Recruitment and selection are considered as two distinct phases with specific methods for HR professionals. This article has specified the advantages and disadvantages of different recruitment and selection methods. Employee retention highly depends on the effectiveness of the primary steps of recruitment and selection methods. The hiring manager or HR manager should have appropriate knowledge of the techniques of recruitment and selection. Otherwise, the right candidates may not be selected.

Recruitment and Selection Methods

The term “recruitment” refers to the first stage in the process of filling the vacancies in an organization by encouraging them to apply for the published position.

Selection is the process of cutting out unsuitable candidates and finally choosing the most suitable person for the position from all the applicants. Mostly, an interview is conducted to evaluate the candidates for the specified job.

Types of Recruitment Methods

There are habitually two types of recruitment processes from which any organization can select a potential candidate for the position. Both the internal and external recruitment processes are described below:

1) Internal Recruitment

Through internal recruitment, a vacancy may be filled by a person who is already working in another position, section, or department at the company. This may help internal employees to get an opportunity for transfer or promotion. Actions that may be required for the internal recruitment method are: distributing announcements for the opening position changes and searching an organizational database for the competent candidate with the skills required to perform the job.

2) External Recruitment

This involves the feeling of a vacancy from a source outside the organization. The sources may include the following:

Employment agencies
Recruitment consultants
Advertisements in newspaper
Advertisements in job-site
Posting of vacancies on companies’ websites
Local school, college, and university.

Advantages of Internal Recruitment

The advantages of internal transfer or promotion can be mentioned below:

This leads to greater job satisfaction and employee motivation among the employee.
The manager may easily conduct a transfer or promote an internal employee as his potential is already known to him. He may not follow the whole process of recruitment.
The induction training period may be shorter than the new candidate.

Disadvantages of Internal Recruitment

However, there might be certain disadvantages of internal recruitment as below:

The organization will lose the opportunity of getting new employees with new ideas and innovation.
Other employees may feel jealous and are not considered for the internal position and resentment. He may not cooperate properly with the selected one.

Advantages of External Recruitment

Organizations can select qualified or competent personnel by attracting them through an open circular of the vacancy. Recruitment through external sources may offer a much wider scope for selection from a big number of qualified candidates to the recruiter.
Recruiters can choose a perfect candidate from a larger number of people because of advertisements in multiple places.
Recruiters can pick new talents from external sources which helps to improve the overall functionality of the organization by adopting new ideas.
Competitive spirit increases due to capturing external sources of employees in the organization.

Disadvantages of External Recruitment

Discontent and frustration increase among the existing staff and they may feel that the chances of promotion are lean.
The lead time of external recruitment is generally long.
The external recruitment process is very expensive. Because companies have to spend a lot of money on advertisement and in other parts of the recruitment process.
Uncertainty of external applicants with the venture and there is no guarantee that the venture will be able to attract the right candidate.

The recruitment and selection methods required a high level of analysis and planning considering the effectiveness and efficiency.

Difference between Recruitment and Selection

RECRUITMENT	SELECTION
1. Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating and encouraging them to apply for jobs in an organization.	1. Selection is the process of weeding out unsuitable candidates and finally choosing the most suitable persons out of all the applicants.
2. Recruitment is positive as it aims at increasing the number of applicants for wider choice or for increasing the selection ratio.	2. Selection is negative as it rejects a large number of applicants to identify the few who are suitable for the job.
3. Recruitment involves prospecting or searching for candidates.	3. Selection involves comparison.
4. It is a positive approach.	4. It is a negative approach.
5. It proceeds with selection.	5. It follows recruitment.
6. It is an economical method.	6. It is an expensive method.
7. It is a simple process.	7. It is a complicated process.

Table: Difference between recruitment and selection

Control in Recruitment and Selection Methods

Evaluation and controls are required to minimize the cost of the recruitment and selection process. The costs generally happened for-

Salary of recruiters.
Cost of advertisement
Cost for producing supporting literature.
Fees for a recruitment agency
Supporting management staff’s salary who works in the background of recruitment and selection process.
Administrative cost
Cost of recruiting a suitable candidate

Recruiters should keep a sharp eye on the above costing sections if they want to reduce recruiting costs ever.

Evaluation of Recruitment and Selection Process

Recruitment and Selection methods go through selective approaches to achieve ultimate objectives and the KPI of the HR Manager. The evaluation of the Recruitment and Selection process might include below things:

The return rate of applications sent out.
The number of shortlisted candidates at various stages of the recruitment and selection process.
The number of suitable candidates for selection.
Retention and performance rate of the selected candidate.

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