Sources and techniques of recruitment and assessing the programme

1. Internal sources

• Promotion — moving an employee to a higher post with more pay, status and responsibility.
• Transfer — moving an employee to a similar post elsewhere, without change of pay or status.
• Internal job posting — advertising vacancies on notice boards or the intranet so that existing staff may apply.
• Employee referrals — staff recommend friends and relatives, often for a referral bonus. (Some books treat referrals as external, since the candidate is an outsider.)
• Former employees — rehiring retired staff, those who left in good standing (“boomerang” hires), or retrenched workmen. Retrenched workmen have a statutory preference for re-employment under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.
• Dependants of deceased or disabled employees — compassionate appointment, common in the public sector.

Merits of internal sources

1. Motivate employees, who see a chance of advancement; morale and loyalty rise.
2. The employer knows the candidate’s record, so the risk of a wrong choice is low.
3. Economical: little or no advertising or agency cost.
4. Quick; vacancies are filled without a long process.
5. Less induction and training, since the candidate knows the organisation.
6. Encourage employees to stay and to train themselves for promotion.
7. Unions prefer it; it supports good industrial relations.

Demerits of internal sources

1. Limited choice: the best person may be outside.
2. “Inbreeding”: no fresh ideas or outside experience.
3. Those passed over may resent the promoted colleague; favouritism may be alleged.
4. Promotion by seniority may put a less able person in the post.
5. Every promotion or transfer creates another vacancy (a chain of movement).
6. Unsuitable for new skills, new businesses or rapid expansion.

2. External sources

Merits: wide choice; new blood and ideas; skills not available internally; meets large requirements; reservation and diversity goals can be met. Demerits: costly and time-consuming; unknown candidate, so higher risk; demotivates existing staff; longer induction; recruits may leave if the job does not meet expectations.

3. Techniques of recruitment

Dunn and Stephens classify the methods as direct, indirect and third-party. Techniques are the means used to stimulate applications.

• Direct methods — recruiters go to the candidates: campus visits, job fairs, recruitment stalls.
• Indirect methods — advertising in newspapers, journals, radio, television, websites.
• Third-party methods — employment exchanges, private agencies, search firms, educational institutions, unions.

Modern sources and techniques

1. E-recruitment — the company’s careers page and online job portals, with applications received and tracked electronically.
2. Social media recruiting — professional networking sites and other platforms to advertise and to search for passive candidates.
3. Applicant tracking systems and AI screening — software that ranks CVs against the job specification.
4. Video and virtual interviews and online tests.
5. Employee referral programmes with bonuses.
6. Walk-in and walk-through interviews — candidates appear without appointment; or are shown the work and interviewed informally.
7. Head hunting and poaching.
8. Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) — an outside firm runs the whole process.
9. Internships leading to pre-placement offers.
10. Gamification and hackathons — contests that test skill and attract applicants.
11. Employer branding — building a reputation as a good place to work.

Current practices in recruitment (January 2025 short note) is answered from this list: stress e-recruitment, referrals, AI screening, campus and internship hiring, outsourcing, contract and fixed-term hiring, and attention to diversity.

4. Assessment of the recruitment programme

The syllabus asks how a recruitment programme is evaluated. The measures:

• Yield ratios — the proportion of candidates moving from one stage to the next, by source.
• Cost per hire — total recruitment cost divided by the number hired.
• Time to fill — days from vacancy to joining.
• Quality of hire — performance ratings and retention of recruits after six months or a year.
• Source effectiveness — which source yields the best recruits at the lowest cost.
• Offer acceptance rate and candidate feedback.
• Compliance — whether legal and diversity requirements were met.

Worked example: yield ratios

A company advertised for management trainees. Total recruitment cost was Rs. 3,00,000.

Overall yield = 10 ÷ 1,000 = 1 in 100. Cost per hire = Rs. 3,00,000 ÷ 10 = Rs. 30,000. If next year the company needs 20 trainees and the ratios hold, it must attract about 20 × 100 = 2,000 applications. This is how recruitment planning uses yield ratios.

How this is examined

“Define recruitment. Explain the merits and demerits of internal sources of recruitment” (January 2026 100-mark paper, Q.7, 16 marks); “Explain the different sources of recruitment” and “Explain the recruitment techniques” (August 2024, 10 marks). Short notes: techniques of recruitment and current practices in recruitment (January 2025), recruitment practices (January 2026, Q.8(b)). The assessment of a recruitment programme has not been set alone recently, but the yield-ratio table strengthens any process answer.