Answer

Recruitment and Selection

Assignment One

Recruiters leverage the use of various strategies to fill vacant positions in the organization. The choice of strategy used depends on the seniority of the position being filled. One of the strategies used include internal recruitment. Internal recruitment refers to the process of filling vacant positions through sourcing from the company’s existing workforce. Internal recruitment as a strategy is important to the recruitment process because of the following reasons; first, it is cost-effective.  Secondly, internal recruitment significantly reduces onboarding time since the employee is already familiar with the organization. Additionally, it strengthens the level of employee engagement as it is seen as a promotion.

Recruiters also get employees through recruitment agencies.  According to Mondy and Martocchio (2016), recruitment agencies are companies businesses outsource their hiring process to. Such companies advertised the positions, conduct the interviews, and select suitable candidates for the positions advertised.   Recruitment agencies are specialized in filling in vacancies and are, therefore, experts in the services they offer.  Even though they are an expensive way of filling in vacancies, recruitment agencies are an important strategy for the recruitment process because they are highly experienced and, therefore, likely to hire the best employees.

Recruiters also leverage the help of professional organizations when filling vacant positions.   Professional organizations are often used when the positions being filled are highly specialized or require highly skilled and competent employees. To fill in such vacancies, recruiters approach professional bodies that regulate the position and get recommendations of suitably skilled candidates to consider. For instance, when hiring registered nurses, the recruiter can approach the American Nurses Association (ANA) and receive names of nurses whose credentials are valid to consider for the job openings. Using professional organizations is important to the recruitment process because it guarantees that the employee hired is qualified and can be vouched for by the professional body.

Assignment Two

As a human resource professional, I have benefited from the use of both internal and external recruitment methods to recruit.  First, I have used internal recruitment methods such as promotion to fill vacancies.    As an internal method, promotions involved filling in job vacancies though leverage the use of already existing labor force. The method has the following advantages; first, it is cost-effective as there are negligible advertainment and interview costs involved. Secondly, it is reducing the time it takes to onboard employees as they are already familiar with the organization. Additionally, the method boosts employee morale and performance, and other employees also strive to be noticed for future promotions. On the other hand, the method has the following disadvantages; first, it limits the pool of applicants considered for the position. Secondly, it creates conflicts among the employees, especially in cases where other employees feel they were more deserving of the promotion.

 The second method used to recruit employees is social media advertising.  Social media job advertising involves posting job openings on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Social media advertainment as an external recruitment method has the following advantages; first, it offers the job opening increased visibility. Social media platforms have millions of subscribers, thus giving the advertisement increased visibility (Aggerholm & Andersen, 2018).  Secondly, it is a cheap method of hiring employees since such advertisements are free. Thirdly, it increases the pool of applicants, thus increasing the chance of hiring quality employees. On the other hand, it has the following disadvantages; first, it poses a lot of privacy issues.  Hiring through social media means the employer has to go through social media handles of interested candidates, thus leading to privacy issues. Secondly, it leaves out candidates who would have applied for the job but due to their inactive social media presence, fail to see the advertisement.

Assignment Three

Confidentiality is a vital requirement that human resource professionals must adhere to.  It is essential for human resource managers to maintain employees’ confidentiality during recruitment because of the following reasons; first, it is a legal mandate that the employers are supposed to abide by (Franca & Doherty, 2020).  Employers are legally mandated to abide by the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).  During job application, applicants provide vital sensitive private information such as their social security numbers, addresses, and performance records. Job application forms make applicants divulge a lot of private and sensitive information.  Employers should protect the information to avoid lawsuits that follow any failure to abide by the privacy obligations in HIPAA.

Secondly, confidentiality is important during the process of recruitment because of the reputation of the company. Employers value their reputation.  Companies know reputation is an intangible asset that needs to be protected.  Protecting information divulged by job applicants during recruitment protects the reputation of the company as a secure employer.  Companies that release information from their job applicants get negative reviews and therefore lose the trust of job applicants. Such reputational damage reduces their chances of attracting qualified employees. The rise in the number of cases of identity theft makes people paranoid and fearful of releasing their private information to institutions that cannot safeguard the information.

Confidentiality of applicants can be managed through the various stages of the recruitment process by restricting the number of people with access to the documents submitted to the company during the application process.  Controlled access to the files ensures there is an established chain of custody that can prevent the information contained in the files from being accessed by authorized personnel within the company. Furthermore, the interview process should also be conducted with the same team to limit those with access to the applicant’s private information.

Assignment Four

  For my first job, I applied for a sales assistant position in a store that handled a wide range of consumer products. The company sold products that ranged from clothes and shoes to electronics. The position required a person who would be in the shop and help the customers locate the products they wanted. Additionally, the employee would answer all the questions from the customers regarding the products they were looking to purchase.  The position, therefore, involved a lot of interaction with the customers who patronized the store

One of the questions I was asked was to rate my communication skills.  The interviewer was concerned and wanted to know how well I was at communicating. The interview panel wanted to know my mastery of both verbal and non-verbal communication. I answered the question by demonstrating by prowess in both verbal and non-verbal communication. After the question, I was given various scenarios that tested my communication skills.  The interviewer dwelled on communication skills because the main role done by the store’s sales assistant is communicating with customers. Terblanche (2018) asserts that customers judge their shopping experience based on factors such as the quality of interaction they had with the sales assistant who served them. The company, therefore, knew the vital role played by sales assistants in either winning clients or giving them a poor shopping experience. It was, therefore, imperative to ascertain the communication skill of the candidates considered for the position since communicating with clients will account for the bulk of the tasks performed in the employee.

The feedback gave to the question was important for the interview process because it served to ascertain my ability to communicate effectively with customers who shop in the store. Sale assistants’ need to be excellent communicators who can remain calm and objective regardless of the communication method used by the customer. Therefore, the question would ensure I was able to meet the company’s communication requirements.

Question Five

 The success of an organization hinges highly on the quality of its workforce.  Companies, therefore, seek to hire personnel with high human capital.  The value of the human capital stems from the level of skills and expertise of the employees of the organization. Companies that managed to hire highly skilled and innovative employees end up with high human capital. Human capital can be measured through several methods; first, human resources can leverage the use of human capital return on investment (HCROI). According to Hilorme et al. (2019), HCROI refers to the profitability that an organization attains from the investments it makes on its employees.  It is calculated by determining the level of value addition obtained from investing the company’s human assets.  Companies make a significant investment in their employees. The investment are done in terms of money spent on training the employees.  Also, money spent on factors such as team building and motivation.  Such investments are geared at increasing the productivity of the employees.   Therefore, to determine the value the human capital generated, the human resource manager should calculate the HCROI.

Apart from levering the use of human capital return on investment, human resource managers can also determine the value of human capital through assessing the value of intellectual property held by the company. Intellectual property stems from groundbreaking work done an employee or a team of employees.  Such innovations can only be made by talented and highly skilled employees of the organization. A company that has several highly talented and skilled employees is likely to have several patents that help them gain competitive advantage in the market. The number of such intellectual property owned by a company plays a vital role in determining the quality of its human capital.  Similarly, the economic value of the intellectual property also plays an essential role in assessing the quality of an organization’s human capital.