Recruitment and Selection Methods

McDonald's

Topic Recruitment and selection

McDonalds:

Recruitment and selection methodology for a Business Systems Analyst position

Many companies today use their corporate website to recruit administrative and executive staff. This technique has the advantage of self-selecting prospective candidates who have a specific interest in the company, rather than general job-searchers. However, retail companies like McDonald's tend to attract consumers to their website, rather than prospective applicants. This is why these companies may sometimes have difficulty using their corporate websites to recruit candidates. On one hand, using a general job search board will increase the volume of candidates, and perhaps attract candidates who are good at their jobs and have outstanding qualifications, but might not specifically be interested in the restaurant industry. On the other hand, it can attract such a wide candidate base, it is difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Specificity in requirements is essential, to narrow down the number of candidates, regardless of the medium that is used. If automated keyword searching of resumes is deployed, this is particularly important, so the keywords selected are meaningful.

Despite its use of the McDonald's website to advertise, one of the problems of a classified advertisement for the McDonald's corporation entitled "Business Systems Analyst" is that the specified requirements are extremely vague. 5 to 10 years of relevant business experience is demanded of all applicants, but what constitutes 'relevant' experience is left up to the individual applicant to decide. The specific requirements are extremely general, such as possessing a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Accounting, or Finance, and having "outstanding analytical, problem solving, and organizational skills" and "excellent communication skills," which could apply to many candidates. Of more relevance in the job description is the emphasis on people skills and working with non-technical laypersons. However, it is uncertain as to whether this is enough to limit the pool of candidates, given that few individuals would admit to not liking to work with people. In other words, applicants must self-screen to a great degree, to see if they are suitable candidates. This can be problematic, given that McDonald's may still be inundated by applicants with extremely varied backgrounds. Although all candidates will have some interest in McDonald's, since they gravitated to the McDonald's website, candidates without relevant IT experience may apply.