Thoughts about recruitment

I'd like to discuss some points raised during a discussion about recruitment during a group HR meeting.

There were interesting comments made about things to consider when changing recruitment strategies or simply engaging in large scale acquisitions. For instance:

1. When acquiring a new business unit always take into account the culture of the business. This point seems obvious in retrospect however the culture of a business or even micro cultures within a business can come secondary when discussions of market share and profitability are on the table. Will a new acquisition align with your processes? procedures? Is it a culture based around a small office environment? A culture may share the same values but work strikingly different in achieving those values through day to day processes.

2. A positive of centralised recruitment is if the recruitment team is familiar with a ride range of business areas with in the organisation they are more likely to cross recruit throughout the organisation. When recruitment is decentralised it will be more specialised however each recruitment team will be less familiar with the needs of each other team.

3. Are business units seeking quality or simply trying to fill a quantity? Businesses in high turn over environments may be doing the latter. That being said high turnover environments may not have the resources to invest in quality recruitment or it may simply not be cost effective because of the fact.

4. At the end of the day the psychological contract is between the manager and the employee not HR and the employee. What this means is what is easier for HR in terms of recruitment may not nessecarily be easier for the mangers dealing with the employee on a daily basis. That being said recruitment processes and procedures should be in the best interests of the managers as they hold the psychological contract and will hold a stronger influence on the employee's experience.