Introduction
Since the 1960s, personnel selection process has become a center of focus by organizations across the world; the main objective of the process is to get the best human capital from the labor market (Henderson, 2003).
Organizations need human resources with vast experience qualifications, talent, and personalities; to develop an orchestrate team, human resources management team need to develop an effective personnel selection procedure. The strategy adopted should guarantee organization good results qualitatively and quantitatively.
Personnel selection is a strategic tool used by personnel managers to search for quality employees who can assist an organization attain its corporate goals, fulfill its mission, vision, and corporate objectives.
Personnel selection process is part of the larger human resources practice, it follows some steps for its effectiveness (Kleiman, 2000).This paper discusses the process of personnel selection using 3Ws and H (why, what, when, and how) strategy of human resources management.
Why select
At an ideal situation, organizations should have the right number of human resources, with wide experience in the area they are engaged in alongside having good interpersonal skills.
Personnel selection is inclined to asking who should be given the available job opportunity given the available number of applicants, qualified and sometimes-experienced people. in modern days, where people have been educated in different areas, it is easy to find a job application filled with a hundreds of qualifies people; the work of the human selection team is to determine the mechanism of choosing the right candidate from the pool of applicants.
Despite the qualified people seeking the post, an organization is limited since it can only have only one or a few of the applicants, the dilemma that faces the human resources management is to seek to realize who has an upper hand among the qualified applicants.
The main aim of the process is to get the best out of the options available; its is an expensive process thus fine result will be of benefit to the organization (Smith & Mazin, 2004).
What methods to use when selecting
Different organizations have different human resources management policies; however all the policies aims at offering the best for their organization, personnel selection involves the efforts made by an organization to methodology to collect information about an individual in order to determine the best employee among the many.
The employees to be recruited in an organization are determined by the needs that an organization have at a particular point in time.
The need varies in experience, education level, gender age, talents among others, during the recruitment process, an organization should be clear on the kind of employee they want, at any one point, and they should ensure the employee has the right characters and factors to lead an organization to the next higher level.
When looking undertaking a background check on an employee it is important for the human resources management to ensure that their policies do not contract any international or national labor laws.
An effective personnel selection method should show some connection and relationship between selection procedure itself and the job for which the individuals are being selected; depending with the task, the process varies; for example some tasks require the human resources to concentrate on abstract knowledge and power of an individual while others are more inclined to people skills.
Some of the most common methods of personnel selection are interviews, work samples and work samples assessment (Kleiman, 2000).
How to select
Three main aspects solely determine the selection approach that a company adopts, the task the person to be selection will undertake, the organizations policy and labor laws. When selecting human resources departments should respects the right of employees, either domestic or international rights; human rights demand that there should be no discrimination on bases or race, color, nationality, disability or gender.
Human resources recruitment should be planned effectively, after planning and need for an employment recruitment process the first step is to advertise for posts.
Advertising may be internal or to the external market; emphasis should be placed on the qualification and the experience that a potential employee should have. When advertising the role that a successful candidate will play if deployed should be well given; minimum qualifications are given in the advert and duration for application
There are some methods that have been used to select people, however organizations are at liberty to develop the way they think can fit them better, the following are the main methods:
Interviews
After receiving the application for a post advertised, the human resources department has the role of conducting interviews. There are different ways that interviews can be conducted depending with the organizational culture.
The main goal of interviewing process is for the management to get a chance to interact with the employee and after some leading questions, they can know what kind of an applicant they are having for selection. Some of the things learnt at this stage include achievements the applicant has had, his drives and ambitions as well as how he represents him/herself.
Personality testing
In the recruitment process, testing the capabilities of a potential employee is important; this is done by psychometric and skill testing. They test the inner self of an individual like attitude, personality and intelligence among others.
When the human resource department understands the kind of a person they are recruiting, they are able to blend their teams to attain harmony and creativity in the teams. Different personalities can perform different tasks thus understanding what fits best for an employee is important. These tests include aptitude tests, personality test and problem solving tests.
Biographical Data and Cognitive Ability Tests
Selection process has can conduct some tests that determines the socialization that an applicant has had as well as his psychological power; the tests are a guide to the human resources management with the aim of selecting the most capable employee among the pool available.
The stage has focus on the hidden talents that an employee has and should be equated with the needs that an organization wants. For example, there are people who have had successful leadership throughout their careers; an organization looking for a leader may be inclined to consider such a person (Henderson, 2003).
Physical Ability Tests and Work Samples
Although it is against labor laws to discriminate employees on their physical abilities, the laws recognize that some function cannot be done but people suffering some disabilities. This test give management a chance to evaluate the capability of the employee, again the approach is dictated by the task likely to be undertaken.
Some organizations require to get samples of previously completed works by the applicants; this assists them to gauge the capability of the employee, on the other hand, an employee may be given a task to accomplish and the results gauged against the expectations of the organization (Bandt & Haines, 2002).
When to select
Personnel selection is part of the larger human resource management process; after an organization has decided to recruit, the selection team should develop the parameters they will use to select people depending with the needs of the post on offer. (Kleiman, 2000). After advertising and receiving of applications, personnel selection starts from short listing of the applications.
Short listing generally aims at reducing the application to a manageable level and disqualifying those people who are obviously not qualified.
In this process the team looks into academic qualification, age, experience among others; the main weighing parameter is the advert requirements ; for example if the advert had called for people under the age of thirty, anybody above that age is disqualified at the short listing stage (Renckly & Renckly, 2003).
After short listing and contacting the successful candidates, the next step is to concentrate on special attributes of the candidate. depending with an organization, there may be a number of stages; personnel selection is involved in every stage where they aim to have the best candidates for the next stage until the final candidate/s is established (Anthony, Kalmar and Perrewé, 2002).
Conclusion
Personnel selection is a methodical process through which personnel managers establish the right candidate for the job on offer; the process starts with applications short-listing and ends when the right candidate has been chosen. Getting the right employee for the right job increases motivation and efficiency in the organization.
References
Anthony, W. P., Kalmar, K. M. & Perrewé, P. L. (2002). Human Resource Management, A Strategic Approach. South-Western:Thomson Learning.
Bandt, A. & Haines, S.(2002). Successful Strategic Human Resource Planning. San-Diego: Systems Thinking Press.
Henderson, R.(2003). Compensation Management in a Knowledge-Based World. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kleiman, S.(2000).Human Resource Management: A Tool for Competitive Advantage. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing.
Renckly, B. & Renckly, R.(2003). Human Resources. New York: Barron’s Educational Series
Smith, S. & Mazin, R.(2004). The HR answer book: an indispensable guide for managers and human resources professionals. New York: Amacom Div American Mgmt Assn.