Recruitment (from an employer’s perspective)

Recruiting

According to the Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI), recruitment can be defined as searching for and obtaining a pool of potential candidates with the desired knowledge, skills and experience to allow an organisation to select the most appropriate people to fill job vacancies against defined position descriptions and specifications.

The purpose of the recruitment process is to find the widest pool of applicants to provide the organisation with the greatest opportunity to select the best people for the required roles.

Acquiring the best applicants for a role can be a competitive advantage for an organisation, whereas hiring the wrong people or having a complex recruitment process can result in disruption, reduced productivity, interpersonal difficulties, interruption of operations, poor customer service and long-term costs.

Selection

Once a pool of candidates has been identified through the recruitment process the most appropriate candidate or candidates are selected through a process that will generally include interviews, reference checks and testing. The purpose of the selection process is to ensure that the best person is appointed to the role using effective and fair processes.

What do employers want from applicants?

• Experience
• Skills and Qualifications
• Social Skills
• Reliability
• Initiative

Youth Central (2011) – What Employers Want – Youth Central