¶ … Human Resource Recruitment Human Resources Planning

Recruitment

Organization's strength is based on the quality of its employees an aspect that places high relevance to the human resource departments and the practices used (Ume, 2008). MSCG concerns in consultancy targets to, direct clients towards adopting the best practices in their recruitment process. This will guarantee recruitment of ideal candidates, professionalism in HR practices, employee and talent retention and productivity in optimal deployment of the workforce (Loosemore, 2003).

Staffing Methods

One of the main activities of human resource management is staffing. Staffing is important because it provides a supply of individuals needed to fill the jobs within an organization necessary to achieve business objectives. Once HR professionals have done job analysis a job description can be prepared. This job description is used when recruiting individuals. Online, ground recruiting, talent search from fresh graduates, employee pouching, use of profession agents and temporary placements count among the methods used in staffing (Richter & Henning, 2010).

Online and Ground Recruiting

Internet recruiting is one of the methods by which HR professionals have available. This method of recruiting has several advantages over traditional methods but also has several disadvantages. Companies first began using the Internet as a recruiting tool by posting available jobs on a bulletin board. Using this method, prospective applicants could search for positions in which they were interested and contact employers directly. Usually this contact was made via telephone, fax, or mail (Loosemore, 2003). As the use of email became more common some companies accepted applications through email. Due to the detonative use of the Internet some companies developed corporate websites by which prospects could apply online by completing a web form. "There are more than 160 million Internet users in the U.S. And 1.2 billion world (Fey, Morgulis-Yakushev, Hyeon Jeong, & Bjorkman, 2009).

Online recruitment methods have advanced to incorporate social media recruiting to help employer attract more candidates to their open positions. The future of online recruiting is not just in sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but in more specialized social networking sites and websites for a specific industry or profession. A recent survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity shows that about sixty-five percent of business professionals are connecting with each other and with employers on the social networking sites. There are millions of people on social media sites and more companies are using social media to target candidates (Yakubovich & Lup, 2006).

The on ground recruiting methods suffers a bigger blow against online recruiting owing to its cost implication in terms of money and time. The convenience observed in online recruitment far outweighs the aspects related to ground recruitment. Majority of American employers are switching to online recruitment since it has a bigger outreach. The use of online recruitment is also ideal for a software development company since it allows for more information to be shared relating to the job and candidate (Harrison, 1986).

Among other ground recruitment measures is the use of Scouting. Scouting means sending the representation of the organizations to various sources of recruitment with a view to persuading or stimulating the candidates to apply for jobs. The representatives provide information about the company and exchange information and ideas and clarify the doubts of the candidates. This method of recruitment opens avenues to collect more information from the likely candidate and also convince them to create interest on job offering. The method is less cost effective given the need to brand a particular job offering using sales agents. It is ideal for a software development company since it increases the potential of targeting an ideal candidate judging from their work (Belcourt, 2006).

Fresh graduate and employee pouching

Buying talent" (rather than developing it) is the latest mantra being followed by the organizations today. Poaching means employing a competent and experienced person already working with another reputed company in the same or different industry; the organization might be a competitor in the industry. A company can attract talent from another firm by offering attractive pay packages and other terms and conditions, better than the current employer of the candidate. But it is seen as an unethical practice and not openly talked about. Indian software sector is facing the most severe brunt of poaching today. It has become a challenge for human resource managers to face and tackle poaching, as it weakens the competitive strength of the firm (Yakubovich & Lup, 2006).

Campus recruiting is becoming more competitive. Winning companies will have a strong product offering...

Along with on-campus recruiting tools, such as career fairs and interviews, employers can also work experimental education programs into their college recruitment efforts. These include internships and co-op programs. Employers have long since rated these as some of the most effective college recruitment methods.
Campus recruitment can be costly. Costs are largely dependent upon how many students a company needs to hire. Companies should evaluate whether the cost-per-hire is economical. If a company is spending up to two-thirds of its recruitment budget on students they do not hire, the recruitment program should be re-evaluated.

According to a recent NACE survey, the average overall budget for campus relations and recruiting was $386,634. The same survey showed that the average cost-per-hire was $5,417. Cost-per-hire figures ranged from $87 to $43,000. Costs can vary immensely from one company to another, because there is no universal formula being used by all employers.

Cost effective recruitment and selection strategies

The human resource role plays a very important role in an organization. Human resources are by far the most important asset that an organization can have if it chooses the appropriate persons. In the course of a company's existence, its employees keep changing. Based on the employee turnover rate, the human resource manager will engage in staffing functions from time to time. The effectiveness and efficiency of the hiring process has an impact on the level of employee turnover. When the hiring policies are inadequate, the company incurs huge cost in terms of wasted time and money as new trainees are recruited, selected and trained for the job. As such, an inadequate recruitment and hiring policy leads to wasted resources (Belcourt, 2006). To reduce such waste, it is important for a company to develop a hiring policy that is cost effective. As Rioux and Bernthal notes, the effectiveness of a hiring strategy determines the ability of a company to recruit and retain qualified employees (Belcourt, 2006).

Each and every company desires to achieve better results always. This can only be achieved by having the required manpower to accomplish upcoming and scheduled organizational mission. Employee resourcing ensures that a company has appropriate skilled people. The aim of resourcing strategy is to ensure that the organization identifies its employees need both now and in the future, and tries to connect them through internal and external recruitment s as well as employee development (loosemore, Dainty and Lingard 2003).

Employee resourcing is categorized under human resource planning capacity. With effective management, employee resourcing can help the company to achieve organizational freedom by ensuring access to full range of skills that can be utilized for longer term strategic planning and rapid response to upcoming problems and arising opportunities. Employee resourcing can improve can help to achieve job satisfaction, employee development and career management system (Yakubovich & Lup, 2006). Employee resourcing is concerned with many activities an element from recruitment and selection. It is concerned with many areas that unsure an institution meets its needs for specific necessary skills and behaviours.

The success of an organization is highly dependent on the quality of the workforce. To obtain the most qualified employees, organizations have recently adopted a recruitment and selection strategy that is useful, cost effective and easy to align with the overall organizational strategy. This strategy is employee outsourcing (Fey et al., 2009). This entails contracting the services of an appropriate recruitment and selection company to provide these services to the company as it concentrates on other areas of the company's operations, for a small company like ours, cutting cost is important if the firm is to remain in the highly volatile software developing business. Thus the outsourcing strategy is the most cost effective strategy for optimal hiring (Fey et al., 2009).

Other than leaving the company's human resource function with enough time to handle other HR functions, the firm offering these outsourcing services is an experienced organization that has devoted it is time to this task entirely. Thus, the chances of making a misjudgment in finding an employee for the given position are very small. Moreover, the competition that is prevalent in this new yet thriving business has ensured that the cost of acquiring these services is very reasonable and affordable. However, this strategy cannot be effective if the firm does not give maximum support to the service provider. This strategy calls for the active participation of the HR department in a number of areas (Richter & Henning, 2010).

The role of such a strategy is to enhance an organization's ability to hire…