Recruitment and Selection Ireland

Journal of Management Development 17,9 662

In search of good fit: policy and practice in recruitment and selection in Ireland
Department of Personnel and Employment Relations, College of Business, University of Limerick, Ireland
Introduction The focus of recruitment and selection is on matching the capabilities and inclinations of prospective candidates against the demands and rewards inherent in a given job (Herriot, 1989; Montgomery, 1996; Plumbley, 1985). Recruitment and selection lie at the heart of how businesses procure human resources required to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals (Aaker, 1989; Jackson et al., 1989; Pettigrew et al., 1988; Raghuram and Arvey, 1996; Walker, 1992) and hence staffing positions, especially managerial posts, in organisations may well represent one of the most important human resource management functions (Judge and Ferris, 1994). Plumbley (1985) suggests that the profitability and even the survival of an enterprise usually depends upon the calibre of the workforce and it has been argued that the costs of ineffectual commercial viability can often be attributed to decades of ineffective recruitment and selection methods (Lewis, 1984; Plumbley, 1985; Smith and Robertson, 1993; Terpstra, 1996). In this paper we review contemporary thinking on recruitment and selection in organisations and, drawing upon Irish data from the 1992 and 1995 Cranet E survey[1], we explore the nature of current recruitment and selection practices in Ireland with particular reference to managerial jobs. In relation to recruitment, policy decisions are examined, recruitment methods are reviewed, and the influence of ownership, size, unionisation and sector on the methods chosen is presented. In relation to selection, the techniques employed are identified and the situations in which they are most likely to be utilised are highlighted. The changing context of recruitment and selection decisions Much of the recent literature on

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