One of the key functions of HR is to help the company select and recruit candidates fit for the open positions. Though HR works in different areas including employee engagement and development, data management, and statutory compliance, among others, employee recruitment and selection is one of its key responsibilities.
Recruitment and Selection – What’s the Difference?
Recruitment is the process where prospective applicants are searched for. Once found, they are encouraged to apply for a position that has been vacant or is anticipated to be vacant sometime soon.
Selection refers to the process of hiring employees from the shortlisted pool of candidates and offering them a job in the company.
Recruitment is comparatively simpler as the process doesn’t demand the recruiter to pay a lot of attention to analyse individual candidates, unlike selection where candidates are thoroughly tested. That’s because the goal of recruiters in charge of the selection process is to learn every tiny detail about each candidate that’s relevant to the open position, so they can select the best fit.
Since recruitment involves identifying what a specific open position needs and persuading candidates to apply for them, it’s not as economically demanding and lengthy as selection. As selection encompasses an array of activities that can be both expensive and time-consuming, it usually takes longer than recruitment.
In recruitment, various modes of communication are used to promote the position that has fallen vacant to entice candidates into applying for it. These communication modes could include newspapers, TV ads, magazines, online ads on job boards, posts on various social media channels, etc. In contrast, selection typically includes assessment processes spread across multiple stages, such as form submissions, interviews, written examinations, etc.
Despite their differences, both recruitment and selection are crucial for your company. It’s important to remember thatyour company’s success depends on its employees. When you onboard an employee who’s well suited for the job and aligns well with the company’s culture, your company can enjoy multiple benefits. Even the employee will thrive, provided your HR has chosen the right candidate for the right position.
To ensure the hiring process and its subsequent results are a win-win for both your company and the employee, it pays to understand how recruitment is different from selection. When you have a clear idea about the difference between recruitment and selection, you will be able to hire the best-fit candidates and help your company reduce losses triggered by bad hires while setting it on the path to unbeatable success.
What Is Recruitment and Selection in Human Resource Management?
Be it talent acquisition or selection of the right candidate from a talent pool, choosing the most apt candidate involves thorough planning and strategic action. Be it writing a crisp and clear job description and advertising the open position to gathering all candidate resumes, screening them to shortlist a few, conducting interviews and assessments to select a few, and finally, giving them the offer letter, a lot goes on during the entire process.
Though the exact processes can vary based on the type of recruitment (internal vs. external), the importance of having an unbiased and streamlined process can’t be overlooked. You should also focus on strategic recruitment and selection.
Not sure what is strategic recruitment and selection? To bring the best talent based into the fold, your company’s HR needs to focus on three factors, namely recruitment-directed marketing, employer branding, and skilled selling. When combined, these factors generate effective responses to dynamic market conditions, thus offering solid support to your company’s strategic objectives.
If your HR is overburdened or you don’t have a dedicated HR team in your company, you can outsource your recruitment process to avoid positions staying vacant for long. Opting for RPO can be a prudent decision for your company as it helps you steer clear of compromising your business agility and feeling stressed over talent acquisition.
Final Words
Recruitment precedes the selection process. The objective of recruitment is to invite or get more candidates to apply for open positions to boost the applicant talent pool. The goal of selection is to choose the best fit candidate for a vacant position and offer the individual an appointment letter while rejecting the rest.
It’s vital to thoroughly understand the difference between recruitment and selection to ensure your company chooses new employees the right way who’ll stay for the long term and contribute to business sustainability and growth.
This article was written by InHunt World