Week 20: Selection

Week 20: Selection

3 Selection Methods

Interviewing

Interviewing is the most common selection method used and is used in all role selections. The main factor for this is because the organisation will be able to interact with the candidate face to face. The organisation can then also use role play, general discussing or phone interviews to find out key information on the candidates personality attitude and skills. The Issues with interviewing is that it can take along time if there a lot of candidates. This will also cost the organisation a lot in manager’s time. This means in order to keep the costs down the recruitment process must be effective in order to cut down the amount of interviews needed.  Another draw back is that people in interviews will often be answering what they think the organisation wants to here. This means that the organisation must prepare for interviews in order to ask the right questions and filter the information into what they are looking for.

Assessment Centre

Assessment Centres I believe are the most effective way of recruiting people. The reason for this is that a organisation can bring all candidates together and often put them through a range of methods such has test, role plays, interviews etc. The min drawback with assessment centres are they cost a lot In money and also take time to organise and carry out. Because of the high cost assessment centres are only used when necessary to fill a role, this is often when recruiting for specialist roles, roles which require high level of skills/ knowledge. A example of this is a friend who had to attend a assessment centre in order to get into a flying college.

References

References are another very common use of selection method. They are also sometime placed on a C.V or “Available upon request”.  I think references are wasted time as the candidate can choose who they want to use as a reference unless company asked for specific past employers. Also a lot of companies now will not give references because of fear of being sued. References I think there for don’t hold much value as they are open to be bias or will be very restricted as to what information they give.

Personal Interview

In a particular interview I took part in the interviewee’s first question he asked me was “What football team I support?” This instantly made me think that we had a common interest and also broke the ice between us. However it also made me wonder how seriously they were taking the interview and weather my response would affect the outcome. After discussing the job I was applying for and what my role would be we then went for a walk around the site. Whilst talking to me the interviewee was very laid back about the language used and was keen to show me around the site. This suggested to me that they didn’t have a lot of experience in interviewing people or that they had a laid back casual personality, through out my time in t role I found it out to be both of those reasons. I also do not think they had really pre pared well for the interview as they did not ask many questions about my skills, qualifications. They were also referring to notes quite a lot in the interview to prompt them on what was to be discussed. I don’t believe the interview was effective looking at it from a companies view as the interview wasn’t very well pre pared and they did not look into what I could bring to the company and why I fitted the role. This could of lead to some one who was not adequate getting the role.  It was effective for me because I felt that the interview had already made his mind who he wanted to get the job and I also felt that I could talk to him and I could control what was being discussed in the interview because they were too laid back and ill pre pared.

The recommendations I would make to improve the selection process would be to have a wider range of people interviewing and also pre pare for the interview. I would do this so there will be more than one persons view on how the interview went and also if two people are taking the interview there will be two views on the applicant.

Conclusion

From my experiences and findings in order to have a effective selection the recruitment process must be done effectively in order to filter the best candidate through.  I also believe that the most effective selection method depends on the role needed to fill and a lot of organisations just follow what is most common i.e. interview and reference rather than planning the selection methods around the role and person they are looking for. If the recruitment and selection process is planned and carried out correctly it will also save organisations money and time in the long term due to selecting the correct person first time rather than having a high turn over of staff until correct person is found.