The Roles of Employee Selection and Training in Capacity Development

The Roles of Employee Selection and Training in Capacity Development

According to Al-Kassem (2017), recruitment is the process of selecting or discovering, and hiring the most qualified candidate from within or outside an organization for a vacant job opportunity. The recruitment process includes examining work requirements, drawing employees to the vacant job position, selecting and screening candidates who apply, and coordinating and contracting new employees to fill the position. Human resource management is in charge of the recruitment process and ensuring that the selected candidate has the knowledge and skills needed to meet the organization’s needs.

The Characteristics Sought by Recruiters

Recruitment is indeed the main function of the human resource management department and the first step towards creating competitive quality and strategic advantage for an organization. Selection, on the other hand, is a progression of steps taken after picking a suitable employee for a vacant position. The process starts after recruitment and divides competitors into two sections: candidates who will be given the job and those who will be disqualified. It also considers evaluating an employee’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The main characteristics sought by recruiters are discussed below.

• Strengths

One of the strengths that recruiters look for is education. The review of a candidate’s educational background to determine whether it fits the job position advertised based on the knowledge the course equips the individual with. For instance, an organization looking for a finance manager will look for candidates with a master’s degree, bachelor’s degree, or diploma in financial management courses such as accounting, financial risk management, and cost management accounting. The second strength is work experience. Recruiters review a candidate’s work experience and determine whether it meets the required level to fill a specific vacant position. In most cases, recruiting for capacity requires an individual with a lot of experience in the vacant position. Recruiters may also prefer an individual who has worked in different companies rather than a person who has only worked for one company for a long time. The reason for considering the former is due to the fact that different organizations expose employees to different work environments enabling them to enhance their skills and capabilities and encounter different challenges that make them perform better at their work.

The third strength involves having good networking contacts. Recruiters access an individual’s ability to get good contacts based on memberships and extracurricular activities. An individual who is active in various extracurricular activities such as attending workshops and seminars has a high likelihood of being hired when recruiting for capacity because they can leverage the networks to help the organization grow and meet its goals. Membership also indicates that individuals have access to different people within their field hence further enhancing the network required to improve organizational performance.

The fourth strength is technical expertise to handle the tasks in the vacant job position. The fifth strength is personal characteristics such as proper time management, good leadership skills, and innovativeness. Recruiters may look for specific personal characteristics that facilitate capacity development so that they can leverage them to build the organization’s capacity. The sixth strength is transferrable skills. According to Milos (2019), transferrable skills are skills developed as an individual progresses through training, education, or employment. They include teamwork, problem-solving, and communication skills. Recruiters may look for specific transferrable skills required to fill the vacant job position. For instance, if the vacant position requires a project manager, recruiters may look for project management skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills, and leadership skills.

• Weaknesses

One of the weaknesses recruiters look for when recruiting for capacity is limited education or having the wrong major. The second weakness is a lack of experience in the vacant job position. A person may have the required education but lack experience in that field, particularly if their previous work positions do not relate to their major or education. The third weakness is negative personal characteristics. In most cases, recruiters may request a candidate to list their weaknesses to determine any negative personal characteristics such as being unable to work under pressure and poor time management.

The fourth weakness is limited technical knowledge. This weakness often arises if an individual does not have experience in handling technical aspects of the vacant job position. The fifth weakness is weak interpersonal skills. Recruiters may deny a job opportunity to candidates with weak interpersonal skills because such an individual would not be able to work with other employees as a team ad may create unnecessary conflicts in the workplace.

• Opportunities

One of the opportunities recruiters consider when recruiting for capacity is a candidate’s ability to relocate. In most instances, recruiters may pick a flexible candidate to relocate to any region because it would be easier to move the candidate to any branch, especially if the organization operates in different regions. A flexible employee also makes it easier for the organization to expand to new markets without recruiting other employees without experience working for the organization. The second opportunity is a positive trend in an individual’s field. Recruiters may recruit a candidate with expertise in a field with positive trends such as technological advancement to enhance organizational performance. The third opportunity is the ability to enhance personal development. Recruiters access a candidate’s ability to enhance personal development based on their extracurricular activities such as volunteering and sports and any short courses they may be taking, such as short leadership courses.

The fourth opportunity is the ability to use skills in different ways. Recruiters access a candidate’s work experience and activities they may be engaging in outside their work environment to determine how they use their skills in different ways. For instance, recruiters hiring a healthcare provider may look for activities such as volunteering to vaccinate people and creating awareness on the prevalence of Covid-19 and preventive measures to reduce the risk of infection. The fifth opportunity is an individual’s ability to strengthen their network based on their extracurricular activities and memberships.

• Threats

The main threats that recruiters look for during the recruitment process are competition in a candidate’s field and increased demand for an individual’s knowledge, skills, and capabilities. High competition implies that recruiters need to hire individuals they can afford to retain because they may be offered a better deal. Highly competitive job positions may also force organizations to introduce additional benefits and incentives to enhance employee retention (Dixon & Flannery, 2018). The second threat is negative trends in a candidate’s field, such as replacing human labor with machines. Recruiters need to ensure that they do not incur high costs in maintaining an employee whose role may soon be replaced by machines. Therefore, they may hire an individual with limited work experience or education to ensure that they have higher bargaining power when discussing compensation. The third threat is limited ability to develop. Recruiters prefer individuals who can easily be mentored by considering their age and flexibility.

The Concept of Capacity Building

According to Ubels & Acquaye (2010), capacity is the ability of institutions, humans, and societies to perform successfully, identify what they intend to achieve, and make necessary changes for advancement and sustainability purposes. Organizations strive to achieve capacity through various capacity development approaches. Analoui & Danquah (2016) define capacity development as a dynamic endogenous process that relies on individual motivation, perseverance, and effort to learn and progress, enabling an organization to grow, flourish, and change. Some researchers define capacity development as capacity building, which is the process of developing and strengthening abilities, skills, procedures, and resources that an organization requires to remain competitive or survive in a dynamic business environment.

According to Fanany et al. (2010), capacity building is also the process that focuses on facilitating combined individual competencies or capacities, in an organization or a group to enable them to change and adapt to changing or new business environments to remain competitive. Fu & Frempong (2019) argue that capacity building is also planned development aimed at increasing management skills, knowledge, output rate, and other capacities in an organization through technology, training, and acquiring experts. Some of the primary capacities required to improve growth include knowledge networking and leadership development capacities.

New competencies, skills, and training are also important aspects that an organization needs to acquire for effective capacity development. Thus capacity building gives organizations opportunities to grow or acquire technical competencies and capacities necessary for organizational and performance development. The effectiveness of organizational development relies on an organization’s capabilities, capacities, and competencies needed to compete with other organizations in the same industry favorably. Christens (2019) argues that organizational development can also be viewed based on an organization’s ability to increase functional abilities to achieve desired objectives and goals for internal and external stakeholders. This is achieved by using technology adaptations, increasing the quantity and quality of staff, and increasing knowledge and strategic information developed by the organization.

Importance Of Employee Selection and Training

Employee selection and training are important in developing the quality of capacity in an organization because it aligns performance management techniques with HRM practices. According to Borate & Borate (2014), well-managed and effective training and development programs help organizations retain their human resources, including those that have been part of an organization’s workforce for a long time. Organizations are investing in training and development to improve their workforce’s skills and capabilities, which in turn increases their productivity and efficiency. There is, however, a need to set enough resources to implement training and development programs because they include a continuous process that is adjusted based on changes in the needs of an organization. Capacity development through training and development gives employees an opportunity to maximize their abilities and perform better. It is also important for organizations to conduct proper assessments to determine the skills and capabilities of their employees to determine areas of improvement and design an effective capacity-building program. Employee recruitment also plays a significant role in building an organization’s capacity by ensuring that the selected candidates have the knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed to develop an organization’s capacity.

References

Al-Kassem, A. H. (2017). Recruitment and selection practices in the business process outsourcing industry. Archives of Business Research, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.14738/abr.53.2180

Analoui, F., & Danquah, J. K. (2016). Capacity development in the context of development: A critical debate. Critical Capacity Development, 29-41. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47416-8_3

Borate, N. S., & Borate, S. L. (2014). A case study approach for evaluation of employee training effectiveness and development program. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2486212

Christens, B. D. (2019). Organizational development. Community Power and Empowerment, 91-122. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190605582.003.0005

Dixon, W. E., & Flannery, T. P. (2018). Retention incentives: An emerging strategy in today’s tax-exempt organization. Compensation & Benefits Review, 50(2), 114-118. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886368719840903

Fanany, I., Fanany, R., & Kenny, S. (2010). Capacity building in Indonesia: Building what capacity? Challenging Capacity Building, 156-184. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230298057_8

Fu, X., & Frempong, G. K. (2019). Multinationals, local capacity building, and development: The role of Chinese and European Mnes.

Milos, D. (2019). Embedding transferrable skills into a higher degree by research candidature. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, 10(3), 173-179. https://doi.org/10.1108/sgpe-04-2019-0046

Ubels, F. J., & Acquaye, B. N. (2010). A Resource Volume on Capacity Development. London prentice Hill publisher.

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When you consider capacity practically, you realize quickly this key element must contain employees skilled in the implementation of the capacity utilized by the organization. Implementation involves the appropriate application of judgment in the use of the technological and other means of creating and accessing the goods and services to be delivered to the clients/customers served. Such knowledge necessitates the hiring and development of employees suited for the creation and delivery of the products provided by the firm.

The skill level of persons hired to provide implementation depends upon the goods and services provided by the organization. For example, if an organization rebuilds classic automobiles, a major part of the creation of the product is hiring and maintaining highly skilled engine and transmission technologists. If an individual hired for such work has a history of successfully doing this work, he or she can begin to assist in making decisions about parts to be ordered, processes to utilize, and rebuilding and installing engines and transmissions when hired. This person should become profitable for the firm quickly. The alternative is to hire a capable, but untrained individual who will become profitable to the firm as he or she learns the parts needed and methods to use in producing the product, a rebuilt automobile.

In this week’s assignment, you will research the importance of thoughtful employee selection when considering candidates to work in the development of the organization’s capacity. You will also focus on the key activity of training and development of capacity personnel, to develop precision and a high sense of quality in the creation and transmission of an organization’s goods and services. This research will provide you with further understanding of the value of capacity from the point of personnel recruitment, through thorough training, to the point of delivery of goods and/or service to the end-user, the customer. Such understanding is a key component of what is known as resource management.

For this assignment, write a paper that describes your research, and includes a SWOT analysis of the characteristics sought by recruiters. Support this assignment with a minimum of 5 scholarly resources. Other appropriate resources may be used as needed.

To complete this assignment, be sure to address the following:

Research the importance of employee selection and training in the development of the quality of capacity in an organization.
Express how, from your research, you have gained further insight into the active meaning of capacity.
Carefully research the peer-reviewed sources to examine recruiting for capacity.
Make careful note of characteristics sought by recruiters for personnel to implement capacity. Employee selection for capacity positions demonstrates the course concept of system, process, and procedural improvement.
Length: 5-7 pages (including a SWOT analysis on page 1) not including title and reference pages