Recruitment

The term recruitment refers to a set of organizational activities and practices that are intended to attract new hires to an organization. The goal of recruitment is to generate applicants who are qualified for employment, who will accept employment offers, and who will ultimately succeed on the job. Recruitment is an important complement to employee selection. Recruitment generates a pool of applicants from which organizations can select new employees and influences the likelihood that the most desirable candidates will accept the organization's offer of employment.

Effective recruitment is essential to organizational success. In recent years, scholarly research and the business press have documented the importance of human capital to organizational performance; recruitment is the process by which human capital is drawn to the organization. Indeed, the search for qualified employees is frequently referred to as a war for talent, a phrase that clearly conveys the importance of recruitment. Recent research suggests that recruitment can have significant impact on applicant quality, which, in turn, can lead to significant productivity advantages for the hiring organization.

Recruitment has important implications for individual job seekers as well. The hiring process is a two-way street: Employers attempt to attract qualified employees, and individuals attempt to find satisfying work. Ideally, recruitment leads individuals to make job choices that meet their personal needs.

Recruitment is a process that unfolds over time. It comprises three phases. First, the organization must generate applicants. It must identify a pool of potential employees and persuade a reasonable number of individuals in that pool to apply for work in the organization. Second, it must maintain applicant interest as the candidates proceed through the organization's (sometimes lengthy) screening processes. Finally, the organization must persuade the most desirable applicants to accept job offers.

Recruitment outcomes also unfold over time. In the short run, organizations might assess what are known as prehire outcomes, such as the quantity, quality, and diversity of applicants or the length of time required to fill a position. In the longer term, organizations might assess long-term or posthire outcomes, such as the performance and longevity (retention) of the recruits. Similarly, individual job seekers initially might attend [Page 667]to whether or how quickly they obtained employment; later, they might focus on how satisfying the employment is.