Empirical Research On Error Factors In The Recruiting And Selection Process

As the very first part of the HRM chains, recruitment and selection has great influence on the other functions of HRM. On one hand, with much higher separation rate, the recruiting burdens for corporations have become much heavier than before. And on the other hand, although recruitment and selection errors are big problems for all management people, they are still unresolved. Under such circumstances, this paper chose error factors in the recruiting and selection process as the object of study. The study tried to figure out the most important recruiting error factors and which of these factors bother HR professional the most by investigating experienced recruiting staffs. Error in the recruitment and selection process is that the candidates hired by corporations don't match with the requirements of the positions or with the corporate culture. In other words, the recruiting staffs make mistakes when making hiring decisions. The wrong persons are hired or the right are rejected. The error sources in the recruitment and selection process are any factors or elements that may cause recruitment errors. Through well-designed empirical research and statistical analysis, 8 recruitment error factors are identified: recruiting preparation, person-organization match, recruitment evaluation, inter-departmental cooperation, recruiting channel, selection, recruiting staff and recruiting concept. Every factor has 3-5 secondary factors and all the 8 factors and their secondary factors constitute the recruiting error source system. Of all the 8 factors, recruiting preparation, recruiting staff, selection and person-organization match are the most important. And at the same time, people find selection, person-organization match, recruiting preparation and recruiting staff are the most difficult to resolve and overcome. Relatively speaking, recruiting channel and recruiting concept are much easier for corporations to do well. A quadrantal diagram was drawn to observe the relations between the importance of the factors and how well they are handled in practice. We found that selection and person-organization match are of vital importance to effective recruitment and they are also the biggest trouble people have in recruiting. As a result, HR researchers and practitioner should pay more attentions to these factors no matter in future research or in practice. In the end, the paper tried to make some suggestions on how to control selection, person-organization match, recruiting preparation and recruiting staff error factors.