Importance of Recruitment in Fulfilling Organizational Needs
Question:
Discuss about the Changing Face of Recruitment in Australia.
In every business organization the significance of manpower planning is increasing due to high labor flexibility. Recruitment is the process of selecting right person at the right time in the right place (Tyson, 2014). It is the first and vital step of the procurement function for human resource planning in an organization. Recruitment helps in fulfilling the organizational needs by having a set of motivated, competitive, adoptable and more flexible human resource. This ensures fulfillment of organization’s objective through continued operation and further constitutes core competency. Recruitment serves the organization by providing a pool of perspective candidates for the business organization so that right candidates can be selected from the job pool. The main objective of the recruitment process is to attain adequate number of employees with required skills and proper quality to help the business to achieve its goal (Wilton, 2016). Recruitment helps in establishing a link between the employers and the job seekers. In Australia, well-articulated and positive employer brand, mobile-first approach and excellent candidate experience is emerging as the top trends in recruitment.
In the current scenario, recruitment is a crucial activity for an organization due to the rise in global competitiveness. Acquiring the best candidate for the required role can prove to be a competitive advantage for the organization. Whereas, ineffective and improper recruitment can lead to enormous disruption, interpersonal difficulties, reduced productivity, interruptions to operations, long term costs and customer services (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). For the last few decades, different organizations of all sizes are now focused on increasing their employer brand. Recently, Australian talent acquisition teams are now operating the work very closely with their cross- functional teams to provide the best branding possible. The recruiters in Australia are now not only thinking about recruiting employees with skilled knowledge and talent but also retaining the talents once hired. Internal hiring within the organization may not be an immediate priority but is integral part of the organization recruitment strategy.
A good recruitment policy is based on certain principles such as the respect for diversity and equal treatment for all in the organization. Ethical decision making and procedural fairness increase the chances of securing the best individual in the organization (Bamberger, Biron & Meshoulam, 2014). Job description is a vital part of the recruitment process. It involves the primary tasks besides the core competencies required for performing the role. The hiring managers in Australia are now using pre-determined criteria at every stages of the recruitment process thus, reducing the risks of discrimination or biasness. In the screening stage only, the selection criteria for the job are determined before being displayed in the job description and advertisement. The potential candidates are evaluated based on such criteria only. Through equal opportunity legislation and privacy the recruitment process currently is conducted in a transparent and fair manner (Wilton, 2016). Privacy law requires that the application of the candidates should be treated confidentially.
Nowadays, the recruiters in Australia are using performance metric to measure the outcome for their hiring strategy. Majority of organization are now using long-term indicators like employee retention to ascertain the quality of hire. The social network is gaining huge prominence in recruiting and hiring talents. Organization like McDonalds have now started recruiting young people through the mobile application snap chat also called snaplication (YouTube., 2017). In the increasing market competitiveness, McDonalds have targeted the youth audience and the young individuals are using this as an opportunity to get hired in jus few seconds by sharing their resume. The talent acquisition team now considers the social networks, media or application as the latest trend to build closer relationship between the talented candidates and employers searching for exciting and interesting job opportunities.
Latest Trends and Techniques in Recruitment Process in Australia
Internal recruitment is still a serious issue in Australia, as the organization would strive to develop various range of formal procedures and have to take a close glance at opportunities and lateral movement that it may bring forward while the internal recruitment process (Breaugh, 2017). Hiring employees that will lead to boost the organization’s employer branding and further improves the hiring processes through the benefits from valuable improvements. Having a well-defined and efficient recruitment strategy is the key element for the success of an organization. It should be ensured that the organization have necessary knowledge, attributes and skills to meet the future as well as current operational requirements.
As the technology and economy of the country is rapidly increasing so is the trends for acquisition of manpower planning in an organization is getting more identified and planned. The biggest trend that the companies are making is by recruiting contingent workers. The companies in Australia are now choosing to “rent” talented individuals rather than hiring (Purce, 2014). Skill requirements are now becoming more stringent and broader. Organizations like, Deloitte are using design thinking approach to solve complex problems through candidate journey mapping that is used in the recruitment phase (Beardwell & Thompson, 2014). The organizations are now more often buying talents instead of developing it. The new recruiting technologies is laying more emphasis on HR analytics and data the employers are now upgrading the recruitment technology to become more competitive and efficient to measure their quality of hire. In organizations like Deloitte, recruiters are now turning to latest software that allows the auto screening of candidates by conducting an analysis on job description to identify the potential biased language.
Nowadays, workplace diversity is gaining more attention in all the sectors of the economy. In Australia, diversity in workplace has been made mandate for all the industrial sectors. According to a Glassdoor survey, majority of passive and active job seekers thinks diversity is a crucial factor that is to be considered while selecting companies and job offers (Tyson, 2014). Recent advances like resume screening technology have been made for talent rediscovery. If the economic condition of Australia continues to increase then the competition for talent is eventually going to become tougher. Mobile recruiting is also one of the game-changing recruitment trends in Australia. The recruiters are demanding mobile functionality and other recruiting technologies from their ATS. There are various opportunities in the form of applicant tracking and recruiting system that makes the job recruitment easier in recent times. McDonald’s snaplication is the latest hiring approach used by the organization to target the young individuals using its media strategies (YouTube., 2017).
The biggest challenges faced by the organizations in Australia are balancing speed of hiring with the quality of hire as the recruitment of best quality individuals takes time. The recruiters are generally facing new challenges with the limited talent pool as the top level talents are generally hired within few days. The social media used for screening and hiring process is cheap, quick and useful approach to learn about the potential candidates and would further speed up the hiring process (Reiche, Mendenhal & Stahl, 2016). Although there are certain legal compliances that may arise while using the social media for the hiring process. There are various challenges that an organization may face due to the latest trends of the hiring process. Employees are now more easily changing jobs due to the increased hiring techniques used by the rival organization. Retaining the skilled and talented employees is becoming a major threat for the organization. There has been a huge shift in the present job market more towards the exciting job opportunities (Storey, 2014). Due to the increased competition there is a huge war for talents in the recruitment industry. The job seekers nowadays tend to trust more the company’s employees instead of the internal stakeholders.
Moreover, the technologies used by the companies for competing with the rival companies are always evolving and staying up to date with the latest evolving technologies is becoming a huge challenge for the organization. Each types of software used in the organization have its own specific learning curve, which becomes quite difficult for the management to get acquainted with various technological tools (Aswathappa, 2013). If proper technology is not used by the organization, it becomes quite difficult to hire the right individuals. As the economy condition gains speed, the power starts to shift from the employers towards the job seekers. This is gradually increasing the difficulties of the recruiters to appeal and retain the most talented employees within the organization. Furthermore social media also plays a crucial role in uplifting or degrading the organization image by making comments about the organization’s work environment public information. Lack of resources and limited budget in reality is also a biggest threat for the recruiters in the organization.
Thus, the recruitment and human resource industry in Australia is now experiencing a steady growth phase. The employers are investing more in attracting the top talents and retaining them in their organization against the backdrop of a tightening labor market and continued growth in the job listings. Furthermore, business organizations are now realizing the importance of retaining culturally-aligned talents and having recruitment teams in-house. The face of recruitment is gradually changing in Australia and major emphasis is given on employer branding. The balance of power would continue to shift in near future from the employers to the potential candidates. The candidates would be more empowered in seeking new opportunities and negotiating terms. Whereas, from technological perspectives online questionnaires, like CV screening will gain more popularity. Job applications are increasingly received and delivered through instant messaging and smart phones rather than emailing. The candidates may gain more experience by engaging them through social media channels like snapchat and instagram.
References:
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Aswathappa, K. (2013). Human resource management: Text and cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Bamberger, P. A., Biron, M., & Meshoulam, I. (2014). Human resource strategy: Formulation, implementation, and impact. Routledge.
Beardwell, J., & Thompson, A. (2014). Human resource management: a contemporary approach. Pearson Education.
Breaugh, J. A. (2017). To Recruitment. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Recruitment, Selection and Employee Retention, 12.
Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R., & Kynighou, A. (2016). Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.
Purce, J. (2014). The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.
Reiche, B. S., Mendenhall, M. E., & Stahl, G. K. (Eds.). (2016). Readings and cases in international human resource management. Taylor & Francis.
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Tyson, S. (2014). Essentials of human resource management. Routledge.
Wilton, N. (2016). An introduction to human resource management. Sage.
YouTube. (2017). McDonald’s innovative hiring process | #Snaplications. YouTube. Retrieved 19 December 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abW_OSmDraA