Challenges in the Recruitment & Selection Process in the Public Sector

 

 

Recruitment and selection process is one of the most important steps in a company being repeated periodically (Denisa, 2017). The importance and purpose of recruitment stresses the need to attract and encourage more and more candidates to apply in the organization (D'souza, 2011).  According to Opatha (2010) recruitment is the process of finding and attracting suitably qualified people to apply for job vacancies in the organization. The quality of the human resource the organization has deeply depends on the effectiveness of recruitment and selection (Gamage, 2014).

In order to meet the modern competitive markets and changing business environment, these changes require competent human resources to support it and this can only be met through effective recruitment, selection and retention process (Samwel, 2018).

 

A few challenges in the Recruitment & Selection Process in the Public Sector are listed out below;

 

Nepotism, favouritism and Political Intervention

In recruitment and selection nepotism is defined as the practice of unfairly giving the best jobs to members of your family when you are in a position of power (Zinyemba, 2014). This practice has often resulted in qualified potential candidates not applying for jobs as they see it as a waste of time (Zinyemba, 2014).

 

Lack of effective Recruitment, selection, retention Policies and Procedures

An organization’s inability to formulate and implement capable strategies for recruiting competent employees and retaining them to achieve organizational goals is one of the main challenges facing organizations’ performance (Cascio, 2003).

Further, the organizations that are very successful worldwide always try to maintain local recruitment strategies and combine that local strategy with the global transfer of information and best practices (Brewster, Sparrow and Vernon, 2007).

Furthermore, Boxall, Purcell and Wright (2007) commented that five different questions an organization has to answer to have an effective recruitment strategy in order to pursue its survival and success which is whom to recruit? Where to recruit? What recruitment sources to use? When to recruit? and what message to communicate? Hence, Syed (2012) argued that an effective recruitment process is positively related to organizational performance.

 

 Lack good Recruitment and selection plans

A common problem in recruitment and selection is poor human resource planning (Kaplan and Norton, 2004). small industries do not have good recruitment and selection plans that can guide their recruitment and selection process, as a result, recruitment and selection process is carried anyhow and at any time and this makes small industries to employ a huge number unqualified workers who cannot deliver and meet the objectives of small industries (Samwel, 2018).

 

Changes in Recruitment Technology

Christini, Gaj and Leoni (2003) opined that that productivity of an organization increases if practices are complementary to the adoption of new technology. This implies that due to changes in industry environment that needs every industry to be more advanced in terms of recruitment, small industries find themselves behind the running world and fail to acquire advance recruitment technology because they are more reluctant to welcome changes and are not ready to take risk associated with changes such as cost and this makes them focus on the use of the old technology of recruitment (Samwel, 2018).

 

Use of old and ineffective recruitment and selection methods

Sinha and Thaly (2013), stressed that it is time to start using the recruiting channels that the company thinks will work for it, that involving a qualitative system in recruitment and selection has helped organizations to grow as they have been able to get the right people for their vacancies.

 Moreover, some of the problems affecting recruitment and selection include an increase of employment pressure, utilization of informal sources of recruitment and delegation of recruitment function (Briggs, 2007).

 

Outdated /inadequate job descriptions

Foot and Hook (2010) observed that the key to stages of a systematic approach to recruitment is job analysis, job description, person specification and attracting applicants through the various process of recruitment. Institutions can improve their productivity by giving employees clear and specific descriptions of their job, roles, responsibilities, performance, performance expectation and job requirements (Stahl, 2004).

 

Lack of Selection interview skills and retention awareness among the managers

selecting employees who are not competent to deliver what is expected from them and the same time do not value and see the necessity of implementing retention as something very important for performance of their industries also ignore and see any retention idea brought to them as a threat to their industries which in turn affects industry performance (Samwel, 2018).

This video of Pandey (2015), further summarizes “Recruitment Challenges and Constructive Solutions”.

Video 1.0 Recruitment Challenges and Constructive Solutions

  

Source: (Pandey, R., 2015)

Conclusion

Every organization is unique and the challenges faced while setting up and running a streamlined hiring process may differ for every individual business (Rozario, 2019). Today’s world is technology-based world and we can feel its presence in each sphere of our lives (Okolie & Irabor, 2017). The pandemic and its repercussions devastated some talent acquisition teams, heaped new demands on others, and proved to be a historic change agent as virtually recruiting and onboarding a remote workforce became the norm for many (Maurer, 2021). Further, Year by year, generations are evolving, we are in constant change and that is the reason why we have to adapt to all the situations that occur in our everyday life and not only (Denisa, 2017).

 

The company I work for, being a public sector organization, experiences many challenges in the process of recruitment & selection process. One of the critical challenges that the public sector organizations face is, “Political interference”. Most of the public sector organizations are highly influenced by the politics and the recruitment is merely controlled by the political authorities of the country based on nepotism and favouritism. Hence, the opportunity to attract and recruit the most suitable candidates for a particular position is challenging.

Lack of good Recruitment and selection plans is another great challenge to the public sector organization in the country resulting a huge loss to the organization as most public sector organizations.

Adopting new changes in recruitment technology is certainly a challenge to the public sector organizations due to the prevailing rigid rules and regulations. Resistant to change from the traditional recruitment methods also prevent the public sector adopting and adhering the new technology to the process.

Use of old and ineffective recruitment & selection methods and lack of selection interview skills & retention awareness are another critical challenge the public sector organization face.

 

 References

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