How companies choose recruitment methods

Recruitment channels are one of the aids to an organization's recruitment practices. A good recruitment channel should have the following characteristics:

I. Recruitment channels are purposeful. That is, whether the choice of recruitment channel can achieve the requirements of recruitment.

Second, the economy of recruitment channels. Refers to the recruitment of suitable personnel in the case of the minimum cost.

Three, the feasibility of recruitment channels. Refers to the selection of recruitment channels in line with the reality of the situation, with operability.

[edit]Common Recruitment Channels

1. On-site Recruitment

On-site Recruitment is a kind of enterprise and talent through the third-party venues, direct face-to-face dialog, on-site completion of recruitment interviews in a way. On-site recruitment generally includes job fairs and job markets in two ways.

Job fair is generally initiated and organized by a variety of government and talent agency, more formal, at the same time, most of the job fair has a specific theme, such as "fresh graduates special field", "postgraduate qualifications," or "IT talent special field". At the same time, most of the job fairs have specific themes, such as "Fresh Graduates Session", "Graduate Talents Session" or "IT Talents Session", etc. Through this kind of differentiation in graduation time, education level and knowledge structure, enterprises can easily choose the suitable session to set up recruitment booths for recruitment. For this kind of job fair, the organization will generally be the first to join the applicants for qualification audit, this initial screening, saving a lot of time for enterprises, to facilitate the more in-depth assessment of the applicants. But the target population segmentation of the convenience of the enterprise at the same time, but also bring certain limitations, if the enterprise needs to recruit several kinds of talent at the same time, then you have to participate in several different job fairs, which on the other hand, also improve the recruitment cost of the enterprise.

The job market is similar to the job fair, but the job fair is generally short-term centralized, and the location is generally temporary selected stadium or large square, while the job market is long-term decentralized, and the location is relatively fixed. Therefore, for some positions that require long-term recruitment, companies can choose the job market as a recruitment channel.

The on-site recruiting method not only saves the time cost of the initial screening of resumes, but also the effectiveness of resumes is higher, and compared with other methods, it requires less cost. However, there are some limitations to on-site recruitment, first of all, geographical, on-site recruitment can only attract applicants in the city and surrounding areas. Secondly, this method is also affected by the organization's publicity efforts and the form of organization.

2. Network Recruitment

Network recruitment generally includes companies posting job information online and even resume screening, written tests, interviews. Enterprises can usually carry out network recruitment in two ways, one is to publish job information on the company's own website and build a recruitment system, and the other is to cooperate with professional recruitment websites, such as China Talent, MileagePlus, Wisdom Link Recruitment, etc., through which the company publishes job information and carries out recruitment activities by utilizing the existing system of professional websites.

Network recruitment has no geographical limitations, large audience, wide coverage, and a longer period of time, you can get a large number of applicants in a relatively short period of time, but along with this is filled with a lot of false information and useless information, so the network of network recruitment of resume screening requirements are relatively high.

3. Campus Recruitment

Campus Recruitment is a recruitment channel used by many companies, companies to posters in schools, previews, to attract graduating students to apply for jobs for some of the best students, can be recommended by the school, for some special positions can also be entrusted to the training through the school, the enterprise directly hired.

The students recruited through the campus are more malleable and energetic. However, these students do not have practical work experience and need some training before they can really start to work, and many of them are not clear about their own orientation when they first enter the society, so their work mobility may also be greater.

4. Traditional media advertising

Published in newspapers and magazines, television and radio and other carriers, broadcasting recruitment information on a wide range of audiences, fast results, the process is simple, and generally receive more information on the application, but also to the enterprise to play a certain role in publicity. Through this channel to apply for a wide range of people, but senior talents rarely use this way of seeking employment, so the recruitment of companies in the grass-roots and technical positions is more suitable for the staff. At the same time, the effect of this channel will also be affected by the influence, coverage and timeliness of the advertising carrier.

5. Talent introduction agencies

This kind of organizations on the one hand for enterprises to find talent, on the other hand, also help talent to find a suitable employer. Generally, they include employment agencies for low-end talents and headhunters for high-end talents. This is the most convenient way for companies to recruit, because they only need to submit their recruitment needs to the employment agencies, which will then look for and assess the talents according to their own resources and information, and recommend the right people to the companies. However, the cost of this method is also relatively high, headhunters usually charge 30% of the talent's annual salary as headhunting fees.

6. Internal recruitment

Internal recruitment refers to the company will be announced to the staff of job vacancies and encourage employees to compete for the job, such as China Mobile has adopted this recruitment method. For large companies, internal recruitment helps to increase employee mobility, and because employees can be promoted or changed through competition, it is also an effective incentive to increase employee satisfaction and retain talent. Internally recruited talent generally have a better understanding of the company and the business, so they can enter the new role faster and do not need a lot of training costs. However, this approach also has certain drawbacks, if the company uses too much internal recruitment, the company will lack of new ideas and new perspectives to join, there is a certain degree of inertia in the thinking of employees, lack of vitality.

7. Employee Recommendation

Enterprises can recommend their relatives and friends to apply for the company's positions through the employees, the biggest advantage of this recruitment method is that the information held by the enterprise and the applicant is more symmetrical. The introducer will introduce the real situation of the applicant to the enterprise, saving the enterprise to examine the authenticity of the applicant, at the same time, the applicant can also be introduced to understand all aspects of the internal situation of the enterprise, so as to make a rational choice. At present, there are already many enterprises adopting this recruitment method, such as Colgate encourages employees to recommend and set up some incentives, if the applicant is accepted, the introducer will get a certain amount of bonus. However, this channel should also pay attention to some of the negative impacts: some internal employees or senior leaders in order to cultivate their own personal power in the company, in the company's important positions to arrange their own cronies, the formation of a small group, which will affect the company's normal organizational structure and operation.

[edit]Effectiveness of Recruitment Channels

From the viewpoint of labor market informatics, enterprises and applicants in the labor market are blind, so it is very difficult for both sides to achieve a good match, and at the same time, the recruitment information released by the enterprise is also a very short-lived information. Based on the above assumptions, when a candidate obtains a job offer, he or she will abandon it if it does not match his or her requirements. If job postings are collected and redistributed by an information intermediary, information that is not useful to one candidate may be useful to others, so these job postings can be allocated more efficiently through this information intermediary. Therefore, Cohen (1960) and Taiwanese scholars such as Li Cheng and Jian Shih Ping (2001) believe that the use of formal recruitment channels is a more effective way of recruitment.

There are also some scholars who have gotten the opposite evaluation through empirical research. Early studies mainly used the applicant's years of experience to evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment channels (Decker ＆ Cornelius, 1979), and the results of the study showed that employee referrals performed the best and applicants were the most loyal, while newspapers and employment agencies were the worst. Others (Gannon, 1971; Conard & Ashworth, 1986) also found employee referrals to be the best recruitment channel by comparing employee turnover rates.

Breaugh (1981) made a more comprehensive comparison by using variables such as employee performance, days absent from work, and job attitudes (job satisfaction, job commitment, and supervisor satisfaction) to measure the effectiveness of recruitment channels and concluded that school career centers and newspapers were worse than magazines and self-referrals.

Another scholar, Moser (2005), argued that the effectiveness of recruitment channels can be measured using various post-employment performance variables. For these post-employment performance variables, generally can be divided into two kinds of performance in the near future and forward performance, some of the employees can be measured soon after joining the job, such as job satisfaction, is the near future performance, while such as employee turnover, the length of the employee's working life, etc., it takes a long time or even after the employee left the job can be measured is the performance of the forward. 1992 Wanous on the employee's performance of the forward measurement In 1992, Wanous measured the forward performance of employees and found that the turnover rate was slightly lower in internal than in external recruitment channels. The explanation for this is that in internal referrals, the relationship between the referrer and the referee is a binding and motivating factor for the referee and plays an important role in the referee's performance.

[edit]Companies' choice of recruitment channels

Through the above discussion, we can find that the effects of recruitment channels obtained based on different samples and theoretical reasoning are not the same. Therefore, instead of blindly relying on a certain recruitment channel, an enterprise should choose an appropriate recruitment channel by taking into account its own characteristics, including its financial situation, urgency, and the quality of its recruiters, as well as the type, level, and competency requirements of the position being recruited.

For example, for enterprises in the growth period, the demand for talent is very large, for the company's senior management, should be used in the way of internal recruitment, because this part of the personnel of the company is very familiar with the new work can be very easy to get started, when the work change, in the rapid development of the enterprise will not cause a greater impact, at the same time, this opportunity for promotion can also be incentivized to talent, retention of talent. For the middle and low-level talent, should consider the use of fast-acting recruitment channels, such as on-site recruitment and a longer period of time network recruitment.

In short, there is no set in stone optimal recruitment channels, for an enterprise, only the most suitable for the current situation of the enterprise as well as the recruitment needs of the channel is the best.