The recruitment process is a key activity and a major responsibility for human resources departments. It is a delicate stage in that it involves identifying, in a relatively short space of time, a person’s current abilities and potential in terms of skills and behaviour. Yet this stage is crucial to a company’s success.
Recruitment will determine the quality of the company’s main ‘resource’.
Recruitment should be seen as an investment, not an expense, even if this investment does generate wage costs that are not as flexible as other costs.
The recruitment plan
At the beginning of the financial year, companies draw up a recruitment plan which takes into account the needs arising from the forward planning of jobs and staff (see the cases studied in the previous chapter).
The recruitment plan must be approved at the highest level of the company. The CFO is authorised to make recommendations on the amount of investment planned.
The decision to recruit an employee, and the final choice, are among the most important for a manager who has been delegated the responsibility. This is one of the reasons why such decisions are almost never taken without the advice of several operational managers and recruitment specialists, both internal and external.
The recruitment policy is one of the components of the general human resources policy1. The profile and personality of candidates must take account of the company’s culture and values.
The recruitment criteria for a company that aims for short-term results and does not attach importance to employee retention will not be the same as those for a company that considers recruitment to be a long-term investment.
Example: a candidate wants to take on responsibilities very quickly in order to gain experience and change function within the next two years. If the company considers that it is necessary to spread the training over two years with progressive delegation of responsibility, it is likely that the recruitment will be a failure for both the candidate and the company.
In addition, when recruiting large numbers of staff for the same activity, the age pyramid and staff turnover must be taken into account.
Example: when a new establishment is set up, only young staff in the same age bracket are recruited.
The risk is that, in the absence of departures in the course of a career, it will be necessary to wait for retirements before recruiting new skills (see chapter 3 on forward-looking workforce management).
The aim of recruitment is to find the best match between the person and the position to be filled. This means that those in charge of recruitment are familiar with the characteristics of the position and its detailed environment (organisation, culture, employment policy) as well as the skills previously acquired by the candidates.
With a few exceptions, the skills acquired are not always identical for the same function from one company to another.
The recruitment of a candidate must take into account the candidate’s future potential and the prospects for development of the position.
Recruitment must also enable candidates to make a choice, and therefore to be fully aware of the consequences of their commitment.
Preparing for recruitment
Recruitment requests come from line managers.
It must be consistent with the annual recruitment plan and changes in the workforce. As this is an investment, recruitment requests should be set out in a written document signed by the line manager and his/her direct superior, whatever the reason for the recruitment (whether or not a new position is included in the plan, or whether a replacement is required following a departure or transfer). To this end, companies use “recruitment request” forms which set out the specific conditions of recruitment.
Is the position being created or replaced, and if so, what are the reasons for the departure of the previous incumbent: resignation, transfer, promotion? Is a longer or shorter training period planned? Does the job description exist? Is it the same as that of the previous incumbent in the case of a replacement?
This formalism may seem restrictive to some managers, but it is sometimes surprising to find that some companies require far more formalism to order new office furniture than to authorise recruitment, even though the consequences of such a decision are of a completely different nature!
Once the application has been authorised, the applicant must be able to comment on the characteristics and environment of the post to be filled to the person recruiting.
The people involved in recruitment must have a certain amount of information at their disposal beforehand (although each of them does not necessarily have all of this information). The necessary information concerns :
1) The company in terms of activity, workforce, sales and results.
2) The job description, describing the job’s general activity and responsibility, details of the main activities, expressed in terms of outputs and responsibilities, and the job’s organisational environment.
3) The candidate’s profile, indicating the intellectual and interpersonal personality factors as well as the skills required (it should be noted that criteria relating to racial discrimination, religion and sex are to be avoided, bearing in mind that they are also prohibited by most employment legislation).
4) Conditions of employment relating to the components of total remuneration.
5) The physical working conditions, including the resources made available.
6) Potential for skills and career development.
7) Reception and integration conditions.
8) Internal recruitment policy.
9) The type of contract and the elements of the employment contract, including the place of work.
10) Geographical mobility requirements, distinguishing between mobility involving travel from a defined place of work and mobility requiring relocation.
