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The Hiring Process: How to Recruit Qualified Employees

A fast-growing company usually recognizes urgent needs for new staff, thus it will create new positions to be filled by qualified applicants.     The hiring process starts from recruitment which is the procedure of “generating a pool of qualified candidates for a particular job” (Gómez-Mejía, Balkin, & Cardy, 2012, p. 170).  The company should form a hiring team which may include mangers, HR staff, and I/O psychologists, and the team must announce availability of the new positions to the market and attract qualified candidates to apply.

After résumés have been received, they should be screened by the hiring team to assess eligibility of applicants.   Job descriptions and other data from the job analysis can be used to evaluate applicants’ qualifications.  Only the most qualified applicants are selected for the interview.  The hiring team should plan and structure the interview process in advance to make it successful.  The interview process should be structured to incorporate an oral exam of subject matter and ability test.  Interview questions should cover all dimensions of the job.  Before interview, the interviewers should reach agreement on requirements of competencies for the position.  The hiring team should focus on “the KSAOCs that interviews can assess most effectively, such as interpersonal or oral communication skills and job knowledge” (Pynes, 2009, p. 197).

Optionally, a standard assessment test may be given to job applicants for pre-hire screening.  Depending on the position’s functionality, the assessment could be a job knowledge test, cognitive ability test, mechanical ability test, motor and sensory ability test, aptitude test, achievement test, integrity test, or personality test (Ajila & Okafor, 2012).  Because new positions in a rapid-growth company may require higher level of abilities in communications, learning, and adaption to change, assessments by job knowledge test, cognitive ability test, and personality test are recommended.   According to Hegebarth (2012), commonly used assessment tests “are validated by organizational psychologists and other experts, and are purported to be excellent predictors of on-the-job performance” (p. 31).  Hegebarth (2012) also recommended an approach of hiring optimization which is a human capital management method to assist corporations in analysis of the relationship between pre-hire evaluation and observed operational performance.  The hiring optimization method can help a company choose the right testing tools to predict future performance.

In the final selection process, the hiring team must decide which candidates are best fits for the jobs.  Using the data of job analysis as the baseline, the hiring team should determine what characteristics are required for effective job performance thus they can use these characteristics to evaluate candidates’ status.  A metric scoring system should be developed to help the decision makers to quantitatively measure each candidate’s qualification.  Depending on candidates’ ranks and scores they earned in interviews and tests, the hiring team will use a pre-defined cut score to finalize the selection for job offer.

References

Gómez-Mejía, L. R., Balkin, D. B., & Cardy, R. L. (2012). Managing human resources (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Hegebarth, K. (2012). Hiring optimization: Measuring the effectiveness of hiring tools on operational performance. Employment Relations Today (Wiley), 39(1), 31-36. doi:10.1002/ert.21352

Pynes, J. E.  (2009). Human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations: A strategic approach (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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