Abstract
An organizations workforce is its most important asset. Managers today are looking at new and innovative ways for recruitment and selection of new workers due to the range of complexities involved in the mobility of employees in and out of the organization and their interaction with potential colleagues.
Many changes have occurred within the 20th century and organizations now place much importance on flexibility and the rapid pace that takes place within the workplace. The labor force market today is mainly driven by unemployment and there are many individuals willing to take up job that are offered without considering their interest, qualifications and fitness to take up the job.
Organizations are on the other hand taking up the advantage and leaning towards recruiting these desperate individuals to minimize costs of maintaining highly qualified workers. With the situation at hand, the recruitment process has, therefore, turned out to be tougher than it has ever been. As a result, many ethical issues come up. An understanding of business ethics is generally an issue that is still developing.
This paper aims at shading light on these ethical issues, with reference to a departmental manager job vacancy that was announced by a newspaper firm in Australia. It gives a brief overview of the job description for departmental manager position and the recruitment methods to be used and their relevance. The paper also goes further to discus the ethical and legal issues affecting recruitment, and incorporates the relevant theories associated with these issues.
Introduction
Workers are a fundamental component of every organization. These people are the primary machinery of the business and they are indispensible since they carry out the tasks necessary for the business or company. In recognition of the importance of the human factor in organizations, most companies have a Human Resource (HR) department which is charged with among other things hiring of new employees.
The labor force market today is mainly driven by unemployment. Compared to the situation in the past, it is relatively easier to find a willing worker for a given position today than it was in the past. Most employees today are, therefore likely to end up in wrong jobs contrasting with their qualifications and even interest.
This unfortunately translates into a disadvantage to the firms (Becker & Gerhart 1996). Even so, as much as countries suffer from high unemployment rates on one side, firms in the same countries suffer from lack of suitable candidates for work. This phenomenon is probably caused by the absence of fit between the qualifications possessed by possible workers and those needed by the firms.
With the situation at hand, the recruitment process has, therefore, turned out to be tougher than it has ever been. It is much easier for a recruitment process to result in a wrong employee because employees are mostly driven by desperation rather than passion to take up any job that comes their way (Schwartz 2010). E
thical issues, consequently arise from this complex situation. Firms are increasingly tempted to overlook the legal and ethical considerations for recruitment (Ryan 2006). In this paper I will analyze a vacant departmental manager position advertised by the leader newspaper organization. I will specify the various recruitment and selection strategies that can be used to obtain the best hire and discuss the ethical and legal implications of my selection choices.
Overview of departmental manager position: sales department
Department manager is an important position in meeting the profit goals of the organization. The managers oversee all the functions of a sales department. They implement strategies and oversee the departmental employees to increase productivity.
It is their responsibility to maintain and implement merchandise presentations, directing the daily activities in the store and reconciling averages or shortages to balance daily cash transactions. The departmental manager will conduct seminars and trainings to build skills and motivate their team members. He will perform continuous assessments on the productivity levels of employees and help them in achieving their sales goals.
He will be relied upon to come up with methods that will benefit their departments and business at large. They implement changes as initiated by the company and support business efforts. By training their staff on sales pitches and stress management techniques, they help organizations in maintaining quality customer service (Brannick & Levine 2002). This directly translates into higher sales in the organization and new business opportunities.
Recruitment methods
Person-based analysis
- Skills
Recruitment is the process of identifying the need in an organization to add an employee to fill a given role and announcing a vacancy position to the public or prospected candidate for the same. When recruiting for the above described position, I will post an advert in a daily public newspaper announcing the vacancy.
This will be to maximize the number of people who will have knowledge of the vacant position. Word of mouth within top rank managers in the organization will not be the primary form of communication for this position as it is the case in many organizations today (Warren 1999). The announcement will be open to the public and will not give preference to any group of individual on the basis of race gender, religion or color.
The advert used in this case is an open opportunity to all applicants, not specifying minimums in terms of education level or qualifications. It however specifies that the applicants should be enthusiastic, dynamic “people focused” leaders. Such open vacancy announcements encourage many applicants and do not hold the possibility of locking out talent.
The ethical and legal implication
As humans, our lives are guided by rules and standards which tell us how to act in given circumstances. In most cases, these norms are well established over many years and they are referred to as ethics. Chryssides and Kaler (1993) proceed to define ethics as a system of moral principles which assists in judging social conduct as “right” or “wrong” and this system is important for harmonious coexistence in the society.
The ethical implication of my choice of recruitment will be to offer an equal opportunity to all interested candidates. Family and political connections will not come before skill and competency as the key factors in this process of recruitment.
On the part of legal measures, it is illegal to give preference or discriminate against job applicants in terms of race, sex, religion, color, marital status, political stand, place of origin, and physical or mental disability during job postings (Guardiano 1994). Job requirements should be described in a way to give all potential applicants a chance to apply (Ryan 1995).
In addition to this, since Australia is a multicultural community which harbors some minority and disadvantaged groups I shall have to consider whether there are any affirmative action programs in place. Affirmative Action consists of a set of antidiscrimination measures put in place which are intended to ensure access to some positions by society members who would otherwise by under-represented or entirely excluded (Kellough 2006).
Selection Process
Selection follows recruitment and it involves choosing a suitable candidate from the submitted application forms to fill the post. Selection is geared towards matching people to specific jobs. This is considerably one of the most essential elements in successful people management of an organization.
After receiving a pool of applicants as an outcome of the job posting, I will base on several methods of analysis to select applicants who qualify for an interview. By looking at the many application letters that I will receive, I will first perform a person-based analysis for the departmental manager position, by looking at personnel skills and competency of the applicants (Milkovich & Newman 2010).
- Skill-based analysis
During the selection, I will require a minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree in business or a related discipline for this position. I will require that the successful applicants be well equipped with Information Technology skills to manage and plan business activities and records.
Training skills are essential to help the manager in recruiting, coaching and assessing employees, and it will be an added advantage to those applicants who will have stated these skills in their application letters. (Brannick & Levine 2002). The ethical implications of the skill-based analysis will be to give priority to the highly qualified applicants for the good of both the organization and the society.
During interviews, I will ask direct questions that offer an explanation on the job requirements and expectations. This will be to give the applicants a clear understanding of what will be expected from the position give me a chance to observe their immediate reaction, helping me to identify the best candidate for the job.
I will take care to avoid unlawful and discriminatory questions. Asking questions on prohibited grounds such as whether an unmarried applicant intends to get married or have children will only increase the possibility of locking out talents on uncertain grounds.
Such questions may also attract legal questioning of my company and increase the risk of facing legal confrontations. Basing interview questions on general assumptions, for instance, asking an applicant whether they have children to disqualify them from a job position that requires long working hours is discriminatory and ethically unacceptable.
- Competency analysis
For an organization to prosper, it is mandatory for the employees to provide high quality work. This is because the individual performance of the employees brings about organizational success. The increase in the performance and productivity of individual workers is a primary concern of the company and it is one of the ways that a business is able to counter increasing costs of running the business.
Solid authoritative personality and prior managerial experience demonstrated during the interview will help me qualify the applicants and eventually come up with a shorter lest of individuals capable of maintaining and improving company standards and implementing business strategies to help improve sales.
The successful applicants should demonstrate their awareness of the business competitors and industry development (Atchison, Belcher & Thomsen 2010). Recruiting personnel basing on competency is ethically approved for this position because, being a leadership position, competency is a key factor in commanding respect from the workers under him.
The successful applicant will need to have outstanding interpersonal, communication and customer service skills so as to enforce the provision of quality customer service (Ryan 2006). To get the best candidate for the position, I will further make calls to check the reference for the job applicants, who have convinced me during the interview, especially to their former employers
. I will ask questions concerning their reliability and punctuality at their previous work place. I will not base on discriminatory questions such as the number of sick leaves taken by an applicant at her former employer. This will be to keep my recruitment process ethically sound (Alexander & Buchholz 1998).
- Motivation Levels
Motivation is essential for people in all avenues of life since it brings about increased performance. Its importance is even more accentuated in the workplace setting where increased performance leads to the success of the organization (Chryssides & Kaler 1993).
As a process, motivation involves engaging a person such that they show desirable behavior or perform certain required action. A hire who is intrinsically motivated to perform desirable activity will be the most relevant for the post. I will therefore run background checks on the potential employee’s previous employers to inquire as to his/her level of motivation.
Theories in the recruitment and selection process
Three theories of recruitment have been involved, basing on three ways by which employees make the decision to join an organization. These are the objective factor theory, critical contact theory and subjective factor theory (Delery & Doty 1996).
(a) Objective Factor Theory
Under this theory, an organization recruits its employee from a pool of applicants basing on his education qualification and other special qualifications such as the length of experience. Delery and Doty (1996) reveal that on the other hand, the employee joins an organization basing on the location of the organization, pay package, nature of work and other opportunities such as educational and career growth opportunities.
(b) Subjective Factor Theory
Under this theory, the employer looks at the capability of the applicant in relation to the position in terms of personality and fitness. The employer also concentrates on the general competencies of the applicant such as communication skills and possession of a foreign language (Delery & Doty 1996).
An employee is, therefore, chosen with regard to the compatibility of the applicant in terms of individual personality, to the general image of the organization.
(c) Critical Factor Theory
Here, the recruitment process is geared towards discovering and filtering potential, not just for the anticipated vacancy in an organization, but to search for potential prospective employee. This is normally the case where the labor conditions in the country favors the employees, where there are plenty of vacancies and scarcity of qualified personnel (Delery & Doty 1996). In this case, the employer is interested in applicants’ potential, success level at projects handled and critical incidences in the applicant’s work experience.
Discussion and Conclusion
The cost of hiring new applicants is high and it is therefore in the best interest of the company to reduce turnover by selecting the most appropriate applicant for a position in the first instance. Human Resource managers are therefore looking for new and innovative ways to recruit and select workers today.
However, today’s environment is dynamic and HR managers have to face a wide range of complexities when hiring employees. Before selecting potential employees, a firm should undertake a recruitment process that is directed towards attracting a large pool of qualified applicants. Selection method should be aimed at identifying the best qualified candidate possible from the large pool of applicants. The ideal worker is one who is both competent and motivated.
An understanding of business ethics is generally an issue that is still developing. Recruitment process should always be based on legal and ethical standards to protect an organizations’ reputation as well as minimize the risk of legal confrontations. Job offers and postings as well as interview procedures and questions all need to observe the legal requirements.
In all the recruitment process steps, the prohibited grounds should always be kept in mind and all questions should be asked in to give all applicants a fair chance to respond basing on the job needs. Such practice and recruitment process culture will eliminate the risk of an organization being charged with discriminatory hiring practices. Good recruiting will also foster an organization’s positive reputation in terms of good business and ethical practice.
This makes the recruitment process easier for the organization. It should be noted that interviews are like advertising opportunities and all the interviewed candidates should leave wishing that they could work for the organization.
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