Recruitment Pumps for All: High-Profile

Recruitment

Pumps for All: High-Profile and Top Secret Water Movement Engineer Recruitment: A Case Study

In order to remain a leader of water movement technologies, Pumps for All must maintain the highest standards of excellence and innovation in the engineers it hires. Its newest project makes use of proprietary technology still in development that has the potential to revolutionize the water movement industry, meaning that a high level of secrecy must be also be maintained within the engineering tea currently at work on the project. The hiring of additional engineers to assist with the development of this technology, increasing the pace and the efficacy of the project, is an especially sensitive and high stakes matter for the company, and must be handled both with great care and with great urgency.

Overall Strategy

Above all else, the recruitment process used for the selection and hiring of additional engineers to be a part of the Pumps for All team and to assist in the development of new water movement technologies within the company must ensure that trustworthy long-term employees are put forth as candidates, eliminating as much as possible any fears regarding the leaking of sensitive information and technologies. The degree of sensitivity of the proprietary information involved in the project being as high as it is, failure in this regard could ultimately lead to utter failure for the project, and even for the company as whole, making employee trustworthiness a top priority in recruitment (Biscoux 2009).

For this reason, recruitment practices will need to refrain from a detailed job description or even acknowledgement of the nature and degree of importance attached to the project, so as not to attract any of the wrong type of applicant -- i.e. those who would be attracted to the position specifically for the proprietary nature of the project/technology (Bernhardt & Dvoracek 2009). At the same time, only the best possible candidates for the position should be considered, so the vetting process must contain a great deal of project- and technology-specific assessment (Bernhardt & Dvoracek 2009). Achieving this balance of secrecy and assessment of the specific knowledge and skill-set required for the position will be achieved through several rounds of interviews that become successively more project-specific in the direction and areas of questioning and more selective in its analysis of responses.

Attracting Applicants

At the present time, however, the pool of applicants for the positions must be greatly increased if the cream of the crop are to be found. Paying wage premia is, of course, one method of attracting applicants (and retaining current employees), but there are other methods proven effective for hiring in technology and engineering positions (Bernhardt & Dvoracek 2009). Low-information recruitment practices can actually positively boost application behavior, especially when product awareness is low but employer reputation is high (Collins 2007). The need for confidentiality and limited release of information during the recruitment process can actually serve to boost applications, as well.

Recruiting Sources

Three primary recruiting sources that should be considered are engineering schools, government agencies, and competing firms. The first of these is already a resource well-utilized by the company, and it should remain so during the current recruitment phase through the increased presence of the company through literature, job fairs, etc. Workers in government agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, could be contacted fairly openly with offers to transfer to the private sector, if and when able. There are definite ethical concerns with attempting to hire engineers from competing firms, but as long as no attempts to gain unfair advantage through theft of information or purposeful sabotage via the removal of a key engineer is avoided, confidential initial contact regarding the positions available would certainly be permissible recruitment activity.

Retention Strategies

Truly, offering wage premia is one of the most effective ways to retain current employees, especially in cases where proprietary knowledge is at stake (Bernhardt & Dvoracek 2009). Money cannot be the sole source of the problem with retention, however, nor can it be the only solution. Many of the employees leaving the company are those more recently recruited from engineering schools; it is very likely that the management system and personnel at the company are simply ineffective at dealing with a younger generation of engineers with certain expectations about their occupation (T + D 2008).

Increasing the importance and the profile of training and development for employees in all occupations and at all levels in the organization is likely to show a boost in retention levels, as will the development of clear job descriptions and expectations as well as individual development plans which all employees should have regular access to (T + D 2008). Managers especially should receive ongoing training regarding best practices for establishing a collaborative and human-resource-centered environment that encourages and acknowledges the contributions of individuals on a regular and meaningful basis. Money is an excellent attraction to a job, but the intrinsic benefits of work well-enjoyed, especially from the unfailing and openly expressed respect and confidence of one's peers and one's superiors, can be far more effective at retaining talent once attracted.

Selection Methods

The primary selection method that should be utilized in hiring candidates for the necessary positions, as noted above, will be the conducting of extensive interviews in increasingly more scrutinized rounds. This will determine a great deal about each candidates knowledge and skill level, as well as certain aspects of their personality, desires, and expectations in order to determine their fitness for the company. Psychological analysis is another selection method that should be employed, given the high-stress nature of some of the work and the long hours expected of the company's engineers. Ability to retain composure and ethical behavior under such conditions is best selected for via psychological analysis.

Ensuring that these selections methods were both valid and reliable would be relatively straightforward, if not precisely easy to carry out. In the case of the interview designs, engineers and management already involved on the projects for which additional engineers are sought would work in teams to develop the interviews, ensuring that all concerns for the position were covered at various stages in the interviewing process. Video review of interviews by the teams could also be taken into account during successive rounds of elimination. Psychological analysis could take place utilizing any number of established instruments, administered either by in-house HR personnel or outside specialists hired specifically for the purpose, which are readily available. This would also provide a greater degree of ethical and scientific certainty regarding the results.

Final Selection

The final group of candidates for the available positions should be placed to work with established teams at the company on a provision basis for a number of days, in order to determine the true level of their working knowledge and skills as well as their commitment to and integration with the overall engineering team. Each candidate could thus be judged on the merits of their job performance -- in all its facets -- specifically, rather than on the assumptions and conclusions drawn about them through the interviewing and analysis process. This would also ensure that those candidates who are more likely to stay with the company, as evidenced by the degree of fit they show with the management scheme and engineering team, would be hired.