as reliable as the unstructured interview as it enables the interviewer to accurately compare candidates and to make the best decision purely on data” (Schmidt et al., 1998). Structured interviews are one of the ways to avoid structured bias in the recruitment process. In some cases, an assessment follows the interview based on the technicality of the job, especially where actual technical skills, for example, software engineering, are required. This assessment aims in observing the response and creativity while responding to questions and coming up with solutions to problems that are bound to occur in the lifetime of an employee.
Lastly, human resource managers perform a reference and background check to ensure some vital details can be verified by previous employers and teachers and in some cases community leaders and parents. The background check can also be used to check the candidates alongside their government data to show data such as prior convictions, adherence to tax payments, anti-corruption and embezzlement criminal charges among many other checks. Beyond this, the human resource manager gathers all the collected data to make the final decision that could include accepting one candidate in the organisation over another or dismissing a candidate for another who is better suited. The decisions can then be forwarded to management who in turn invite the candidates for training.
Throughout the process, the potential for bias is very high and at any given point, a human resource manager could act on his or her own bias to formulate a decision that could not only compromise a company’s productivity but also its public relations image to the word. One sure way to evaluate without bias is to perform a similar assessment as already mentioned. That way only the information provided determines the results of a decision. For instance, if a job description says five years and in one application has four years while in another it has five years, the decision picks only the one with five years of experience. There is no potential for bias in such a situation.
Another very important way is to apply an incredibly diverse interview panel. This comprises an interviewing panel that has into account the different races, ethnicities and gender presentation. Similarly, diversity could apply to the different departments available in the organisation. Each department has a unique view of a company and employing diversity ensures that interviewers do not fall victim to oversight into what a candidate needs to have to achieve the job’s goals (Byham 2002). Having a multi-gender, race and even age panel ensure that social and cultural biases, especially in the modern world that is more or less like a global village where even recruitment could be across the globe are all catered for. It is easy to make a decision based on similarities rather than competencies in human resources which is why it is fundamental to apply a diverse interviewing panel.
In conclusion, getting the recruitment process right is vital for organizational culture. It not only creates a good image of the company to the world but also ensures that a talent pool that actively contributes to the productivity of the company is achieved.
References
Byham, W. C., Smith, A. B., & Paese, M. J. (2002). Grow your own leaders: How to identify, develop, and retain leadership talent. FT Press.
Schmidt, Frank & Hunter, John. (1998). The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology. Psychological Bulletin. 124. 262-274. 10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262.
