What is meant by Recruitment? Explain any four external sources of recruitment.
Meaning: Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for jobs in an organisation.
External Sources of Recruitment: Following are the external sources of recruitment:
i. Direct Recruitment: Sometimes information about the vacant posts is pasted on boards placed at important places by the organisations. Such information is usually displayed at the Workshop, Office or the Factory Gate. People who are interested in these jobs apply for them. This method of recruitment is meant only for the recruitment of unskilled workers.
ii. Campus Recruitment: It refers to recruitment from educational institutions. Some big organisations remain in touch with the educational institutions with the purpose of recruiting young talented people. These persons come from colleges, universities, management institutes, technical institutes, etc. These institutions have a placement cell each with the purpose of helping their young students to find suitable jobs. The human resource managers of various companies get in touch with these placement cells and obtain the suitable persons for appointment.
iii. Recommendations: With a view to establishing good employer-employee relations, sometimes managers recruit people on the recommendation of their existing employees. In this way, present employees feel encouraged and there is a complete control over new employees. This source is mostly used for appointing lower level employees.
iv. Labour Contractors: They are the link between labourers and managers. They remain in contact with both the labourers and the managers. As and when managers put up demand for labourers, these contractors make available their supply in no time. This system of labour recruitment is very much popular in road construction, building construction and plantation industry.
“Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organisation.”
External sources of recruitment:
(i) Recommendation of Employees: Many firms encourage their employees to recommend the names of their relatives, friends for employment. Such applicants are likely to be good employees because their background is sufficiently known.
(ii) Labour Contractors: Labour contractors keep in touch with labourers in the villages and bring them to the places where they are needed. On payment of commission, they are ready to supply required number of workers.
(iii) Management Consultants: Management consultancy firms help organisations to recruit technical, professional and managerial persons. They specialise in middle level and top level executive placements. They maintain the data of persons with different qualifications and skills and advertise the jobs on behalf of their clients.
(iv) Campus Recruitment: Universities, colleges, institutes of management and technology, etc., provide technicians, engineers, chemists, accountants etc.
Many big organisations maintain a close link with the universities, technical & management institutes to recruit qualified personnels for jobs. This is referred to as campus recruitment.
(v) Advertisement: Advertisement in newspapers and journals is a common method of encouraging people to apply for the jobs. The main advantage of this method is that sufficient information about the organisation and the job can be given to allow self-screening by the applicants. It attracts a large number of candidates.
(vi) Employment Exchange: Employment exchange registers the names of job seekers to maintain records for their qualifications, experiences, etc. Employers inform the exchanges about the vacancies. These exchanges refer the names of people possessing required qualities and skills to the employers.
(vii) Recruitment agencies: An agency may be hired to perform the task of selection. They are also called placement agencies. These agencies work for a charge.