- Internal Sources
The first decision in recruitment is to determine whether to promote someone from within the organization or recruit from outside.
Internal recruitment has the advantage of enhancing employee morale. Other advantages include;
The organization has a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of its employees and this reduces chances of making the wrong decision.
Employees know about the organization and how it operates, this reduces the chances of an employee having inaccurate expectations and therefore becoming dissatisfied
Internal recruitment makes full use of the abilities of the organization’s employees and this improves the organization’s returns on its investments on its workforce.
Internal recruitment can be a powerful employee retention strategy
It can however have a number of disadvantages which include;
Disadvantage of inbreeding and stagnation of ideas. New blood can bring new ideas which an organization may need to grow and become innovative.
Infightings for promotions can become overly intense and have a negative effect on the morale and performance of people who are not promoted.
Heavy reliance on internal sources can also perpetuate racial, gender, tribal and age composition of the workforce.
A balance between internal and external recruitment works best for any organization
- External Sources
Organizations have at their disposal a wide range of external sources for recruiting personnel.
Examples of external recruitment include:-
- Job advertising commonly placed in daily newspaper.
- Recruitment agents and bureaus.
- Employee referrals
- Walk in interviews mostly for casual jobs
- Unsolicited application letters
- College/Campus recruiting
- Executive recruitment firms/ head hunters e.g Hawkins & Association
- Social Media e.g Face book, Linkedin
- Online/Internet based recruitments firms e,g career point
- Company web site
- Electronic media e.g TV, Radio etc.
Advantages
One advantage of recruiting from outside is that the pool of talent is much larger than that available from within.
It is often easier and cheaper to hire highly technical, skilled or managerial people from outside rather than training and developing them internally, especially when an organizational has an immediate demand for the type of talent.
Disadvantages
Attracting, contacting and evaluating potential employees can be a very demanding and difficult task.
Employees hired from outside need a longer adjustment or orientation period.
Recruiting from outside may cause morale problems among people within the organization who feel qualified to do the jobs
Several theories have been advanced to explain why internal sources of recruitment are more advantageous than external ones. .
The first theory suggests that applicants from within the organization receive more accurate information about the job than employees recruited through other methods.
Another theory postulates that differences in the effectiveness of recruitment source are a result of different recruitment sources reaching and being used by different types of applicants. Internal applicants are able to get information about vacancies much faster
A third theory has its roots in literature on interpersonal attractions which indicates that people tend to be attracted to those who are similar to themselves. It follows then that an employee recommending another for a job is likely to choose a person similar to him/her.
Supporting research found that long tenure employees referred applicants who also tended to stay long on the job..
The fourth theory is based on the concept of realistic job previews.
Realistic job previews involve giving an applicant an honest assessment of a job because they know what to expect, informed applicants will tend to stay on the job longer than applicants who did not understand the nature of the job.
