Recruitment Methods

In the era of competition for attracting talent, the ‘recruitment’ function has been viewed as a critical function. It acts as a channel of discovering potential candidates and attracting them to fill up the existing vacancies (Breaugh 2013; Chang and Chin 2018). Recruiters use various recruitment methods (RMs) such as job advertisement (JA), online portals (job and web portals), word-of-mouth, social media, etc. for attracting suitable applicants. Research witnessed that recruiters’ intention to use these methods depends on several pre-hire and post-hire outcomes such as the number of applications, quality of applicants, speed of filling up the vacancy, post-joining job performance, absenteeism, commitment and satisfaction of the applicants (Fisher et al. 2014; Wei et al. 2016). Above mentioned factors directly imply when recruiting a person to a company.

According to Wilson & Hawks (2022), it mentions two main recruitment scenarios.

1. Internal recruitment 
2. External recruitment

               (Das 2020)

Internal recruitment is different from external recruitment in that the employee filling the vacant position in the company is sourced internally from existing company departments instead of getting a completely new employee who has not been working for the company. In internal recruitment, the vacant position is identified, and the company employees are notified by the human resource department so that interested and qualified individuals can apply for the vacant position (Wilson & Hawks 2022).

The internal recruitment plan of any organization refers to the decision of the organization to seek employees from within the organization and let the employee from within the organization get consideration for a vacant post. However, this strategy is applicable to only those employees who are already on the payroll of the organization. This seems to be a viable option and is an important source as it provides the employees with growth opportunities and personal development (Falk 2013). There are multiple aspects of the organization using internal consideration as the option. The first one is the promotion which gives an upgrade to the employee in terms of job role, responsibilities, remuneration, facilities and statutes. Any employee already on the payroll of the organization receiving this upgrade will be more willing to contribute more towards the growth of the organization. This is one important aspect that most organizations have followed this phenomenon on quite regular basis and have always used promotions as a chance to increase employee motivation (Krawczyk 2011).

Most of the prominent sources of external recruitment involve advertisements, employment consultants and agencies, educational institutes and e-recruitment to name a few. Each of these methods has its own perks and benefits that each organization can reap as per their need. Advertisement is one of the oldest methods used by organizations for external recruitment and using multiple mediums, firms advertise vacant positions in order to create a sufficient talent pool of applicants Research has proved that ads trigger response quite rapidly and instantly. Though, it can be a costly affair but helps in gathering data in abundance and majorly quality applications.  However, recruiters must have to take follow-ups and need to ensure that discriminatory words are being avoided (Breaugh 2012).

Internal recruitment

Advantages	Disadvantages
Reduced Time to Hire	May Stagnate the Company’s Culture
Shortens the Induction Process	Increased Training Costs
Cost-effective	Limited Choices
Improved Employee Morale	May Lead to Workplace Hostility

(Barcelos 2019)

External recruitment

Advantages	Disadvantages
Increased Conversion Rate	Higher Risk
Better Quality Candidates	Greater Cost
Attracts New Skills and Inputs	Time Consuming
Brings New Business Insights and Ideas to the Table	Possibility of Maladjustment

(Barcelos 2019)

For example, the company I work for, usually recruits through internal recruitment. When employees who already know the system is being promoted or appointed to other departments, it is so easy to communicate workflow among people since they already know each other. On the other hand, it makes some tasks difficult to process without certain skill sets. 

List of References

1.      Barcelos, K. (2019) Internal vs External Recruitment: Weighing the Pros and Cons  

2.      Breaugh, J. A. (2012). Employee recruitment: Current knowledge and suggestions for future research. In Schmitt, N. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of personnel assessment and selection: 68-87. New York: Oxford University Press.                                                                                                         

3.      Breaugh, J.A. (2013), “Employee recruitment”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 64, pp. 389-416.

4.      Chang, E. and Chin, H. (2018), “Signalling or experiencing: commitment HRM effects on recruitment and employees’ online ratings”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 84, pp. 175-185.   

5.      Das, N. (2020) Difference between Internal and External Sources of Recruitment

6.      Falk, A. M. (2013). Do lab experiments misrepresent social preferences? The case of self-selected student samples. Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(4), 839–852.           

7.      Fisher, R., McPhail, R., You, E. and Ash, M. (2014), “Using social media to recruit global supply chain managers”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 44 Nos 8/9, pp. 635-645.      

8.      Krawczyk, M. (2011). What brings subjects to the lab? Experimental Economics, 14(4), 482–489.      

9.      ‌Wilson, S. and Hawks, D. (2022) Internal Recruitment | Advantages & Disadvantages. Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/internal-recruitment-definition-methods-process.html (Accessed: November 27, 2022)