In todays highly competitive environment, the companies pay a special attention on the job advertisements they advertise to obtain a reasonably large amount of applications from highly competitive, well-educated and experienced candidates which provides the company with a competitive advantage. Therefore, the methods and strategies hold an immense importance while designing the recruitment process.
It also enables the organization to receive professional advices from media and then designing and copywriting accordingly about the recruitment process so that their advertisements stand out in the relevant publication and build an employment brand in the market. Therefore many researchers have shown their concerns and interests in this approach. Some of their major findings and suggestions are reviewed below. The main purpose of Advertisements in the recruitment procedure is to locate and attract large number of applicants and to build an improved the image of the company.
INTRODUCTION:
The term recruitment is defined as “ The process of finding and hiring the best-qualified candidate (from within or outside of an organization) for a job opening, in a timely and cost effective manner”. The recruitment process includes analyzing the requirements of a job, attracting employees to that job, screening and selecting applicants, hiring, and integrating the new employees to the organization ( Business Dictionary, 2013).
Rynes (1995, as cited in Russo, Rietveld, Nijkamp and Gorter , 1995) defines it as “ Recruitment encompasses all organizational practices and decisions that affect either the number, or types, of individuals who are willing to apply for, or to accept, a given vacancy”.
Whereas advertisement is demarcated as “ The public communication about causes, goods and services, ideas, organizations, people, and places, through means such as direct mail, telephone, print, radio, television, and internet”. An integral part of marketing, advertisements are public notices which are designed with the purpose to inform and motivate (Business Dictionary, 2013). Recruitment advertising, as a whole, includes all aspects of communication which are used by an organization to attract the talent to work within it (LinkedIn, 2013).
MOVING FROM TDADITIONAL TO COMPETANCE BASED APPROACH:
Farnham and Stevens (2000) analyzed and reviewed the prevailing practices of recruitment and also carried out an internal research investigation which comprised of personnel’s, managers and training specialists. They found out the restrictions and limitations of the prevailing recruitment and selection practices and recognized the need to move from the subjective to effective methods of recruitment and selection at all levels of the organization. So they reached to this decision that there is a need to move to the competence based approach. Along with this, they also acknowledged the role of training and relationship-building between managers and personnel specialists. In the end, they concluded that the new system works well for the organizations as it has increased their efficiency, performance and workplace conflicts.
PORTAYING FITTING VALUES IN JOB ADVERTISEMENTS:
A good advertisement plays a vital role in attracting and capturing the interests of a huge number of skillful candidates so when an ad is being composed for publication, it should contain the entire essential requirements which the candidate wishes to find in it.
Spence (1973, as cited in Cooman and Pepermans, 2012 ) presented “ The signaling theory” which explains different aspects of recruitment and selection processes to the job applicants about what the environment of the organization would be.
Along with the layout feature of the advertisement, its content also holds an immense importance in order to generate initial interest from the potential job applicants (Gatewood et al., 1993 as cited in Cooman and Pepermans, 2012 ).
Another important feature of job advertisement is that it should express the matter of the content in un ambiguous terms which could explain the reader that hoe an organization wants itself to be perceived by him rather than providing its objective description only (Erez et al., 2001 as cited in Cooman and Pepermans, 2012, ).
Mathews and Redman (1994) are of the view that recruitment advertisements are communicated to the target sample by mass media communication which not only states the job requirements but also serves as a medium for the transmission of the organizations message. It should contain a wide range of relevant information about the job including the major aspects of professionalism.
INSTRUMENTS USED:
Kene Henkens, Chantal Remery and Joop Schipper (2005) examined various recruitment techniques and then they traced all those down to basic three strategies. The first strategy is labeled as the “ active and informal recruitment” which aims at inducting vigorous and familiar new employees. The second one is called “ recruiting via the internet” which aims at finding active and dynamic employees via internet and the last one is characterized by “ formal recruitment” which searches the staff by outsourcing to recruitment agencies, placing advertisements in newspapers and magazines and posting ads on internet.
INCREASING DIVERSITY:
The chief goal of many organizations is to maximize its work place diversity which can give it a competitive advantage. The introduction of THE EMPLOYMENT EQUALITY REGULATION 2003 made it illegal to discriminate employees on the basis of sexual orientation, religion and beliefs. In the article, Jeremy tipper (2004) has presented a practical and logical four step procedure which would enable the organizations to increase their diversity through recruitment processes. It starts with the “ Market research” by utilizing all internal resources to identify the talent available in order to effectively recruit them then it moves at “ Building the business case” with the purpose to hire skillful mangers who could win the hearts of those on which it would have an impact by sound advertisements. Next is the effective utilization of the “ Variety of communication channels” to target your audience and last one is to “ Reward the diversity recruits” which has successfully increased the diversity of the organization.
MAJOR TRENDS IN RECRUITMENT ADVERTISEMENT:
According to Tom Redman and Brian P. Mathews (1995), recruitment advertising plays a significant role in the hiring of employees on job. For this purpose, they analyzed ten years changes in it along with the variations in the market for personnel jobs and their nature. The results obtained revealed that currently, public sector is more noticeable in recruitment, HRM is emerging as a definite occupation, experience requirements are becoming more specific and the Institute of Personnel Management (IPM) qualifications are more in demand. Although, there has been an immense improvement in job advertisements but still there in an ample scope for improvement.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISEMENT VARIABLES AND APPLICANTS RESPONCES:
Kaplan, Aamodt and Wilk (1991) investigated the effect of job advertisement variables on applicant’s response rate. For this purpose they examined three hundred and fifty companies and found out that advertisements which include different variables to enhance its physical features like border, space etc. shows a positive response in terms of job applicant’s pool.
IR-RELEVANT FEATURES IN JOB ADVERTISEMENT:
There are some attributes in job advertisements which are totally not required in it so it is very important to examine the content of the recruitment advertisement to avoid the publication of unnecessary details.
The attribute which according to Mathew and Redman (1996) is pointless in incorporating it in job advertisement is the use of personnel characters. He examined many advertisements for this purpose, and found out that out of 88 different characteristics the social skills specifically related to communication hold the most importance. After all his researches and surveys, he concluded that although the advertisers follow stereotypes when linking the advertisement, they do not make decent use of personal characteristics.
Fowler (1990, as cited in Mathew and Redman, 1996 ) quotes that :
“ Many advertisements specify qualities such as “ enthusiasm”, or “ drive”. Together with
describing jobs as “ challenging”, these words have become advertising clichés, and do
Little to inform or attract applicants.”
GOVERNMENT POLICY REGARDING RECRUITMENT:
The government policy aims to follow the best practices and high standards of recruitment and selection procedures in order to attract suitable applicants to the City and to create an ethical foundation on which consistent recruiting and selection decisions are made while considering appropriate legislative requirements. The principles, values and the recommendations of the
Guidelines on Equal Opportunities and Family Friendly Policies are recognized by this policy
Alahad Group (Pvt) Ltd. Pakistan’s #1 Manpower Recruitment Group the leaders in providing manpower recruitment services for professionals in Pakistan & Gulf. Our distinguished clientele represents a wide spectrum of industries like manufacturing, construction, engineering, telecommunication, petrochemical, banking, information technology, trading and distribution, shipping and aviation, travel and leisure, health, accounting and auditing, financial services, transportation, call centers, business process outsourcing etc. . One of the best Recruitment Agencies in Pakistan | Recruitment Agencies in Nepal provides opportunities to develop a fulfilling career where employees are recognized and rewarded for quality work, dedication and creativity at all levels of the organization. Employees can expect a dynamic, supportive and openly communicative environment accommodating new levels of innovation, technology and forward-thinking solutions.
BLOGS SHOWING ITS IMPORTANCE:
Job advertisements form an important part of the recruitment process. Cummins uses various means to communicate job vacancies including:
newspapers (local and national) – typical costs £3-10k
recruitment consultants (they have expertise in recruitment and will search their databases as well as maybe advertising jobs) – typical costs 20% of successful candidate’s salary
Job Centres
the World Wide Web.
Each advert emphasises the knowledge, skills and experience individuals require within each post: these are the competences associated with the post. Position profiles identify the critical technical and non-technical competencies required for each job. These feature within the advert and shape the questions that candidates face at interview
Using the web helps Cummins to advertise across the world and reach candidates that are more diverse as well as enabling the company to advertise quickly whenever vacancies arise. Cummins’ websites include: www. eujobs. cummins. com
Cummins also uses external web portals, from which people can apply directly. As they do this they can learn more about the company and traffic can be monitored
WRITERS SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT:
Pia A. K. Heilmann, (2010) carried out a qualitative case study research and the method used was group interview executed from an organizations perspective, He recommended the usage of web for recruitment, offering competitive compensations, creating flexible time arrangements, providing challenging and exciting tasks and offering trainings.
The recruitment and selection method is concerned with identifying, attracting and choosing suitable individuals to meet an organization’s human resource requirements and when planning for employment requirements, then it is necessary to forecast personnel needs, the supply of inside candidates, and the supply of outside candidates (Dessler, 2002).
Gomez-Mejia et al.,( 2001) presented a wide variety of approaches to increase the labor supply available to an organization which includes include training and retraining existing workers, grooming current employees to take unoccupied positions, promoting from within and recruiting new employees from outside the firm, hiring temporary
Laborers sand paying overtime to existing staffs.
CONCLUSION:
From the above discussion, it is concluded that in this competitive era advertising has now become more important than before in order to attract a large number of skillful and well-qualified job candidates. This provides the individuals with a clear picture of the working of the organization and its environment. They need to address this matter with the right recruitment channels and the right procedures to achieve the desired results. For this purpose, they must have a skillful staff which could design the recruitment strategies and methods along with its creative advertisements. However, even now it is not given immense importance which it requires which the organizations should understand for their own benefit.
Its importance can be seen from this quotation:
“ Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does
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