Managing Hospitality Enterprises Human Resource Management Recruitment Selection Business Essay

Introduction

The main purpose of recruitment and selection process is to select the right candidate for the job (Dale 2001). In a hospitality industry, it is often said that “our people are the greatest asset (Hayes and Ninemeier 2009). People are a critical component in this industry as they are the ones that have the most interaction with the guests. Many successful hospitality leaders has this perception that by giving outstanding guest services it will lead to the company excelling and making profits. There is also a point in mind to take note as there is a need to identify the talented people in the organization and coming out with methods to train and retain them. These people must be kept satisfied and committed to the organization goals.

At any one time people will be trying to either change their job or acquire a job and employers at the same time will be looking for employers (Nickson 2007). This indicates that all the workers in the external market are competing for jobs all the time.

Due to the impact of the recent economic recession, employers would find it difficult to retain their top-performing employees as during this period the employees do not enjoy much benefit. Employers fear that employees would leave their current job and getting a better job. In a Hospitality Industry, it is often seen that attracting the locals to work are often more difficult to work.

Among the many areas of the Human Resource Management, I feel that the most basic step in the Hospitality Industry is to recruit the right people for the Industry.

Definition of Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the process of attracting a pool of candidates for a vacant position, and selection is the technique of choosing a new member of the organization from the available candidates (McKenna and Beech 2008).

Recruitment is the process of finding and engaging the people the organization needs and selection is that part of the recruitment process concerned with deciding applicants or candidates should be appointed to jobs (Armstrong 2009).

According to this author there are four stages of recruitment and selection are as follows:

Recruitment and selection stages

Defining requirements – preparing role profiles and person specifications; deciding terms and conditions of employment.

Planning recruitment campaigns.

Attracting candidates- reviewing and evaluating alternative sources of applicants, inside and outside the company: advertising, e-recruiting, agencies and consultants.

Selecting candidates- sifting applications, interviewing, testing, assessing candidates, assessment centres, offering employment, obtaining references; preparing contracts of employment.

The overall aim of the recruitment and selection process should be to obtain at minimum cost the number and quality of employees required to satisfy the needs of the company (Armstrong 1998).

According to the same author there are only three stages of recruitment and selection which are:

Defining requirements – preparing job descriptions and specifications; deciding terms and conditions of employment.

Attracting candidates – reviewing and evaluating, alternative sources of applicants, inside and outside the company, advertising, using agencies and consultants.

Selecting candidates – sifting applicants, interviewing, testing, assessing candidates, assessment centers, offering employment, obtaining references; preparing contracts of employment.

Among these three authors above, each of them gives different definition to what recruitment and selection is. The first author talks about just filling up the vacancy of any particular position in the company and choosing a new member without any consideration of whether that person is capable of doing the job. However the second author does resolve the issue of this by basically trying to see whether the person’s goals is on the same track with what the organization is trying to achieve at the same time and after that selecting whether the person goal’s can fit into that particular position. The last author is basically trying to use the minimum resources available to achieve the maximum productivity of the company to gain profits.

Out of all these three authors, the second author definition should be considered by Human Resource Managers as having the person with the same goals as the organization would help the company yield better results and as well as retention of the employees without worrying about them changing or quitting their jobs.

Process of Recruitment and Selection

The recruitment and selection process typically comprises of 4 stages. The first stage is to plan, the second is to recruit, the third is to select and the last stage is to induct (Peragamon Flexible Learning 2005).

The first three stages of this process are very important. Being a HR manager, he/she needs to determine whether recruitment is necessary, the job specifications and writing a job description. After this, the most appropriate application methods are determined, deciding how to attract applicants and marketing the job. The next is to sift and shortlist applications, holding selection interviews, making a decision to offer and taking up references.

The recruitment and selection process has 3 steps. The first step is to plan, the second is to recruit and the last is to select (Ingram et al. 2009).

The recruitment and selection process is a complex process. There are four important identifiable phases in this process which are pre-recruitment, recruitment, select and induct (Lock 1998).

The three author’s point of view for the recruitment and selection process are basically the same except for the second author who only has 3 stages instead of 4 comparing with the other two authors.

From this, the second author stopped at the point of selection of the applicants but do not do anything to further to evaluate the employee being selected. This should not be the case for any organization. After the employee is selected, all aspects of an organization’s recruitment and policy should be known and clearly conveyed to the employee (James 2005).

In a hospitality industry, the HR manager has to know the country’s HR policy before implementing the recruitment and selection process, this is so as not to make any unnecessary mistakes. For example, employing more foreigners than locals would mostly likely cause an outrage.

Orientation is given to the new employees that are being selected by the HR. On the first day of employment, the employee is being shown the different parts of the Hotel to meet the different managers and the employees to get familiarize with the various departments. The employees are also shown the different facilities of the hotels as well in the process.

Contact should always be maintained with the new employees until it becomes apparent that they have settled down and become part of the team.

Every aspect of the recruitment and selection process should be implemented and executed perfectly so that the employee can perform better.

Implementation of Effective Recruitment and Selection

The recruitment and selection process serves only as a model of how an employee should be recruited and selected.

Greater efforts are made to improve by having a sharper competitive edge so that good candidates are not lost to the competitors. This can be done in several ways which are E-recruitment, Technology; Streamlining, Screening and Keeping in closer touch (Rankin 2003).

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, an increasing number of managers had become aware that attracting and selecting the best candidates is not an easy task, nor is it risk fee. The organization when I doubt, should not hire and keep looking so that resources are not wasted (Banfield and Kay 2008).

Effective recruitment and selection of personnel should attempt to ensure that an individual’s aspirations and capabilities are not too divergent (Sharma 2003).

The three authors have different views about what is effective recruitment and selection, the first author view is basically to use the minimum costs possible to get the right employee for the job, the second author basically means to wait for the right candidate to appear for the job. The last author basically means that the employee’s goals and objectives are somewhat similar to what the organizations have.

The best option would be the combination of the first and last author by using the minimum number of resources to get the employee which has the same goals and objectives as the organization. This would enable the company to save costs as well as getting the suitable employee for the job.

In the hospitality industry, the image of it has been skeptical towards many people due to the fact that people has the misperception of this industry. The misperception includes factors such as the low salary, long working hours, long standing hours and giving service to customers.

Basically anybody with a diploma or less can work in the hospitality industry such as being a waiter, a front office staff, a housekeeper, etc. With a bit of training, anyone is capable of the doing the job. Many people do not wish to serve people as most of them enjoyed being served.

The best effective way now normally is through word of mouth by referrals or contacting hospitality schools to get students for internship and if possible get the graduates to go back to the hotel to work. This saves the hotel of wasting resources and effectively recruiting the graduates as they have already work in the hotel and no basic training is required for him/her.

For any organizations, normally those well-known of that particular industry would receive more job applicants than others. For example, Hyatt Hotel would receive more applicants than other hotels. Therefore, what it can do is to have a group of people on the spot for selective recruitment and selection, out of 5 people, the best candidate would be selected by the manager.

Lastly, the recruiter plays a very important role to ensure that the recruitment and selection is being implemented effectively.

Outcomes of Recruitment and Selection

The final outcome of the recruitment and selection stage is to consider and implement a carefully organized, systematic recruitment and selection process that qualifies candidates in ways that reduces the cost outlay overall (Thompsen 2010).

Keeping costs low is paramount, but the senior management team should avoid going overboard with its cost-cutting efforts. For some highly qualified individuals, the experience of a low-budget recruiting process might be a deal-breaker. So the most successful companies seek a balance. For the median prospects, the cost outlay must remain low. The company should then reserve the most expensive recruiting techniques for the most highly qualified prospects.

The above might seem an overly simplified list of desired outcomes, but it all points to one overarching outcome: Develop a fair, efficient, and effective recruitment and selection process. The outcomes list sets up the essential target of having a legally sound recruitment and selection process that also produces the perception of fairness. And in the end, the company that reaches all of these desired outcomes will be left with a high-powered, highly effective and low-cost recruiting strategy.

Recruitment and selection can be an expensive activity and it is important that some attempt is made to evaluate the effectiveness of the methods used and to justify expenditure (Simms 2005).

One of the difficulties is that is difficult to quantify the contribution that the newly recruited individual is making to the organization and the benefits. Even if this is possible, it is difficult to identify how different aspects of the procedure contribute to the recruitment and selection of a particular individual. For example, if a different, less expensive method had been used, the same individual might still have been appointed because they happened to be looking for a change of job at that particular point in time in that particular area of work or location.

Although there may be too many contingencies and variables to evaluate in a meaningful and tangible way, recruitment and selection should nevertheless be evaluated and the outcome of the evaluation used to inform and revise future activities.

Measures of the number and suitability of applications received through a particular recruitment method can provide information about the continuous appropriateness of a particular method. This sort of information can also be useful in evaluating other aspects of the process, for example, a usually large number of unsuitable applicants may indicate a poorly written advertisement or a very general person specification which needs to be revised for the future.

It can be also useful to seek and evaluate feedback about the process from applicants, new recruits, managers and other staff involved in the process, and during exit interviews.

Conclusion

Recruitment and selection is a vital function of HR in the organization (Pattanayak 2005). The slightest mistake will lead to a square peg in round hole. In the long run, this would prove to be problematic as these people would pull the organization down.

An organization periodically needs to attract applicants for their existing or future staffing needs (Pynes 2009).

There are many methods of recruitments available. Recruitment Strategies should be planned in advance of the organization’s needs. Strategic job analysis and audits of positions and employee skills should be updated on a regular basis to determine which incumbent employees are qualified for promotions or newly created positions. For some positions, depending on the qualifications and experience needed, HR may need to find applicants from the external labour market.

In any organization, efforts should be made to recruit and select a diverse workforce by including individuals with disabilities, older employees and different types of races.

Lastly, after recruitment and selection, the best recruitment and selection method should be pointed out and used for subsequent use. Evaluation of the employee is very important after that so that the organization knows how well the employee is doing or coping with the job. This will determine whether the choice of selecting this employee has been a correct decision.

Retention of employees in the hospitality industry is very important even after recruitment and selection so that the employer do not repeat this process of recruiting and selecting a new employee and training the employee from scratch.