Outback steakhouse is a restaurant in the United States and deals basically in casual dining. This restaurant has ventured in various markets such as Asia, Australia and Europe. Due to its capacity as restaurant dealing with numerous customers Outback steakhouse come up with various selection methods of its employees. The most used technique by Outback in the selection of its employees is employee referral. This is a recruitment process where organizations cross check potential candidates for employment within their existing and current social networks (Stewart & Brown, 2008). This process helps the employees within the company to select and choose suitable employment from their preferred friends and social networks. If an employee is satisfied with the choice of a skilled and qualified candidate he or she is given a referral bonus. This type of recruitment is cost effective and efficient, since it can be done on employment of all sizes and in all industries. This process is essential to Outback steakhouse because the best candidates are selected through this process thus enabling the company to stay ahead of competition. The process is also of benefit to the restaurant since it reduces expenditure in the recruitment process (Stewart & Brown, 2008).
Outback also considers recruitment consultancies for the selection of its candidates. Consultancies normally have links with candidates who are passive and active and that makes them easier for them to locate these potential employees.Recruitment consultancies handle all the selection procedures on behalf of the company thus making it cost effective in terms of time consumption. Therefore, this means that the consultancy company does role profiling, response management, probationary management and candidate selection (Stewart & Brown, 2008).This method of selecting candidates through consultancy normally give Ouback a competitive advantage because the choice of the employees is the best thus bringing a positive input to the company.
Job advertisements are other forms of recruiting and selecting candidates for employment where candidates are supposed to fill application forms either online or through news papers and other advertisement agencies. Although this process of filling application forms is rather cumbersome but it works well for Ouback. Job advertisements are good because they give candidates various options in the choice of the job they want to apply for, thus giving the company an easy time in the selection process (Stewart & Brown, 2008). Job advertisements also reach a bigger coverage of potential candidates as a result they give the company a variety of options in the selection of the best candidates. This is also a method which has worked well for outback for the past few years since its inception in business.
Importance of fit to Outback Steakhouse
Fit creates direct relationship and contact between the potential candidate and the employee who has referred the candidate. This type of relationship helps the candidate to have a feel of the company and also assists the candidate to understand more about the company (Stewart & Brown, 2008). Candidates usually make appropriate decision because they are able to analyze the chances of success in that particular company. Outback steakhouse restaurant has been successful in the recruitment and selection process of candidates due to the use of fit. Through this process outback is able to remove unskilled and candidates of low quality at no cost by any means hence ensuring a consistent recruitment process which results to employment of high quality candidates. Furthermore candidates who are recruited through this process are able to cope with other employees easily compared to others who have been selected in different methods (Stewart & Brown, 2008). Due to the matching of the expectations between the employer and the candidate, the candidate is able to easily fit to the culture of outback as a company and other departments within the company. According to Stewart & Brown (2008) fit creates commitment of workforce by employees and also increases staff retention thus reducing the company’s staff recruitments in the future.
Outback’s selection process and their validity
Outback uses archaic and traditional methods in selecting of its candidates for employment such processes include completion of application forms, then a candidate completes tests and finally they participate in interviews (Stewart & Brown, 2008). These processes are time consuming and they usually make many applicants to panic thereby making some of them fail in interviews: this might be a cost to the company because in the process skilled and high quality candidates are lost, even though these procedures are valid they may not be the best (Stewart & Brown, 2008). Such a recruitment process may be a disadvantage to some candidates due to favors and discrimination of others. These processes require additional staff by the company since every process has to be supervised thus making some of the work in the company to stop or be delayed in order to attend to these procedures. Outback should consider reviewing these selection procedures in order to remain relevant in the dining industry if not they will end up employing low quality stuff due to rogue traditional methods.
Reference
Stewart, G., & Brown, K. (2008). BUS530: Human resource management (1st Ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.