Recruitment Tips

All of us at least one time during our life face with situation when we are applying for a job. In that case it’s very important to know how is it better to start, what steps should we do, & so on. We can try to find work different ways: in newspapers, employment agencies or with the help of our friends – but when at last we find something we are interested in we start thinking how we can get this job. & the first step on the way to the work of our dream is resume & letter of application. It is a vital part of the job search strategy. You must develop your resume & a letter of application to accompany your resume for jobs that you may seek. It is an orderly summary of your background data, & should be designed to contribute to your overall persuasive effort. The idea here is to target your resume so the employer feels that your qualifications are a perfect match for the job opening. Like a resume, a letter of application shouldn’t be too long. It is designed to introduce you to the reader & slants your background more precisely to a particular job that does the all-around chronological resume. Because it is a reflection of you, it should be prepared with great care. You shouldn’t forget that the main purpose of resume & the letter of application is to get you an interview.

So next step is interview. It is important to be well prepared for the interview. Most interviews last 30 minutes or less & that time may be the most important in your life. During that time you must make a positive impression. This is your opportunity to show an employer that you have skills necessary or help them solve their problems. You should be able to reduce your anxiety & demonstrate competence & confidence in the interview situation by preparing for the interview. Being prepared for the interview mean that you should know what interviewer will want from you & also what do you want from interviewer. It is to your advantage to ask probing questions about company or to seek clarification or points that reveal you have done your homework. In addition it’s important to research a firm thoroughly, because your future rests on whether you make the right job selection. There are some rules we should remember going to the interview:

-         allow yourself plenty of time to get to the interview early;

-         dress conservatively, avoid either too formal or too casual attire;

-         greet interviewer by name & introduce yourself, act as a guest & follow the interviewer’s cues;

-         be enthusiastic about your accomplishments & what you can do, but don’t act superior;

-         be frank & truthful & project self-respect, don’t exaggerate;

-         be attentive, always ask for clarification of something you don’t understand;

-         be talkative & friendly, but concise;

-         be prepared to discuss salary, but don’t introduce the subject.

After the interview & especially if a company still interests you, you should send a thank you to the interviewer. This basic courtesy is often overlooked by those seeking jobs, but it’s one excellent method of keeping your name fresh in interviewer’s mind & keeping your file active.

At last after all these steps if you are lucky you can get a letter congratulating you with successful job search. & now you have practically the easiest part: accept or reject a position.

1. In case of refusing a job, use an inductive approach. In other words, state your reasons first, then the tasteful refusal, & a pleasant ending. Reply as quickly as possible, so that the job can be offered to another candidate.

Acceptable letter should be written using a deductive approach. Begin by accepting a job in the first sentence, follow with any necessary details, & end with pleasant closing.

Finally, there is one last important point to remember. Immediately inform your college placement office of your job acceptance so they will stop referring your name for possible placement.

Getting in a habit of attending to common courtesies such as these, can start you on the right foot to a successful career in business.

So this is the usual process of applying for a job. But it’s only one side of a medal. To understand this process better let’s look at it from another point – with eyes of employer, who is seeking for potential employees. & this process is a process of providing appropriate human resources, or staffing. & comparing with our chaotic attempts of finding job it’s an absolute concrete process. So to be more successful in applying for a job it would be useful to know this process “inside”. It’ll give us an opportunity to understand that while applying for a job we are passing several steps.

The phrase “appropriate human resources” refers to those individuals within the organization who make a valuable contribution to organizational goal attainment. The contribution is a result of their productivity. Productivity in all organization is determined by how human resources interact, & combine & use all other management system resources. Such factors as background, age, job-related experience, & level of formal education all have some role in determining degree of appropriate human resources for the organization.

Appropriate human resources must be provided for the organization as various positions become open. The process of providing appropriate human resources (staffing) involves four main steps:

I.     recruitment;

1. selection;
2. training;
3. performance appraisal.

This process can be used to fill either managerial or nonmanagerial positions openings.

I. So recruitment is the first step in providing appropriate human resources for the organization once a position becomes open. Recruitment is the initial screening of the total supply of prospective human resources available to fill position. The purpose of recruitment is to narrow a large field of prospective employees down to a relatively small number of individuals from which one person can be hired. To be effective at recruiting, first of all the recruiter must know where potential human resources can be located.

So there can be different sources of potential human resources:

1. Internal recruiting – finding employees within the company who are willing or able to be promoted or transferred to another job. Internal recruiting is usually less expensive than outside recruiting. In addition, first – hand data about skills & post performance are available &, finally, promotion can be a motivational factor. But promotion will not remove all necessity for outside recruiting: the jobs that promoted employees leave must be filled.
2. External recruiting – if for some reason a position cannot be filled from within the organization, there are numerous sources outside the organization:

2.1. General recruiting:

-         Publication advertising;

To tap this source the recruiter simply places an advertisement in suitable publication. This advertisement should both describe the open position in detail & announce that the organization is accepting applications from individuals who would like to fill the position. The type of position to be filled determines the type of publication in which the advertisement should be placed.

-         Television advertising;

-         Radio advertising;

2.2.Direct recruiting:

-         Competitors;

There are several advantages to luring human resources away from competitors, & this type of piracy has become a common practice. These advantages are: the competitor will have paid for the individual’s training up the time of hire: the competing organization will probably be weakened somewhat by the loss of the individuals; the individuals once hired, becomes a valuable sources of information regarding how to best compete with the former organization.

-         Employment agencies;

An employment agency is an organization that specializes in matching individuals seeking a position with organization in need of them. These agencies help people find jobs & help organizations find people.

-         Educational institutions;

Several recruiters go directly to educational institutions & universities to interview students close to graduation as prospective human resources.

-         Professional societies.

Finally in order to be effective, recruiters must understand the job they are trying to fill. The process that determines what activities & skills are necessary fro a specific job is called job analysis. There are a lot of job-analysis methods commonly used. Each of them has a same purpose – the systematic differentiation of one job from another in terms of work activities, machines, tools, the product made or services performing. The result of job analysis is a job description – an organized, factual statement of the duties & responsibilities of a particular work role. It tells what is done, how it is done & why it is done. This information allows a personnel manager to write a job specification – a statement of the skills, abilities, physical characteristics, & education required to perform a job. The job specification is the basis for staffing, because it allows a realistic assessment of the employee’s skills & abilities.

The recruiting period (phase) provides applicants fro screening (the process of separating qualified from unqualified or less qualified job applicants). They use such methods as application data, interviews, tests for assessing employees’ characteristics. After candidates are screened, selection begins.

II. Selection involves choosing an individual to hire from all those who have been recruited. The selection process is typically represented as a series of stages through which prospective employees must pass in order to be hired. So in fact, selection is the process of making decision to offer a job to a particular person.

III. After individuals have been both recruited & selected, they must be trained. Training is the process of developing qualities in employees that will ultimately enable them to be more productive &, as a result, contribute more to organizational goal attainment.

IV. After it the process of making that individual a productive member of organization is still not finished. The fourth step in providing appropriate human resources for the organization is performance appraisal – process of reviewing an individual’s past productive activity to evaluate the contribution he/she has made to attaining organizational objectives.

So as we know from the definition, management is getting things down through people, therefore none is as important as human resources, the people with whom manager has to work. So staffing is one of the manager’s functions & it implies providing human resources needed to achieve an organization’s goals. Staffing can also be called personal administration. Staffing includes a wide variety of organizational activities which can be divided into preliminary (job analysis, job description & job specification) & those directly related to staffing – recruiting, screening & selection, & placement.