WHAT ALL MNC’S SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RECRUITMENT & SELECTION IN SRI LANKA

 

The resource capability of any organisation or a business will define that strategic capability of the business to sustain in the environment as well as to gain a higher competitive advantage which the rational for resourcing has emerged. On the other hand, the important and most valuable capabilities and resources of any organisation are those hard to replicated, imperfectly transferable, tough to identify and understand, durable and having the ownership with a controlling ability by the organisation where such resources need to be protected by the organisation since such will have an essential role in generating a higher competitive advantage through strategies that made to use such resources and capabilities with a higher efficiency and effectiveness (Grant, 1991). From a resource base view, human resources of any firm are vital for the firm since human resource considered to be the most important and valued resource that any firm has among all other resources of the firm which will enhance the capabilities of the organisation to gain a higher competitive advantage as well as a higher sustainability. The increased competitive pressures for firm due to globalisation human resource has identified as a main source that generates a higher competitive advantage whereas together with changes in the labour force demographics a higher management concern has given to attracting best talents for the firms and such has become one of the main concerns of the firms as well as managements (Anderson & Witvliet, 2008). Further with the use of new technology developments attracting applicants has not become any issue for the organisations whereas the primary concern has become recruiting the beat talents and the right applicants (Sackett & Lievens, 2008). Tus the resourcing strategy of any organisation in strategic human resource management should focus on attracting higher capable people to the firm and retain them better than its competitors and employing such attracted people in a highly effectively manner to gain a higher competitive advantage (Armstrong, 2009). Therefore, resourcing approach in human resource management is considering on matching organisational requirements to the resources as well as more radically considering the skills, competencies, and behaviours that required for the future development of the organisation to gain a higher competitive advantage in the business environment (Armstrong, 2009). It is not sufficient for the firms to just recruit and select employees or resources as required whereas it has become very challenging to retain such employees with the organisation while development them to meet future challenges in the environment to gain a higher competitive advantage.

 The recruitment and selection process starts with the human resource planning process which defines as the process which identifies the human resource requirements of the organisation and generating plan to acquire such human resource requirements (Bulla & Scott, 1994). Another definition for human resource planning was it’s a process which firms try to identify the demand for labour in the organisation and evaluate the nature of human resource requirement, size and the source which acquire the said requirement to meet the demand of the company (Reilly, 2003). By discussing human resource planning Armstrong (2009) has stated that the process includes many activities including scenario planning which includes a proper forecasting on the present and future changes that can happen in the environment which will have an effect for the requirement of additional human resources for the organisation demand forecasting which include identifying the requirement of human resources and skills for the organisation to face the forecasted changes in the environment, supply forecasting which include the ability of the organisation to supply such skill and human requirement through the company as well as need of the company to employee new staff from the labour market which further include identifying the labour market trends, demand for the labour in the given environment and the demand for labour and the available talents and skills in the market, forecasting requirements which include the analysis of the deficit of human resources based on the demand and supply that has been forecasted, and finally, action planning that the firm required to plan propose actions to find required human resources for the organisation. Further he stated that though the activities were discussed separately all the activities are closely related as well as interrelated to each other which the organisations need to consider the real requirement of the organisations to recruit and select the talents that the company need (Armstrong, 2009).

Employee recruitment was defined as attracting the potential skills and talents for the company who likes to work for the company and creating a pool of talents that the company can select the best out of the said pool (Taylor, 2007). Further the selection was defined as sleeting the best talent out of the recruited talent pool with the right knowledge, skills, competencies and attitudes (Taylor, 2007). Thus, though recruitment and selection has defined separately it has become very important to consider both recruitment and selection together. The recruitment and selection process consisting with four steps whereas the first step is requirement defining whereas tis includes preparation of role profiles, person profile and employment conditions. The preparation of role profile engages with identifying the requirement of the company, the role that the selected employee must conduct as well as reporting channels whereas person profile is involving identifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities that the person should have to perform in the identified role. And the next step is defining the terms and the conditions such as the maximum salary, designation, and employment terms such as probations, time of confirmation or weather the employment is under permanent or temporary basis. The second step is planning recruitment campaign whereas this includes that the strategies that the organisation will consider attracting all the possible talents for the company or to communicate the message of the firm to the beast possible target skills in the market. Further, this required a better analysis by the organisation to identify which techniques or strategies that they organisation will consider in recruiting applicants whereas formal and informal techniques can be considering by the firms. Job centres, employment agencies, and newspaper advertisements are the main formal recruitment methods that practice by most of the organisations and referral by the current employees of the organisation or word of mouth can consider as informal recruitment practices that mostly use (Carroll, et al., 1999). Through research it was identified that informal methods in recruitment produce better results than formal recruitment techniques in terms of quality of the workers and their commitment (Zottoli & Wanous, 2000). Though few variances were identified it was identified that newspaper advertisements, agencies, and informal recruitment techniques such as referral by friends and employees as most popular ways that companies recruit employees in Scotland (Scholarios & Lockyar, 1999) and with an research in 201 large scale US companies it was identified that referrals, recruiting for the colleges, and recruiting through agencies as top ranked recruitment techniques out of nine recruitment techniques that were consider for the study (Terpstra, 1996). A study conducted with the manufacturing organisations in Malaysia it was found that most of the companies are using paper advertisements as the main recruiting technique which follow by referrals and agencies (Jusoh & Kok Ai, 2002) that indicates that different countries and different companies are using different methods in recruiting and with the popularity of internet both the job seekers and the companies who recruit people are using internet and an increase in using internet as a recruitment technique has increased during last few years (Arthur, 2008). Through a research conducted it was found that internet as the beast platform to advertise managerial positions of the organisations and such has generated a higher productivity for the organisations in finding better talents including professionals whereas local newspapers were fund to be the best media for advertising non-managerial vacancies which the recruitment process indicated a higher effectiveness while national papers also considered as better media to advertise managerial vacancies of any organisation in USA (Rioux & Bernthal, 1999). Further it was researched and found that over 90% of US large organisations are highly depending on web advertisements in recruiting their employees whereas mostly depending on own website by introducing careers section in the company website whereas the higher success on such is due to the companies are proactively recruiting candidates which will help them to identify the best talents in the market and produce better efficiencies in recruitment (Lermusiaux, 2003).

The third step of recruitment and selection is attracting candidate whereas this is the final step in the recruitment process in which the companies should identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the recruitment process as well as recruitment techniques that they have used whereas such will help the companies to reconsider their recruiting techniques which they could not attract a considerable higher talents of pool which considering other techniques to attract best talents of the available vacancies. Recruitment is affected by many factors one of the main factors that the recruitment process affected was the labour market conditions in any given market. One of the factor that affect the recruitment is that the labour force population whereas higher the labour force population resulting the companies to attract more applicants to the company whereas lesser the labour force population will reduce such applicants (Lee, 2005) in which at the situations where a market that has lower labour force population, companies need to consider very strong recruitment techniques in order to attract more applicants for a given vacancy that the company has a higher chance to select the best talent on the market. On the other hand, becoming an employer of choice is another strategy that the firms can adopt to attract more applicants for the organisations to have a successful recruitment process (Purcell, et al., 2003) in which the employee value propositions of the organisation will help to become an employee of choice. Employee value propositions has defined as the financial and non-financial offerings by the company to its employees where such value propositions are consisting with salary, other financial benefits and non-financial benefits such as work life balance equal treatment (Armstrong, 2009). Further through their researchers Purcell, et al. (2003) has identified six employee value propositions and Ramlall (2003) has identified 12 employee value propositions that can attract more applicants at the recruitment stage. Employer brand is another factor that will affect the effectiveness of recruitment process whereas higher the employer brand will encourage more candidates to apply for a vacancy that publish by the organisation. Employer branding is defined as creating the organisation unique in its culture and working experience to the employees from other organisations while promoting the organisation as a better place to work and inviting others to work for the company which further producing the employee value propositions (Walker, 2007). Further, employer branding as defined as a process in building positive image in the minds of the current employees and the outsiders about the firm (Mathis & Jackson, 2008). Such build image about the organisation will motivate candidates to apply for the job vacancies as self-motivators (George, et al., 2004) whereas employer branding can consider as an effective strategy that can attract more talents that the organisation required from the labour market (Wilden, et al., 2010). Thus, all the communications by the organisation will have an impact on the brand of the company including their advertising and branding in marketing as well where such will have an influence on the candidates to consider the organisation as a better employer and all such communications to the outside of the organisation in any form may affect to the image of the organisation to become an employer of choice. This was evident by many researches whereas a study has identified that upper level college students who were looking for jobs has consider the organisations as better employer mainly due to the organisations official web site consisted with videos of current employees whereas the companies just has texts and pictures were rate low as better employer by them due to the fact that the believing of the at the companies who spent on creating a video will have less consideration on reducing the costs and such companies will spend more in employees (Walker, et al., 2011). On the other hand, through a primary study it was identified that best performing organisation has 37% higher concentration in developing systematic employee value propositions, 32% higher concentration on regular and continuous assessment of employee value propositions and such companies have used media 28% more in employer branding than low performing organisations (BCG & WFPMA, 2015) which evident that employee value propositions as well as employer branding has very important in generate better performances which will create through the best attracted and selected candidates.

Selection was defined as the process which picking the best talent or talents who can perform best in the position with required knowledge, skills, and abilities out from the talent pool that already has recruited (Mathis & Jackson, 2008). Further it was argued that the selection process should consist with five generic standards called reliability, validity, generalizability, utility and legality (Noe, et al., 2012). The reliability of the selection process indicates that the consistency of the process of selection and the degree of the process to be conduct in random errors (Noe, et al., 2012). The validity represents the ability of the process to measure all the relevant characteristics that required to perform the job and only the relevant aspects of performing the job whereas generalizability is the ability of the process to analyse all the contexts of the validity (Noe, et al., 2012). Utility refers to the degree which the information that has gathered from the selection process enhance the effectiveness of the selecting the best person for the organisation and the job to be performed whereas legality is the confirmation of all the selection methods are according to the laws and regulations of the country. Selecting the best suit candidate is very important for any organisation whereas the performance of the organisation is depending on the performances of the sleeted employee. Further it has become very important to select the candidates who can work in the environment of the organisation or to identify the candidates who can adopt for the culture of the organisation where selecting a wrong candidate will result lower performances by the employee as well as him to resign from the job which the organisation need to another recruitment and selection cycle to higher another employee which costs a lot for the company.

With reference to the multinational companies, they need to operate in many destinations that are different from each to another. Thus, the main issue such companies face is the difference in the cultures and legal systems in the countries whereas the labour market conditions which are differs from each country to the other also create a significant effect for the recruitment and selection process of the company. One of the issue that the multinationals need to face is that the recruitment techniques that they should use whereas though it was identified through a study that 90% of the recruitments in USA was through internet the companies could not practice same in south Asian countries whereas in south Asia the highest computer literacy was produced from Sri Lanka which is low as 25% in which the companies that use internet as a recruitment technique only can address and focus only 25% of the total market and even for the lower grades the ability of the message to reach the required people may lower than that. Even in employer branding, there can be differences in different destinations since the factors which attract the potential employees may differ destination to destination. Higher masculinity societies are target oriented and femininity cultures are considering the quality of life (Hofstede, 1980). Thus, in masculinity cultures the candidate are attracted for the challenges that the employer offers to them and in femininity cultures like Sri Lanka the candidates are attracted for the life quality that they can obtain from the employer where the employer branding of the companies should consider such to gain a higher success. Further the employer branding communications should also consider such cultural differences whereas the cultures with higher individualism many prefer the organisations that will offer higher targets and the low individualised cultures will prefer to see more team work where the multinational organisations should consider on employer branding to attract more candidates to the organisation. On the other hand the power distance is also very important factor in different cultures that the multinationals should consider specially with the managerial employees whereas in countries like Sri Lanka which has a higher power distance in culture, the managerial candidates could be attracted for the communication that offer a higher authority whereas such will not be a concern in a culture that has a lower power distance.

In conclusion, it was identified the human resource planning is an important process for the organisations to consider having a better recruitment and selection process whereas the recruitment process will affect by many factors such as labour market condition, brand of the employer and employee value propositions. Further with respect to the multinational companies it has become essential to understand the cultural differences of the country or the destination that they operate whereas such will have a higher effect for the recruitment and selection process of the company specially the companies need to have different employee value propositions as well as an employer brand that has communicated to the target candidate based on the cultural differences to attract them. Further the other conditions such as the computer literacy, intellectual capacities, and perception on the media channels of the candidates also create a significant effect for the recruitment and selection process of the company whereas such need to be closely monitor by the multinational companies when developing their strategies in attracting candidates for the organisations and selecting the beat talent for the organisation that will help them to gain a higher competitive advantage.

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