Human Resource Management

Topic Question 1

Discuss how a strategic approach to recruitment and selection can help an organization to gain competitive advantage. Use an organization which you are familiar to illustrate your argument.

Introduction

A successful employment plan will help an organization to identify their human resource needs. To execute the plan, organizations need to focus on recruiting and selecting the right people for the job (Decenzo & Robbins 2002). In this new global competitive age, organizations are facing greater difficulties in hiring finding the right time to hire the right people for the right positions (French 1994)

According to Seward and Dein (2005), the process of recruitment and selection is to help meet the needs of both the organisation and the potential employees. Hence, when going through the process of recruitment, organizations should be able to identify and recruit potential employees who have talent and is able to help the organization in order to gain competitive advantage. This essay serves to elaborate on the theatrical approach of the recruitment and selection activity and how it is utilized by the organization that is being illustrated.

Further on, this essay will also aim to examine the other human resource activities such as reward management and training and development which are linked to helping the organization to stay competitive in their respective industry. The Starbucks Corporation will be used as my illustration to the argument of how recruitment, selection and other HR activities will help an organization to gain competitive advantage.

Recruitment

Recruitment involves the process of attracting people to apply for a job position by creating a good image of the organization, hiring the most suitable applicants, and successfully introducing the new employees to the organization's policies and practices (Compton, Morrissey & Nankervis 2002).

Large organizations usually perform their own recruiting. To be successful in recruiting and attracting a pool of applicants, the public image of the organization must be perceived as positive. It works both ways; both the applicants and organization has to sell themselves to each other. If the corporate image of the organization is perceived as good, the recruitment effects are greatly enhanced. Most people would prefer to work with a company which has a reputation for being a good employer (Seward & Dein 2002). As an example, Starbucks has been placed 98th in this year's Fortune Magazine top 100 employers (CNN 2011). Starbucks caring approach to their employees has endeared the company to their employees making it a company that applicants might choose over other similar companies.

There are several ways to conduct recruitments. The traditional walk-in-interviews, recruitment drives, and even internet recruitment are common ways recruitment is conducted nowadays.

Walk-in-Interviews

When an organization has a good reputation and image for being a good place to work, it will attract walk-in applicants that are qualified to apply for a job. These unsolicited applicants usually have a good impression of the firm and are often proved to be valuable employees (Mondy, Noe & Premeauz 1996). Large proportion of Starbucks retail employees are hired through the walk-ins (Evans & Hansen 2010). With so many outlets around the world, a large proportion of Starbucks retail employees are hired through this method.

Recruitment drives

This is a method of recruitment that is used to attach a large proportion of applicants to apply for a job and come for interviews (Mondy, Noe & Premeauz 1996). Mostly used when expanding the company and requiring a larger workforce, this type of recruitment normally nets the most employees. Advertising and making use of Job Fairs are the most common ways of going for recruitment drives. Starbucks conducts Job Fairs by sending their experienced store managers down to the ground to make initial contact with potential employees to show what working at Starbucks is like and to let future employees know and understand the company better (Gretchen 2005).

Internet Recruitment

Recent years has brought about technology as an important tool in how recruitment is being conducted. An example would be internet recruitment.

In today's context, companies want to make use of the internet as a platform to do recruitment by including a recruitment section in their website which also allows the organization to display their updated product, services, corporate philosophy, and mission statements that allows potential applicants to find out more about the company and job positions available (Decenzo & Robbins 2002). Companies also makes use of online job searching portals such as Jobstreet and JobsDB and new and upcoming, the social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to reach out and advertise their companies to a larger crowd of people (ERE Media 2011).

Within Starbuck's own website, there are job descriptions with accompanying testimonials of staff working for Starbucks. They also let employees to post things like stories, photos on their Facebook page and going as to providing a web application for applicants to apply for a job within the social networking website. The web application itself is built such that users are able to explore the different jobs and be linked directly to the Starbucks job website to apply for the job (Dave 2011).

Internal recruiting

Internal recruiting is what organization should consider identifying the best seek candidates from the organization. When organizations recruit current employees for the appealing jobs vacancy, it helps them to enhance their engagement and commitment. As a result, they would feel appreciated that the firm gave them advancement opportunities and in return they would be loyal (Boxall et al 2007).

Selection

Recruitment is the process of getting people to apply for jobs but selection is the process to identify and hire the most competent individual for your organizational needs. It is the process of picking from a pool of promising applicants to fit the particular position within the organization (Mondy, Noe and Premeaux 1996).

There are several ways that an organization can select their potential candidates their potential candidates for the available job. The first line of selection is to filter out candidates that are promising. The next part is conducted through interviews.

Starbucks