Management Chapter 7 Recruiting Selecting Training And Developing Employees Recruiting Selecting Training And

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Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

Chapter 7

Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and

Developing Employees

Learning Objectives

Opening Case: The Coaching Carousel

Chapter Outline

Closing Case: The Temptation of Temping

Discussion Questions

Additional Resource: Employees First, Customers Second

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, students should be able to accomplish the following objectives.

1. Describe the recruiting process, including internal and external recruiting and the

importance of realistic job previews

3. Identify and discuss popular selection techniques that organizations use to hire new

employees

5. Discuss how organizations train and develop new employees to better enable them to

perform effectively

Opening Case: The Coaching Carousel

Case Summary

It’s called the coaching carousel. Every year when football season ends, coaches get fired and

new coaches get hired. Every team needs a head coach. Hence, there is precisely one job at each

team and that job has to be filled—and quickly. For example, consider the National Football

League. The day after the regular season ends is known as Black Monday, and most firings take

place that day or a few days after. Of course, not all teams failing to make the playoffs fire their

coach.

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

At the end of the 2017 season, seven head coaches were fired or agreed to resign. So where do

new head coaches come from? Some come from a pool of former head coaches who were

Think It Over

1. In what ways are recruiting and hiring coaches similar to and different from recruiting

and hiring corporate managers?

Students’ answers will vary. However, their answers may include the points mentioned

below. The following are the similarities between recruiting and hiring coaches and

corporate managers:

• Recruiters hire a coach who can win a game for them or a corporate manager who

2. If you were a coach, what would be important to you in considering a new coaching

position?

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

other than team players and facilities provided to the team like a separate physical fitness

coach, different training facilities for the team, etc. A new coach might also look for

professionalism in the team.

Chapter Outline

Introduction

This chapter examines the processes used by organizations to attract, hire, and develop new

employees.

I. Recruiting Employees

The processes of recruitment and selection are the means whereby organizations acquire new

human resources. Recruiting is the process of developing a pool of qualified applicants who are

interested in working for the organization and from which the organization might reasonably

Both parties in the recruiting process—the organization and the prospective employee—have

goals they are trying to accomplish in the recruiting process. The most basic and fundamental

goal of an organization’s recruiting effort is essentially to fulfill the definition of recruiting: to

develop a pool of qualified applicants. This overriding goal, however, also suggests three

specific related goals that are important to the recruiting process.

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

In addition to these goals, however, individuals can also have idiosyncratic goals. One

fundamental decision that an organization must make as part of its recruiting strategy is whether

to focus recruiting efforts internally or externally. As summarized in Table 7.1, both internal

recruiting and external recruiting have unique advantages and disadvantages.

A. Internal Recruiting

Internal recruiting is the process of looking inside the organization for existing qualified

employees who might be promoted to higher-level positions. In any event, it is generally

important that an organization use internal recruiting as part of its overall planning process

because, as noted in Table 7.1, internal recruiting has several advantages over external

recruiting. Perhaps the most important of these advantages is employees can see that there is

Job Posting

Perhaps the most common method that organizations use for internal recruiting is a process

called job posting. This is a relatively simple procedure. Vacancies in the organization are

publicized through various media such as the company intranet, newsletters, bulletin

Supervisory Recommendations

Another method of internal recruiting is supervisory recommendations. In this case,

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

when a new position needs to be filled, a manager solicits nominations or

recommendations for the position from supervisors in the organization. It is important,

however, that supervisors give equal consideration to all potential candidates in these

cases.

B. External Recruiting

External recruiting involves looking to sources outside the organization for prospective

employees. As noted in Table 7.1, external recruiting has advantages and disadvantages that

are directly counter to those of internal recruiting. In some cases, no internal employees may

be able to fill new positions, thereby making external recruiting the only option.

On the other hand, external recruiting may result in motivational problems in the organization.

Current employees may feel that they have been denied opportunities and that outsiders who

C. Methods for External Recruiting

Word-of-Mouth Recruiting

Referrals come to an organization via word-of-mouth recruiting. In most cases, the

organization simply informs current employees that positions are available and encourages

them to refer friends, family members, or neighbors for those jobs. From the organization’s

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

Advertisements

Advertisements on websites and in newspapers and related publications are also popular

methods for external recruiting. Some professional periodicals and publications also have

space set aside for help-wanted recruiting ads. This form of advertising tends to be

Employment Agencies

Public employment agencies became a formal part of the recruiting process with the

passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. This law requires that anyone who is paid

unemployment compensation must register that fact with a local state employment office.

These state agencies work closely with the U.S. Employment Service to get unemployed

individuals off state aid as quickly as possible and back in permanent jobs. Employers

data from unemployed persons and uses this data to match qualified individuals with

available jobs.

College Placement Offices

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

Most large organizations visit college campuses every year to interview graduates for jobs

within the organization. An advantage of this method for the organization is that it can

Digital Recruiting

The importance of digital recruiting is hard to overestimate. Perhaps the most important

reason for the growing reliance on digital recruiting is that it is cost effective. It does not

cost much to post job openings on online job boards such as Monster.com, which are

visited by literally millions of people annually. In addition, many organizations that start

their own websites for recruiting find that they can reach potential applicants more easily

and use these sites as marketing tools.

Of course, there are potential problems associated with digital recruiting as well. Ease of

access also means that many people may apply for a job who are not really qualified, and

this means more time spent sifting through the résumés of unqualified applicants. In

addition, although digital recruiting has the potential to generate a more diverse group of

applicants, differences in access to computers and the Internet still exist in the United

States.

D. Internships: A Mixed Model

Although it is easier to think about recruiting having either an internal or external focus, it is

possible to take an approach that really combines elements of the two. An intern is a form of

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

temporary employee who can help respond to work demands in short term. More important,

internships can be an important recruiting tool.

E. Realistic Job Previews

A final topic for discussion concerning external recruiting is the use of the realistic job

preview (RJP). It is an effective technique for ensuring that job seekers understand the actual

nature of the jobs available to them. In the past, many recruiters were guilty of painting a

glowing picture of what a particular job might entail. They made the job sound glamorous,

exciting, fun, challenging, and rewarding in different ways. Once employees accepted the job,

F. Evaluating the Recruitment Process

The final issue to discuss is how an organization might go about evaluating its recruiting

efforts. This evaluation requires metrics that a firm might use in that evaluation. Another

overall metric is the recruitment cost ratio, which includes all the costs associated with a new

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

II. The Selection Process

Selection is concerned with identifying the best candidate or candidates for a job among the pool

of qualified applicants developed during the recruiting process.

A. Steps in Selection

At a general level, the selection process involves three distinct steps.

• The first step is gathering information about the members of the pool of qualified

recruits regarding the levels of requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)

B. Basic Selection Criteria

Several possible criteria can be used in the selection decision, and these often differ in terms

of how objectively they can be assessed.

Education and Experience

In a selection context, education refers to the formal classroom training an individual has

received in public or private schools and in a college, university, or technical school. For

some jobs, the educational fields are open; in other cases, they must be within a specified

Skills and Abilities

The assessment of skills and abilities, on the other hand, is rather mixed in terms of

objectivity. It is relatively straightforward to assess someone’s typing ability, and it is even

possible to measure an ability such as spatial relations objectively. But as organizations

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

move toward teamwork and team-based operating systems, many of them are also putting

more emphasis on hiring individuals with the skills necessary to function effectively in a

group situation.

Personal Characteristics

Some personal characteristics, which are believed to reflect the applicant’s personality, are

also difficult to assess objectively. More recently, however, a great deal of attention has

been paid to assessing applicants in terms of the big five personality traits. These traits

Hiring for “Fit”

When a firm decides to hire someone on the basis of fit, it hires that person not because he

or she is the most qualified for a specific job, but because she or he is a good fit for the

III. Popular Selection Techniques

Most organizations rely on a comprehensive system of multiple selection techniques to ensure

that they gather all the relevant data and assess this data rigorously, objectively, and without

discrimination. Figure 7.3 illustrates one example selection sequence that an organization might

use.

A. Applications and Background Checks

An employment application asks individuals for various facts and information pertaining to

their personal background. Commonly asked questions include details such as name,

educational background, personal career goals, and experience.

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

Application blanks, when used in typical selection systems, provide a quick and inexpensive

mechanism for gathering several kinds of objective information about an individual that can

be easily verified. A number of innovations have extended the usefulness of application

blanks, including the following:

B. Employment Tests

Another popular selection technique used by many organizations is an employment test, or a

device for measuring the characteristics of an individual. These characteristics may include

personality, intelligence, or aptitude. Although employment tests are generally traditional

question-and-answer exercises that applicants complete on paper or online, the courts

Cognitive ability tests measure mental skills. The applicant is not required to do anything

physical, only to demonstrate some type of knowledge. General intelligence, or g, refers to

reasoning or problem-solving skills, but it is typically measured in terms of the information

Psychomotor ability tests measure physical abilities such as strength, eye-hand coordination,

and manual dexterity. These abilities can be practiced and perfected, and are usually measured

by some type of performance test. Psychomotor tests are popular because they apparently

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

measure what is important for performance on the job. In addition, they often measure skills

that are important for jobs and little evidence of disparate impact occurs when they are used.

Personality tests measure traits, or tendencies to act, that are relatively unchanging in a

person. Personality can be measured in two ways: self-report inventories and projective

techniques.

• A self-report inventory is a paper-and-pencil measure in which an applicant responds

to a series of statements that might or might not apply to that applicant. Some of these

Personality tests are somewhat controversial. Some critics believe they can lead to legal

problems, whereas others disagree whether cognitive ability tests (especially intelligence

tests) or personality tests provide the most useful information for selection decisions.

Regardless of the merits of these arguments, however, both personality and cognitive ability

remain popular criteria in selection techniques, as do all employment tests in general.

Integrity tests attempt to assess an applicant’s moral character and honesty. Most of these

tests are straightforward and include questions such as “Do you think most people would

C. Work Simulations

Chapter 7: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Developing Employees

Work simulations (sometimes referred to as work samples) require an applicant to perform

tasks or job-related activities that simulate or represent the actual work for which the person is

D. Personal Interviews

Although tests are popular, the most widely used selection technique in most organizations is

the employment interview. Interviews have traditionally been defined as face-to-face

conversations between prospective job applicants and representatives of the organization.

In any case, three different types of interviews are commonly encountered.

• In a structured employment interview, the interviewer works from a list of standard

In addition to these basic types, another form of interview has been gaining popularity. A

situational interview asks the applicant questions about a specific situation to see how he or

she would react. In other cases, rather than ask about something that has already happened,

the interviewer might ask the applicant to imagine a situation that has not yet occurred.

It is difficult to establish the job relatedness of interviews, partly because of the prevalence of

interview errors.

• Interviewers who make the first-impression error tend to make a decision early in the