Example Slidedoc on employee recruitment used in a university human resource management course

1. Employee Recruitment:
Attracting qualified candidates for job openings
Slidedoc
Cyn D. Fisher
Professor of Management
Bond Business School 1

2. Introduction to Recruitment
04
Table of contents
5 Steps to Recruiting Effectively
06
Internal Recruitment Methods
11
Active and Passive Candidates,
External Recruitment Methods
12
Employment Agencies and
Executive Search Firms
14
Networking and Social Media,
Homework
17
19
Employee Referral
18
The Applicant’s Point of View
and Realistic Job Preview
Preparing for the class sessions on Recruitment:
Week 4 Session 2: Carefully read slides 1-13 of this Slidedoc, including doing the embedded exercises to develop
your understanding. Read the three assigned articles on this topic by Johnson, Krell, and Weirick. Links to
articles can be found in iLearn.
Week 5 Session 1: Carefully read slides 14-end of this Slidedoc, including following the hyperlinks to additional
materials to read or view. Do the homework on social media recruitment as described on slide 17. Submit your
homework before midnight Monday February 13.

3. 3
In class, we will examine the concept of
employer branding, discover how to
create effective recruitment ads and
corporate careers websites, and practice
creative recruitment planning.
Be sure you are in class to enhance your
skills and knowledge related to employee
recruitment.
This Slidedoc sets the stage for
understanding five steps to effective
recruitment. Some specific methods of
recruitment are discussed here, others will
be explored in class.
The three assigned articles provide further
advice and insights on aspects of
recruitment.

4. 4
INTRODUCTION TO RECRUITMENT
Recruitment vs Selection
Some people use the term recruitment to refer to both
attracting job candidates AND assessing them to decide
which are best to hire. In this subject, I will use the term
Recruitment to refer only to the first part of this process –
reaching out to find and attract the right kind of job
candidates, motivating them to apply for a job with your
firm and remain interested while you are making up your
mind about them, then accepting a job offer if you decide
to make one. I will use the term Selection to refer to the
process by which you assess candidates to see if they have
the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes (KSAAs) you
require, and therefore whether or not you want to make
them a job offer. These processes overlap in time.
It is very important to be able to attract good people to
apply for open positions the firm might have. First, you
need to fill openings so that your business can continue to
produce products, serve clients, or grow. Second,
remember that the goal of recruitment is to attract a
“qualified response” from the labour market, not just any
response. It does no good to the company or the
candidates to have a large number of job applicants if
many of them lack the skills needed to do the job.
Third, you’d like your recruitment process to produce a favourable
selection ratio (number of applicants per opening) so that you have
the luxury of being selective and choosing the very best.
Part of effective recruiting is cultivating an employer brand so that
people in the labour force understand what your company is like as
an employer, view it favourably, and are likely to apply and later
accept job offers. This will be discussed further in class.
There are many methods available for recruitment, some of which
will be discussed later in the document and/or in class. The right
mix of methods must be chosen for the best results in any given
search – there is no one method that is always most suitable.
Recruiting Costs
Recruiting can be quite expensive if you consider all the costs from
the time the need to hire is recognised until a new person (or
people) is hired, trained, and as competent as the employee they
may be replacing.
Brainstorm all the likely sources of expense to a company in the
process of replacing an employee with a new hire from outside
the company. Make a list then turn the page to see some answers.
Attracting well qualified people to want to work for your firm is
essential to business success.

5. 1. Pre-work. Preparing/updating job analyses, developing selection criteria, planning the recruitment campaign
2. Advertising. Creating ads and paying the fee for advertising on a job board, newspaper, billboard, radio, etc.
3. Employment agency or executive search firm fees, if used, and managerial time to liaise with these outside firms
4. Maintenance and updating of the company’s corporate careers webpage
5. Clerical and managerial time in correspondence and record keeping, which may be with dozens of candidates for even a
single opening
6. Travel expenses for candidate to company visits, and/or for recruiters on road shows, to job fairs, to campus visits
7. Referral bonuses to current employees if applicable
8. Managerial time for short-listing meetings and interviewing. This can be huge as decisions often involve a selection panel
of 3-4 managers, and several candidates may be interviewed for each open position
9. Other pre-employment assessments – in addition to interviewing, candidates may undergo costly testing, reference and
background checks, medicals, etc.
10. Lost management productivity in other areas due to involvement in recruitment, meetings, negotiations with the
candidate, etc.
11. Poor service, stress, overtime payments to other employees, and lost productivity while the role is unfilled if the business
is understaffed
12. Signing bonus to new hire if applicable
13. Relocation expenses if applicable
14. Onboarding costs. Administration of employee induction/orientation, salary and benefit set-up, etc.
15. Training, managerial time for coaching, and lost productivity until the newcomer is as good as the person they replace
As you can see, finding and hiring new employees is expensive. Some of the above are arguably selection and training costs rather
than purely recruitment costs, but they are expenses that are incurred when hiring a new employee from outside the firm. Many
companies don’t keep very good records so they under-estimate these costs. A firm is often better off to retain a good employee
than to have to replace them if they leave.
RECRUITMENT RELATED COSTS
5

6. 6
1. First, know the job!
– Duties, conditions, KSAAs needed
– Inducements/value proposition/brand you can offer
2. Decide which labour market to target
– Internal
– External (where exactly?)
• Local, state, national, international
3. Decide how to reach that labour market
– Choose recruitment methods
4. Plan and execute recruitment campaign
5. Evaluate success, keep records
Detail on these steps follows.
FIVE STEPS TO RECRUITING EFFECTIVELY

7. 7
1. KNOW THE JOB
It is essential to know a lot about the job for which you are
recruiting so that you can craft persuasive and accurate
recruiting communications, work out where qualified
people are likely to be found, and know what to assess
after they apply. You need a current job analysis which lists
duties, working conditions, KSAAs needed, etc. so that you
can clearly communicate to candidates what the job is
about and what kind of person you are seeking. The job
analysis is also essential for organisation members involved
in selection, so that they can assess candidates on truly
needed KSAAs.
You also need to think about the inducements or employee value proposition that
the company has to offer to the right candidates. Why should they consider coming
to work for your firm? Do you have a strong employer brand around a unique
culture and purpose, excellent training and mentoring, desirable location, growth
potential, competitive pay, and/or benefits of the type particularly valued by the
type of person you want to attract? Recall that PWC is doing research to understand
Millennials so they can offer an attractive workplace to this type of employee. Think
about why you have or would accept a job, and what a company could reasonably do
to attract you.
Read the article by Johnson entitled Brand Your Company. What is an employer
brand, and why and how could you create one? Read the article by Weirick entitled
The Perfect Interview. This piece describes how to be sure the employer brand is
communicated and reinforced throughout the recruitment and selection processes.
We will look at some examples of employer branding in class.

8. 8
The two choices are the internal labour market – people who already
work for the firm in some other capacity or location, or the external
labour market – people who don’t work for the firm. Some companies
pride themselves on growing their own talent and offering their
employees opportunities to move up, so prefer to recruit from within
whenever possible. This is also usually less expensive, faster, and you
are less likely to be fooled and end up with a bad hire. Training time,
effort needed to learn the culture and time to build networks of
relationships in the firm are also less for internal candidates. As
discussed in class, a good succession planning system helps assure a
healthy internal labour market.
If you are hiring for entry level roles, you’ll probably have to go to the
external labour market. Likewise, to support growth, you’ll have to do
a fair bit hiring from outside the firm (though not for every role). If
you need skills not available in the firm, clearly you’ll need to go
outside. Read more about the internal vs external labour market
choice in the article by Krell entitled Look Outside or Seek Within? As
you read, make a list of the factors that would drive you towards
internal versus external sources for filling a vacant position.
If looking in the external labour market, specify geographically where
you will look – local, state, national, or international. This decision is
driven by where the type and number of people you need can be
found. You’ll choose the smallest/most local labour market that will
serve your needs, as it’s faster and cheaper than mounting a wider
search. You’ll also be likely to look locally if you don’t plan to subsidise
moving expenses. However, for special or higher level skills, or if you
need more people than the local market can provide, you’ll need to
choose a larger or different labour market.
Which labour market?
2. DECIDE WHICH LABOUR MARKET TO TARGET
Which labour market would you target
for the following jobs, and why?
• Short order cook for a café in
Surfer’s Paradise
• Professor of Entrepreneurship for
Bond University
• Manager of a new Aldi grocery store
in Townsville, Qld
• Social worker for a government
agency in Grafton, NSW

9. 9
Which labour market would you target, and why?
• Short order cook for a café in Surfer’s Paradise – You’d look
locally on the Gold Coast. You won’t be paying relocation costs,
and there are quite likely to be plenty of cooks available locally.
If someone wants to commute from Brisbane, that’s fine, but
you wouldn’t go out of your way to tap the Brisbane market.
• Professor of Entrepreneurship for Bond University – These
guys are scarce and highly sought after. While you’d look
nationwide, you would absolutely also look worldwide
(especially in the US and Europe).
• Manager of an Aldi grocery store in Townsville, Qld – Probably
this job would be filled internally by someone who manages an
Aldi elsewhere, or who is an assistant Aldi store manager either
in Townsville or another city. If there are no qualified internal
candidates, one could look locally, though the number of people
with grocery store management experience in Townsville (area
population about 200,000) isn’t likely to be large. Expanding
the external search to nationwide (via a job board or search
firm) could work.
• Social worker for a state government agency in Grafton, NSW –
A job like this would probably be posted internally on a the
agency’s state-wide employment site first in case someone else
in the agency wished to apply for a transfer. Failing that, one
might try looking externally in Grafton first (population 20,000)
and the surrounding commutable region (Coffs Harbour,
population 75,000). I actually saw this job advertised in the
Gold Coast Bulletin. It’s a three hour drive so clearly not
commutable. My guess is that they looked within the agency
and locally first without success, then decided to expand the
search to larger population centres in the hope of attracting
someone to relocate.
Sometimes a labour market can be very highly targeted.
For instance, a few years ago the boat building companies
in the Gold Coast Marine Precinct were having great
difficulty recruiting the skilled people they needed in
trades such as welding, fiberglassing, cabinet making, and
upholstery. These trades were in short supply in
Southeast Queensland. Rather than just expanding their
labour market generally, they capitalised on an
opportunity to go precisely where plenty of people with
the needed skills were about to become unemployed.
Specifically, two auto plants were shutting down in
Adelaide. They sent a recruiting delegation to Adelaide
and returned with nearly 100 tradies and their families.
Several years ago the city of Seattle was having a hard
time hiring for its police force. They had 125 vacant
positions and couldn’t find enough local candidates who
met their requirements. Once they decided to expand
their recruitment activities from local to nationwide, they
were able to fill their needs. They also found that they
had an additional inducement that was relevant to this
expanded labour market – the opportunity to live in a city
regarded as hip and desirable.

10. 10
5 STEPS TO RECRUITING EFFECTIVELY, CON’T
3. DECIDE HOW TO REACH THE CHOSEN LABOUR MARKET. Once you know where you are looking, you can
think about how best to reach potential job candidates in that market. We will talk about a number of
recruitment methods later in this document. You may choose to use more than one method at a time.
4. PLAN AND EXECUTE THE RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGN. Plan the campaign in terms of when it will begin, using
the methods chosen above and data from past campaigns (below). Develop the needed materials (ads,
selection criteria, web content, etc.) Execute the campaign.
5. KEEP RECORDS, EVALUATE SUCCESS, APPLY WHAT YOU LEARN TO THE NEXT RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGN.
There are a number of types of information that should be kept in connection with any recruiting effort to
inform future recruitment campaigns. You might have seen a question on an application asking “how did you
hear about this job opening?” Companies want to know which of the several methods they may have used
actually brought in the most candidates, or attracted the best candidates, so they can re-use the best methods
and stop using less effective ones. In addition to the total number of candidates per method, companies
calculate the yield ratio (applicants per hire) from each source or recruitment method to find out which
sources produce a high frequency of candidates good enough to get and accept an offer. If they have data on
how well employees are performing, companies can assess which method(s) brought in the best performing
candidates, or those least likely to quit within a year. This is called source quality. For instance, companies
who recruit at universities should compare the quality of candidates in different degrees at different
universities and stop visiting universities which do not produce good graduates in a particular area. Companies
should also calculate time to fill, or how long it takes on average from when they start looking to fill a role until
the new hire is on the job. This helps them work out when to begin recruiting. For instance, how long before
the opening of a new store should you start looking for staff? When we hire a new professor from overseas to
teach at Bond, it can take 8 -16 months from starting the search until someone has moved here with a suitable
visa. On the other hand, a sign in the window of a shop may produce a new shop clerk who can start in a
week. Normally, employed individuals should give at least a couple of weeks notice to their current employer
before leaving, which increases the delay before they are in a new role. Finally, companies should calculate
cost per hire. Some methods, such as executive search firms, can be quite expensive. However, small
differences in cost per hire are probably irrelevant over the lifespan of a good employee. When planning the
next recruitment effort, use the information above to decide when to start, what methods to use, and whether
several methods might be needed to attract enough good candidates for the number of openings.

11. 11
INTERNAL RECRUITMENT
METHODS
The next few slides discuss a subset of recruiting methods. Others
will be explored in more depth in class. All are important. We
begin with a consideration of internal recruitment methods.
Internal Recruitment Methods
1. Internal Job Posting. Enterprise agreements or awards
may require that most jobs are first advertised internally, to
provide advancement opportunities to current employees.
Whether or not it is required, it’s good practice to give your
own employees a chance if you think there are likely to be
qualified internal candidates. Most companies have an HR
intranet site on which jobs are posted and employees invited
to express interest in moving from their current job to another
open job anywhere within the firm. This may be a either a
lateral transfer or a promotion.
Bond has such a site which is only visible to employees. On
this internal website site, employees can get the full position
description, , see the selection criteria, and find out how to
apply. There is another site for jobs being advertised
externally, though internal candidates can also usually apply
for these as well.
2. Manager Nomination. Managers may be asked to
nominate individuals who may be qualified for an open
position elsewhere in the company, especially for higher level
roles.
3. HRIS Search. Another way to find suitable internal
candidates is to search the company’s human
resource information system for individuals with the
required backgrounds, skills, and preferences. In
large companies this is particularly useful, as the best
person may be in another division or location.
4. Consult Succession Plans. The reason
organisations have succession plans for important
jobs is to facilitate early thinking on who may be
qualified to move into a job should it become
available, and to assure that development plans are
in place to build the skills needed for higher level
jobs. If an open position appears in a succession
plan, there should already be one or more likely
candidates identified.

12. 12
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE
JOB SEEKERS
Only a small proportion of the workforce is actively seeking a
new job at any one point in time. These active job seekers
put their resumes on job boards, search job boards and
newspapers for job ads, network with their friends and social
media connections about job opportunities, and visit
company homepages seeking opportunities. Slightly less
active seekers may skim ads from time to time but are not
working as hard at finding new opportunities. Standard
recruitment advertising and the greatest share of recruitment
expenditures are aimed at this relatively small group of
unemployed or disaffected employees who are most actively
trying to leave their current employer. These may not be the
people you want to hire!
Another share of the workforce is simply not interested in
moving no matter what, so needn’t concern recruiters except
insofar as they may be able to refer someone else if asked.
However, there is often a large share of the workforce who
are passive job seekers. They are not reading ads, sending
out resumes, or trying to leave their employer, but if someone
approaches them with the right opportunity, they will
consider it. These people often make the best employees.
They are gainfully and happily employed but might be
receptive to the opportunity for an interesting job challenge,
the next step in their career ladder, or relocation to a
company in a more desired location or industry.
Passive job seekers are not generally reached by advertising.
They may be accessed by employee referral programs in
which current employees pass on information about openings
and encourage their friends to apply, and/or via professional
social media platforms like LinkedIn that facilitate networking
between employees of different firms. Firms who can
leverage their employees’ networks can gain access to
potentially excellent future employees. In addition, firms may
conduct web searches to locate likely candidates and
approach them directly, or employ a search firm to do this.
An example is a search we recently conducted for an
academic role in Bond Business School. Advertising did not
produce any candidates we found suitable. We subsequently
asked academic contacts to refer colleagues who might be a
good fit, and also searched the websites of 8 top universities
to locate high performing faculty members in the field who
currently held the rank just below the level of our
appointment, on the assumption that a promotion would be
attractive. We then contacted these individuals personally to
tell them about our opportunity.
There are many external recruiting methods to choose from.
Consider using a range of methods to target both active and
passive job seekers.

13. 13
EXTERNAL RECRUITMENT
METHODS
External recruitment methods include the following (and more).
• Newspaper ads, radio or TV ads, billboards, sign in the window
• University campus recruiting
• Public or private employment agencies or executive search firms
• Advertising on job boards, searching job board resume databases
• Company’s own careers website
• Social media
• Employee (and other) referral
• Job fairs
How did you find your last job?
How will you go about seeking a professional job after
graduation?
Job Fair

14. 14
EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES
Public Employment Agencies. Most governments
provide employment services for the unemployed in an
effort to get them back into paid work and off welfare. It
is free for employers to list jobs with public job service
agencies. While some good candidates may be found via
public job service agencies, there are also quite a few
clients who are not really interested in working or who
are long-term unemployed because they lack basic work
skills.
There are three kinds of agencies an employer might use to
locate candidates for open positions.
Recruitment
Agencies
Private
Employment
Agencies
Executive
search or “head
hunting” for
higher level jobs
Contingent
search for
lower to mid
level jobs
Public
Employment
Agencies
JobActive
Australia
Private Employment Agencies. Private employment
agencies charge employers to locate candidates for low to
mid level jobs like chef, secretary, supervisor, or nurse.
They are paid only if there is a successful hire, so
sometimes they are called contingent search firms. Fees
often range from 9-19% of annual salary. They don’t
decide whom to hire, of course, but they provide any
other services the organisation may request, including
helping with job descriptions, preparing and placing
recruitment advertising, preparing a slate of candidates,
applicant testing, and reference and background
checking.
Employment agencies say they can do a better, quicker
job with recruitment than many companies (especially
smaller ones) could do on their own, because the agency
is a recruitment specialist. They know where to find
people, understand the local labour market and salary
trends, and already have databases of potential
candidates. Further, if the firm doesn’t want competitors
to know they are hiring (it may signal a strategic move),
the agency can serve as an intermediary without making
public which organisation is seeking what kind of
employees. Agencies claim that they are actually more
economical than “doing it yourself” despite their fees,
because so much managerial time is saved and
candidates are appointed more quickly.

15. 15
PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES
Are employment agencies always more efficient and economical than doing your own recruiting?
A Case Example. A friend of mine was Senior Vice President – HR at a large national homebuilding company in the
US. The firm had grown rapidly by acquiring other home builders. When she was hired, there was no workforce
planning and there were many unfilled jobs for construction superintendents, architects, accountants, and other
roles critical to success of business. She ran forecasts showing that the company needed to hire 300-500
professionals in these occupations each year for next three years. The company had no internal recruiting
expertise so had been using agencies to fill most of these positions, at a cost of 20-30% of first year salary per hire.
She put a case to the CEO to hire four full time recruiters, at a salary of $75,000 each. Each one would fill 75-100
jobs per year. She placed one recruiter in each major market across the country (East Coast, Midwest, etc.). Also,
she arranged for each one to specialise in a different class of jobs, e.g. architects, so they could supply expertise to
the other recruiters when needed and manage the company’s liaison with the relevant profession. She calculated
the cost savings to the company of employing four in-house recruiters at $300,000 vs paying a search firm for each
and every hire, and it was millions of dollars annually. As the company grew faster, she went back to CEO with
updated forecasts and they hired more recruiters, eventually having thirteen. So using an employment agency isn’t
always better than doing recruitment yourself. However, she still used a specialised executive search firm when
needed for one off senior roles.
Click on the logo to the right to read in detail about the
services offered by one local recruitment agency, New Point
Recruitment. Note the four kinds of packages offered to
employers, prices, and the services associated with each.

16. 16
EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRMS
Executive search firms are used to find higher level managers and professionals
Executive Search Firms are also known as head hunters. They
are hired by companies with vacancies for upper level
professionals and managers. They are particularly expert at
searching for passive candidates and pride themselves on
having great networks and search skills to find the right
people. They directly approach individuals thought to be well
qualified and try to interest them in applying for the job.
If a head hunter calls you, tells you about a job, and asks “can
you recommend anyone?” they really mean “are you
interested?” so feel free to mention yourself. Or if you aren’t
interested they’d be happy for you to suggest others who may
fit the role.
Search firms produce a slate of candidates for the employer to
assess. They may assist with assessment, salary negotiation,
and relocation as well. They clearly regard the employer as
their client, not the job seeker. Executive search firms are
usually are paid their search fee, or retainer, whether or not
there is a successful hire from among the candidates they
found, hence they are also known as retained search firms.
Fees can be 20-33% of total first year compensation, including
bonuses, so they are quite expensive. They also can keep the
identity of the hiring firm confidential until later in the search.
Some of the largest executive search firms in the world are
Korn Ferry International, Egon Zehnder, and Heidrick and
Struggles. All have offices in Australia. Their names are
hyperlinked to their home page if case you want to
investigate them further (optional).

17. 17
NETWORKING AND SOCIAL MEDIA
It’s hard to get reliable data, but suggestions are that most people get their jobs
through personal contacts and networking. One source says that eighty percent of
available jobs are never advertised. Instead, candidates find out about job openings
via networking, proactively approaching organisations, and referrals. This is the
hidden, informal job market. Personal networking has always been important in
finding jobs and job candidates, but is even more impactful today. The availability of
social media has accelerated the ability of both job seekers and companies to find
each other and offers companies new ways to leverage their and their employees’
contacts to reach out to potential new hires.
It’s been said that the best people and the best jobs find each other in the informal labour market.
HOMEWORK ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN RECRUITMENT*
Due by midnight Monday Feb 13th. Answer the two questions below.
1. Your company is not making much use of social media for recruitment. Your boss has asked you to find
out how social media can be used to locate and attract good candidates. Find and read or watch at least
three useful articles and/or videos about how companies are using social media for recruitment. Prepare a
summary for her, in your own words, which integrates what you have learned about how social media can
be used effectively in recruitment. Include the urls of your sources in your answer.
2. How can you apply what you have learned about social media recruitment to accelerate your own job
search as you approach graduation?
*Note that the homework is about Recruitment – finding, attracting, and informing candidates of your
openings, NOT Selection (evaluating candidates).

18. 18
EMPLOYEE REFERRAL
Companies should cultivate networks through which to informally disseminate word
about jobs they are trying to fill and encourage knowledgeable others to spread the
word to likely candidates. For instance, companies may build networks with professors
or former employees and ask that they refer particularly promising individuals.
A special case of networking is having an employee referral program to encourage and
sometimes reward employees for referring people who they think would be good hires.
After all, a company’s own employees know what kinds of people the company needs
and who will fit in. To preserve their own reputation, they won’t refer candidates who
they don’t think will succeed, and they are likely to provide a realistic job preview as well
as informal mentoring to friends who are hired following their referral. Note that
candidates referred by employees should still go through all the same selection steps
(interview, testing, additional reference checks, etc.) as those who apply via other
methods.
Your employees may be your best recruiters
Employee referrals are inexpensive and effective. One expert suggests that up to 70% of job
vacancies may be filled through employee referral if the referral program is correctly designed
and funded. Effective programs make sure that employees KNOW what job openings are
available and are frequently asked to refer candidates. Employees should get feedback about
their referrals (so-and-so was hired, so-and-so did not quite make the cut). It must be easy to
refer and there must be a system to keep track of who has referred whom, especially if
bonuses are to be paid. While not all companies pay bonuses, it’s not uncommon to offer cash
for successful referrals. These may include part of the bonus upon hiring and another payment
if the person is still employed and doing well after three to six months. Bonuses and publicity
really make these systems work. There does need to be some budget for this, though the cost
per hire is still likely to be half what it would cost to fill the role without referral.
The only drawback is that referral may not support goals to increase workforce diversity if your
current employees mainly know others that are similar to themselves. For Equal Opportunity
purposes, formal means of recruitment (like advertising) are also usually used.
Click the picture above to watch a
video about groupon’s employee
referral program.
Click the picture above to read 20
tips for an effective employee
referral program.

19. 19
THE APPLICANT’S POINT OF VIEW
Before potential applicants can apply, they first need to be aware that your
company exists, become interested in it as a potential employer, and find out
about a job that may suit them. The company’s overall reputation, employer
branding, and specific recruitment efforts are critical in these stages. If they
apply and make it through the first cut, candidates need to stay interested and
patient throughout the several steps in the selection process, not take a job
elsewhere or lose interest before an offer is made, and ultimately decide to
accept your offer.
Applicants often interpret the way they are treated in the recruitment and
selection processes as proxies for the way the company will treat them later as
employees. Therefore, it is important to treat applicants well and fairly. That is,
respond quickly to acknowledge receipt of applications, keep candidates well
informed of next step and timeline (e.g., video interviews will be conducted early
next month, followed by site visits for short-listed candidates…), respond politely
to their queries, assure that they speak to recruiters or hiring managers who are
professional in demeanour and well informed, and try to build personal
relationships with promising candidates to increase the likelihood of eventual
offer acceptance. Even after the offer is accepted, a percentage of new hires
change their minds and never show up to begin work. Be sure to continue to
nurture the relationship during this critical time, then greet them with effective
orientation and “on-boarding” on arrival.
Applicants make decisions too – about applying, sticking it out through the selection
process, accepting job offers, and staying after hire

20. THE REALISTIC JOB PREVIEW
20
During the recruitment process, it is important not to mislead candidates about the job or company.
You want to establish an accurate Psychological Contract so that the candidate is not disappointed later.
Sometimes companies intentionally give candidates a Realistic Job Preview (RJP) during the recruitment
process by telling them the good, the bad, and the ugly of the job. This can be done by video, work
sample, brochure, or in the interview. It is done in an effort to allow candidates who wouldn’t like
aspects of the job to “self-select” out and decline the offer rather than becoming costly performance
problems or early turnover statistics. Those who accept the job with their eyes wide open are (slightly)
less likely to quit when the going gets tough and will be more mentally prepared to cope with challenges
on the job.
Optional Resources on the RJP:
Click here for a brief introduction to the
realistic job preview. Click the picture to
the left to read more detailed advice on
how and why to use RJPs, and click the
picture to the right to watch a sample RJP
video for the job of phlebotomist.