Employment Planning & Recruiting

Employment Planning (EP)

• The process of determining an organization’s

human resources needs. By such planning an
organization ensures that it has the right
number and kinds of people, at the right place,
and at the right time. It ultimately translates the
organization’s overall goals into the number and
types of workers needed to meet the goals.
 EP involves three
things

• Forecasting demand for Personnel

• Supply of inside candidates
• Supply of outside candidates
 Forecasting Personnel Needs
It is based on the following factors:
• Mission of the organization
• Strategic Goals and Objectives:
- Forecast of personnel requirements
• Projected turnover
• Quality and skills of employees in relation
to what is required if the needs of the
organization changes.
• Technological and other changes
resulting in increased productivity.
Methods to predict employment needs

• Trend Analysis: Study of a firm’s past

employment needs over a period of
years to predict future needs. It may be
for the whole organization or for each
subgroup like sales, administration etc.
However, it provides a simple
estimation and ignores many other
factors like sales growth, productivity
etc.
 Methods to predict employment needs

• Ratio Analysis: A forecasting technique for

determining future staff needs by using ratios
between some causal factors (like sales
volume) and the number of employees
required, (for instance, number of salespeople.)
Methods to predict employment needs

• The Scatter Plot: A graphical method

used to help identify the relationship
between two variables, such as a
measure of business activity and your
firm’s staffing levels. For example,
Number of students and requirement of
teachers.
The Scatter Plot
Size of Hospital Number of
(Number of Beds) Registered Nurses
200 240
300 260
400 470
500 500
600 620
700 660
800 820
900 860
Determining the Relationship Between
Hospital Size and Number of Nurses

Figure 5–3
Methods to predict employment needs

• Using computer to forecast Personnel

requirements: determination of future staff
needs by projecting sales, volume of
production, and personnel required to maintain
this volume of output, using software packages.
The software generates a what-if scenario of
personnel requirements at different level of
business activity.
• Managerial Judgment: Forecast of personnel
needs on the basis of managerial judgment
depending upon factors like change in
productivity, change in market conditions, etc.
 Forecasting the supply of Inside
Candidates

• Qualifications inventory: Manual or

computerized records listing
employees’ education, career, and
development interests, languages,
special skills and so on, to be used in
selecting inside candidates for
promotion.
 Forecasting the supply of Inside
Candidates
• Personnel replacement Chart: Company
records showing present performance
and promotability of inside candidates
for the most important positions.

• Position replacement Card: A card

prepared for each position in a company
to show possible replacement
candidates and their qualifications.
 Management
Replacement Chart
Showing Development
Needs of Future
Divisional Vice
President
Figure 5–4
 Forecasting the supply of Inside
Candidates
• Computerized Information System: A computer
database of employees with information from wide
variety of areas related to employee and
employment. It usually includes:
• Work experience
• Product knowledge
• Industry experience
• Formal education
• Training Course
• Foreign language Skills
• Relocation limitations
• Career Interests
• Performance Appraisals
• Skills: Type, level etc.
 Forecasting the supply of
Outside Candidates

Employers may adopt the following sources:

• Publication of Bureau of Statistics, GOB

• Universities and other Technical Education
Institutes.
• Publication of Professional Associations
• Publications of employment agencies etc.
 Matching demand and supply of
employees

The matching may lead to two outcomes:

• Supply exceeds demand: it leads to
decruitment

• Demand exceeds supply: it leads to recruitment

Matching demand and supply of
employees
 Decruiting

• When any oversupply of employment observed,

HRM must undertake some difficult steps to
severe some of its people from the organization-
this process is referred to decruitment or
downsizing.

Throughout the 1990s, for example, IBM cut its

staff by 122,000 workers, and 83,000 employees
were let go at AT&T.
 Why this trend of
downsizing?
• To increase their flexibility to better
respond to change.

• TQM and work process engineering

result in flatter structures and
redesigning work that, in turn, result in
reduced number of employees.
 Effective Recruiting
• The effectiveness of recruiting lies initially with
the number of applicant generated by the
recruitment process.
• The more applicants you have the more
selective you can be in your hiring.
• Recruitment is a more complex activity than
most managers think it is.
• The recruitment effort should make sense in
terms of the company’s strategic plans. It
should take care of its timing, method and
importance of non-recruitment issues.
 Measuring recruitment effectiveness

• Few organizations attempt to evaluate the

outcome of their recruitment efforts. Two
points to consider:
• What to measure?
• How to measure?
 Recruiting Yield Pyramid

• Recruiting yield pyramid

• The historical arithmetic relationships between
recruitment leads and invitees, invitees and
interviews, interviews and offers made, and offers
Figure 5–6

made and offers accepted.

 Internal Sources of candidates

Benefits:
• The employer knows better about the strengths
and weaknesses of the existing employees.
• They are more likely to be more committed
• Morale of the employees may rise because
promotions will be considered as rewards.
• Required less orientation and training.
• Less costly than going outside to recruit.
Internal Sources of candidates
Costs:
• Employees who will not get the job may
become dissatisfied. (So transparency is
required about the selection procedure).
• Sometimes all the internal candidates have to
be interviewed which may be sheer wastage
of time.
• The group may not be as satisfied when their
boss is appointed from within their own ranks.
• There may be a tendency to maintain status
quo.
 Finding Internal Candidates

• Job posting: Publicizing an open job to employees

(often literally posting it on bulletin boards) and
listing its attributes, like qualifications, supervisor,
working schedule, pay rate etc. However, the
organizations usually don’t post supervisory jobs.
• Personnel records: Information in the personnel
records may reveal the potentiality of existing
employees.
• Skills banks: Some companies develop a skill
bank that list current employees with specific
skills.
 Finding Internal
Candidates
• Succession planning
• The process of ensuring a suitable supply
of successors for current and future senior
or key jobs.
• Succession planning steps:
• Identifying and analyzing key jobs.
• Creating and assessing candidates.
• Selecting those who will fill the key
positions.
 Rehiring employees

• Is it good or bad?
• Advantages:
• They are known quantities.
• They know the firm and its culture.
• Disadvantages:
• They may have less-than positive attitudes.
• Rehiring may sent the wrong message to
current employees about how to get ahead.
Outside Sources of Candidates

• Advertising
• Employee referrals
• Employment Agencies
• Schools, Colleges and Universities
• Professional organizations
• Unsolicited Applicants
• Cyberspace/Internet recruiting
• Headhunting
• Internship
 Choosing the Right Method
The following factors are the most relevant:
• The type of job being filled
• How quickly the job needs to be filled
• The geographic region of recruitment
• The cost of implementing the recruitment
method
• The effectiveness of the source in yielding
viable candidates
 Advertising
The employers should address two issues related to
ad: the advertising media and the ad’s
construction.
• The media: It depends on the positions for which
we are recruiting. The varieties of media may
include:
• Job posting at the factory gate
• Ad in the local newspaper
• Ad in the national newspaper
• Ad in the international magazines
• Ad in the professional journals
• Ad in the internet
 Advertising
Construction of the Ad: follow the AIDA (Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action) principle.
• Attention: by using heavy margin, background,
caption etc.
• Interest: crate interest about the job with some
interesting features like changing nature, location,
salary package etc.
• Desire: mention the required qualifications and
skills required.
• Action: call for call or write.

Be creative in preparing the Ad.

 Advertising
It is better to take care of the following points:
• Introduce the Company
• Describe the job
• Describe the qualification required
• Mention any pertinent information about the job
that an applicant should know about.
• Describe the benefits
• Mention the Address of contact.
• Check for the correctness
 Advertising
• Blind–box Ad: An advertisement in
which there is no identification of he
advertising organization.
 Employee
referrals
Benefits:
• The candidates are likely to be more capable.
Because otherwise he/she will be accused.
• The candidates will get a better and realistic
picture about the job. It will increase job
survival.
• It is considered a very useful means for hard-to-
fill positions. Even some companies announce
reward for referring an employee for such
positions.
 Employee
referrals
Disadvantages:
• Sometimes it may be backed by the existing
employee’s personal interest.
• May lead to nepotism.
• May minimize the opportunity for diversification
in the workplace.

Employee referrals, however, considered to

have universal application i.e. may be used for
all types of jobs.
 Employment
Agencies
Services provided:
• Job posting facility for the employers
• Access to the database by the employers
• CV posting facilities for the candidates
• Conducting screening for the employers
• Providing training on how to prepare CV,
face interview etc.
• Facilitate employer in preparing job
advertisements etc.
 Employment Agencies
• Reasons for using a private employment agency:
• When a firm doesn’t have an HR department and is not
geared to doing recruiting and screening.
• The firm has found it difficult in the past to generate a pool
of qualified applicants.
• The firm must fill a particular opening quickly.
• The firm wants to reach currently employed individuals,
who might feel more comfortable dealing with agencies
than with competing companies.
• The firm wants to cut down on the time it’s devoting to
recruiting.
 Employment
Agencies
• Avoiding problems with employment agencies:
• Give the agency an accurate and complete job description.
• Make sure tests, application blanks, and interviews are part
of the agency’s selection process.
• Periodically review data on candidates accepted or rejected
by your firm, and by the agency. Check on the effectiveness
and fairness of the agency’s screening process.
• Screen the agency. Check with other managers or HR
people to find out which agencies have been the most
effective at filling the sorts of positions needed to be filled.
Schools, Colleges and Universities

• The employers may contact the

management of the institutions or the
placement center (if there is any) for
sending resumes or the candidates to
their organizations. They also may visit
campuses and make spot recruitment.
 Professional organizations

• Many professional Organizations like,

Nurse’s Association, MBA Association,
labor unions etc. operate placement
services for their members.
 Unsolicited Applicants
• Unsolicited applications, whether they
reach the employer by post, e-mail,
telephone, or in person, constitute a
source of prospective applicants
 Cyberspace/Internet recruiting

Benefits:
• It is rather a very cheap means of advertisement.
• The information about the candidates may be
collected quickly and uniformly.
It provides more information about the company itself
to the candidates.

The candidates are now also using Internet to “sell”

themselves by having their own websites and
encouraging the employers to visit their WebPages
(also called websumes).
 Headhunting
• Used for the midlevel and top level
executives. Usually based on informal
contacts.
 Internship
• Many organizations recruit their full
time employees through internship
placement.
 Recruitment Alternatives

• Temporary help services/ Contingency

personnel
• Employee Leasing
• Independent Contractors
 Temporary help services/
Contingency personnel
• Temporary employees are particularly valuable in
meeting short-term fluctuations in HRM needs. Now
they are used for a wide range of services like, office
administration, nurses, computer programmers,
accountants, librarians, secretaries and even CEOs.
The older workers who have already retired or have
been displaced by rightsizing in many companies or
left the public sector jobs under the golden handshake
program may constitute a good source of temporary
workforce.
Advantages of Contingency Personnel

• Provides management with the flexibility to

control fixed employee costs
• Relieves a company of many of its HRM
burdens
• Cost savings
• Contingency workers who excel at their jobs
can be offered core positions
 Disadvantages of Contingency
Personnel
• Contingency personnel may need a
considerable amount of orientation and training
regarding company procedures and policies
• This raises questions of the cost
effectiveness of this approach
• Contingency workers might be less loyal or
committed to the “host organization”
• Contingency workers may receive better wages
than core workers, leading to resentment
among employees
 Types of Situations to Use Contingency
Personnel

• Certain types of hard-to-find expertise are

required
• Companies are trying to staff new offices in
geographic areas far from main
headquarters
• Companies want to keep headcount down
• Companies are trying to staff positions to
work on high risk projects
 Employee Leasing
• Leased employees are hired by one firm
and sent to work in another for a
specific duration of time. When an
organization has a need for specific
employee skills, it contracts with the
leasing firm to provide a certain number
of trained employees.
 Employee Leasing
Benefits:
• Usually the employees are professional and are
well trained
• Less costly for the beneficiary organization
because they will pay only a flat fee, not the
social security payments, severance pay etc.
• The beneficiary companies can meet the
seasonal increase in job demand with less cost
and hassle.
• Individuals also enjoy flexibility in their jobs.
Independent
Contractors
The companies may contract out some
of their jobs to individuals who are
expert in those areas and want to work
from their home.