Global recruitment practices

Abstract

Following our interviews with the managers in the human resources department of the various companies and talking to the some of the employees working in them; and web based research we found that there are widely varying recruiting practices across industries and within industries. Our study is constrained by limited by number of companies surveyed per industry and number of employees and Human Resources personnel interviewed per company. The differences in the type of job studied blue collared vs. white collared jobs, unionized vs. non unionized further make our comparisons difficult. We found that referrals by in house employees, rehiring of former employees and in- house job postings were the most effective sources of recruitment. For most of the companies, employee referral seemed to be recruitment strategy of choice at the middle level. For traditional companies with a distinctive cultural heritage like HSBC, Toyota McKinsey, internal promotions and grooming home grown talent pool was predominantly followed with almost no external recruitment at the senior levels. At the entry levels, the firms had diverse practices ranging from unionized recruitment, walk-ins, and campus recruitments to employee referral and recruitment through company portals and job portals. We have found that walk-ins have been slightly less effective because they are typically for low profile jobs and have resulted in high-attrition rate. There was also rampant automation of recruitment and screening process at the entry level and filtering, incorporating feedback amongst other processes at all the levels of recruitment. Through the analysis of eclectic group of companies, we were able to obtain an overview of the various recruitment practices at each of the levels. Finally, the most successful recruitment systems are built around continual reinvention taking into consideration the industry type, the life cycle stage of the company and the industry; thereby mapping the talent acquisition strategy with the overall business strategy.