Business Recruitment & Selection

Business Recruitment & Selection

I. Introduction

These days, what people dream about are being companies' CEOs whether they are small companies or big ones not to mention multinational companies like MCI WorldCom, Coca Cola, and Hewlett-Packard to name a few. The reason is so clear that a CEO will get many benefits including interesting compensation packages and the power to stir the company into one they envision.

Dean and Mary Tjosvold in their book titled Psychology for Leaders: Using Motivation, Conflict, and Power to Manage More Effectively point out that "Top management sets policies; managers make decisions and solve problems; and employees do their assigned tasks" (1995).

Based on the above statements, it is obvious that top managements are responsible to create a healthy working environment including remuneration their employees deserve. While a CEO is widely known to have huge compensation packages, it certainly takes more than just money to attract and retain skilful professionals or employees to run the company's fortune. Therefore, it is helpful to offer them competitive compensation packages as well.

Employees who feel they are underpaid will also feel they are undervalued and are more open to potential offers from outside firms. Compensation has a significant effect on how employees feel about their jobs, so ensure that it remains attractive over time and keep up with the market. Offering fair and competitive compensation will help us reduce turnover and the costs associated with it.

Concerning the human resources management, in this paper, we would like to evaluate the recruitment and selection process at Tesco, a well-known supermarket in United Kingdom. In general, there are three aspects concerning the recruitment process at Tesco: Effectiveness and efficiencies of planning process, recruitment procedure and recommendations for improved selection, and main recruitment legislation.

II. Recruitment and Selection at Tesco

2.1 Tesco's Planning of Recruitment and Selection

As a big supermarket in United Kingdom, no wonder if Tesco needs employees that match the company's current and future needs. For this reason, Tesco designs a programme named Job Guarantee Programme aims at recruiting appropriate employees for the benefits of employers and employees.

Fiona Walton, Chris Hill, and Mike Campbell in their article Tesco Job Guarantee Programme: an Assessment, say that the Job Guarantee Programme clearly has potential benefits in a variety of areas. To make it happen, Tesco conducts proper planning stages of their recruitment and selection process including:

* Partnership discussions

* Launching of promotional programme by a public relations company

In my opinion, the planning stages of recruitment and selection employees play significant part in determining the success of the recruitment itself. However, the two stages described above are not sufficient since the planning stages should deal with criteria, targeted applicant, costs, method of recruitment and many other considerations.

In today globally competitive marketplace and a continuing shortage of skilled workers, companies have two major challenges regarding their employees. First, they are to obtain the best people to strengthen their whole business lines from sales to customer service and marketing to finance department. However, it costs companies a few dollars since such people demands higher wages than they get from current employers.

Second, once companies obtain the best people they can hire, the challenge shifts to how to retain them. One way to obtain and retain the best workers and employees is through conducting pre-employment testing that suggest the whole picture of fledgling workers of companies.

Currently, employers test for quantifiable skills (such as computer skills) and personal qualities (such as honesty or emotional intelligence). Dina Berta says that "matching personalities and jobs has helped lower management turnover dramatically at 65-unit Eateries Inc. over the past two years.

In addition, Jennifer Kraszewski, the company's human resources director justifies that by conducting a testing the company enables to be more selective. Therefore, pre-employment testing becomes a tool to determine whether someone will be a good fit for the organization. This is important to minimize employee turnover while getting the best new employees.

Figure 1 Four Steps of Selection Process

Source: Hauenstein, Patrick. "Using Technology to Get the Best Employees." Advantage Hiring. 2000. Retrieved April 21, 2005 from <http://www.advantagehiring.com/newsletter/0600/n0600_hau1_dist.htm

All this steps described above are in planning stages. In addition, concerning the recruitment and selection process, Patrick Hauenstein says that, in general, there are four steps in conducting selection process as shown in the Figure 1.

2.2 Recruitment Procedures at Tesco

The programme was implemented in Seacroft under several stages as following:

* The first stage is assessment interview by (East Leeds Family Learning Center) ELFLC with potential job seekers in order to examine and determine kind of support to reach the standard required by Tesco

* At the same time Tesco hold a series of open days in which potential applicants are able to take particular applications forms that do not ask about skills and experience, but just personal details and the work preferences

* The third stage is that participants choose between pre training that takes up to 16 weeks of basic skills or just interview training

* The fourth stage is interview with members of Tesco's Human Resources department. There are two procedures in this stage: Tesco's normal 'Select the Best' process and a 'First Impressions' interview (Table 1). Each procedure has typical focus in accordance to its preference. 'First