Challenges in staffing and best approaches for effective recruitment

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 20-October-2014

1.      Introduction

For every organization, the staffing process is a difficult issue because it is not about recruiting new staffs, it is more about recruiting staffs that can deliver designated tasks. As such, care should be taken with the recruitment process in order to ensure that competent candidates are offered equal chance of recruitment while the most reliable takes the job. Once the recruitment process is complete, companies are also faced with the issue of retaining competent workforce and this has been linked to increased competitive advantage for companies that can successfully retain their workforce talents (Holbeche, 2004). In the wake of such understanding, this research is aimed at assessing and discussing staffing challenges with special reference to personnel selection practices, as well as providing best approaches to successful recruitment.

2.      Challenges in staffing, especially with regards to personnel selection practices

As noted by Holbeche (2004), companies do face a number of recruitment challenges but the biggest of them are:

Finding the right staffs – the first challenge starts with finding the right staff which involve letting potential applicants know that there is an open position, as well as ensuring that the applicants informed possess required skills.

Attracting – once the awareness has been created, the second challenge is convincing these applicants to apply for such jobs by letting them known what the company will offer in terms of benefits they will get after employment.

Retention – probably the biggest challenge of staffing, retention of staffs has been linked to increased competitive advantage (Holbeche, 2004) because when companies has competent staffs, they will be able to maintain sustainability in production and profitability by meeting customers’ demands. However, retaining staffs is very difficult because individual differences can bring about differences in staffs’ demand, expectations and decision to stay with the company.

3.      The best approaches to successful recruitment

There are different approaches that a company can use for recruitment and whether or not it is described as “best” by the company depends on the level of success that such company enjoyed with that particular approach. They include:

Advertisement – this involves advertising for open positions in the company and allowing potential applicants to submit their CV directly to the company.

Recruitment agency – outsourcing recruitment process is not new and this case involves giving out open positions in the company for recruitment agencies to source for potential candidates that can fill such position. The disadvantage of this when compared with advert is because the recruitment standards might be lower than company’s own standard.

Special events – companies can also conduct events such as job fares for applicants to participate and recruit directly from such events.

Internship – internship is one of the best approaches to recruitment because it involves putting the applicant into test in order to better understand his or her competence level with designated task before making the final decision of recruiting such applicant

Executives search firms – this is similar with outsourcing via recruitment agency, but it involves searching for potential applicants through database of executives.

Professional associations – companies can recruit directly through professional association by going through the CVs of their members or seeking recommendations for best staffs to fill open positions in the company.

Internet recruitment – this is probably the fastest growing recruitment method in the modern day labour force, and it involves a company placing advert for open positions online and interested applicants submitting their CVs either online directly or walking into the company to make such submissions.

4.      Conclusion

From the above discussion, it has been made known that they are numerous issues when it comes to staff, but the most significant are finding the right staff, attracting the right staff, and retaining competent staffs. Additionally, numerous approaches can be used to make such success, but the decision to use any approach depends on the company’s view on that approach and their projected success from making use of it. Thus, it can be concluded that all the approaches discussed are effective, but effectiveness depends on how companies adopt it.

5.      Reference

Holbeche, L. (2004). Aligning Human Resources and Business Strategy. Burlingto: Butterworth Heinemann