Roles in Recruitment Process

HR Manager Interview in Hifab Gruppen AB

Group 5 Xin Guo (860324-7084) Tarza Salah (850510-1306) November 23, 2010

Roles in Recruitment Process

Human Resource Manager Interview

1.

Introduction

The recruitment process is the most critical function in human resource management. Most of theoretical researches are focusing on different strategies in recruiting employees. In our empirical case, we found out that the activities of different players in recruitment process are more interesting to be discussed, although we formulated the interview questions to focus on different steps in recruitment process in the beginning. The empirical case is based on the interview with the human resource director in Hifab Gruppen AB. Hifab Gruppen AB is one of the biggest project management consulting companies in Sweden. The customers of Hifab are mainly from construction industry and energy industry. The projects consulted by Hifab also include reconstruction of KTH main library from 2000 to 2002. [3] This report mainly discusses about different roles including line managers, HR specialists and human resource consulting companies in recruitment process from theoretical as well as empirical perspectives. However, we are not covering the discussion about candidates in this report.One of the most interesting findings in the empirical case is that the importance of the line managers is more and more significant in recruitment process. In Hifab AB, line managers are key interviewers and decision makers in recruitment. Therefore, we think it is important to involve more knowledge and skills of human resource management in training of line managers if they are main decision makers in recruitment as Hifab AB.

2. Theoretical Background
The recruitment process is critical for every organization since human recourse is one of the most important elements in an organization or a company. There are many reasons when an organization needs to launch recruitment. For example, a current employee quits, his/her position will become vacant and this post should be replaced by a new employee. Besides, skill shortage is another reason for an organization to implement recruitment. The aims of recruitment are to obtain suitable candidates for vacant posts in order to improve organizational performance. According to Foot and Hook [1], there are many roles are usually involved in a recruitment process. First one is HR manager, who is an organizer in the whole recruitment process. Before launching a recruitment process, the HR manager should assess if the vacant post should be covered in an organization with the other important role, a line manager. In preparation of the recruitment including job description and job advertisement, a line manager is usually responsible for the job description. But when a line manager formulates a job description, he/she normally needs to decide the person specifications with the third player, post holder. The reason is that a post holder knows detail steps in a post better than a line manager. But sometimes a line manager or a post holder is reluctant to spend time to formulate a high-quality job description. So at this time a HR specialist is responsible for gathering information from the post holder and the line manager and formulating better job description and job advertisement in a company. Following preparation, the second part in recruitment process is selection in which most suitable candidates are picked based on their application information, such as CVs and cover letters. Since a line manager is familiar with the work that needs to be done and has more experience in evaluating a candidate, a line manager is still a key role in selection. But in some organizations, the first round screening is done by IT system when there are numbers of candidates. A face to face interview is the most popular and frequently used method of selection. In many cases, at least two interviewers should
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Roles in Recruitment Process

Human Resource Manager Interview

be involved in an interview to eliminate and avoid interviewer errors. Interviewers can be line managers, HR manager and specialists or other experienced managers in the company. However, interviewers preferably are trained people. IRS (2007)[2] indicates a trend in which line managers will take more responsibilities in selection. The third and last part in recruitment process is evaluation and decision making. In this part human resource specialists try to figure out some methods of supplementing the information gained during interviews, such as references, work sample test, psychological testing and so on. Line managers are found to be more and more vital in evaluation and decision making. Some traditional activities are transferred from HR specialists to line managers. In order to avoid subjective errors in evaluation, some methodologies, such as scoring and ranking, are introduced to help decision makers do the final selections. Moreover, the last role HR consulting companies are hired by many companies to recruit employees more efficient and effective.

3. Empirical Case: Hifab AB

The empirical case is about the recruitment process in Hifab AB, which is one of the biggest project management consulting companies based in Sweden. Lars Ander, who is the HR director in Hifab header office in Stockholm, was interviewed by us on Oct. 1st , 2010. During the interview, we mainly discussed about the recruitment process in Stockholm header office of Hifab AB. The interview questions (see Appendix) was designed to cover four main steps in a regular recruitment process, job formulation, screening, interview process, and candidate evaluation process. The interview started with a couple of questions about the company and the human resource organization in the company. As the HR director, Lars is working with other three colleagues in the human resource department in Hifabs headquarter office. He is mainly responsible for internet communication and coordination regarding to human resource management. Two categories of positions are usually involved in recruitment process in Hifab AB, project consultants and project managers. Most of project consultants are recruited directly by Hifab AB while project managers are normally recruited by human resource consulting companies which are temporarily hired by Hifab AB. The workflows of the recruitment process in Hifab have been standardized to guide line managers by HR department. Five main phases in the recruitment process can be demonstrated in following diagram (Table 1). By considering job specification needs and financial estimation, the first step is to assess the needs of vacant positions. In preparation phase, the profiles of suitable candidates are defined first. Job advertisement and selection of channels usually have done in this phase as well. Job description and requirements are usually formulated by line managers. However, the opinions of post holders are usually the most valuable references in this case. Most of job advertisements are formulated by human resource consulting companies, but line managers have the same responsibilities when hiring the specific consultants for their projects or departments. Line managers play the most important roles in following three phases. From selecting suitable applications to interviewing candidate and making final decisions, line managers are always key players in Hifab AB. As we mentioned, most of time line managers are responsible for recruiting project consultants rather than project managers. Project managers are externally hired by human resource consulting companies.
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Roles in Recruitment Process

Human Resource Manager Interview

1.Needs to recruit a jobshare

2. Preparation of the recruitment

-Suitable candidates -Advertisement: external media - Recruitment company

3.Selection

4.Interview

5.Final decision

-Job specification needs -Financial

-First meeting -Selection of applications -First contact -Take at least 2 references -Second meeting -Salary ect.

-Employment Condition -Contracting -Introduction

Aids: -Needs assessment -Job specification

Aids: To think of the advertising and selection

Aids: Compilation of candidates

Aids: -Interview Guide -Questionaire of the Interview

Aids: Forms are available in HR at "inside"

Table 1: The Standard Recruitment Process in Hifab AB [6] Moreover, when line managers are usually too busy to participate in recruitment, the responsibility will be transferred to those human resource consulting companies, Lars said so. The forms of the interviews are mostly face-to-face and sometimes telephone interviews are used as well. The average duration of the interview is 1 to 1.5 hours and at least two references should be involved in the interview. Besides line mangers, other experienced managers in the companies are also invited to be interviewers. Human resource specialists are usually not attending interviews in Hifab case. The open questions are mostly used by line mangers in the interviews. Lars, as a HR manager, who is also making the decisions of internal recruitment but he is not involved in the interviews. But in Hifab AB, Lars has another duty in which he is marketing the value of the company to employees. And other HR staffs are responsible for internal communication, external searching and recruitment process design.

4. Analysis
The aim of our interview is to get deeper insight of recruitment process, but we found the functions of different roles in their recruitment are more valuable to discuss in the Hifab case. Therefore, the analysis focuses on different roles who are involved in recruitment process. The importance of line managers is obviously in the Hifab case. From the theory framework, we can see that line managers are usually familiar with relevant technology and they understand which candidates are more suitable in existed teams. However, they usually need to listen to post holders when they are formulating the job description. In Hifab, they only recruit experienced talents, and line managers know how to evaluate how experienced those candidates are. But one problem as Lars mentioned, is that line managers usually dont have much time to work on recruitment. Therefore, human resource consulting companies are the other important players in Hifab case. Lars thinks hiring
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Roles in Recruitment Process

Human Resource Manager Interview

human resource consulting companies is the more efficient way to explore experienced talents they need. Although there could be more costly to hire consulting companies, the results usually satisfy the company. The responsibilities of human resource specialists in Hifab mainly include designing the recruitment process, deciding recruitment channel and coordinating recruitment process. However, as the HR director, Lars is also responsible for marketing the company image to employees. This is also a special heritage of Hifab AB. Employee branding and marketing is also a popular strategy used by many companies now. Since the most important customer value is fully fulfill the needs of the customers, Lars and his colleagues are doing efforts in influencing employees.

5. Conclusions
The roles of line managers are more and more important in not only recruitment process but also in other activities of human resource management. To involve line managers into recruitment process will help establish more efficient organization. Especially for Hifab those consulting companies, they usually need to hire experienced talents, so the decisions are usually made by managers who know how to evaluate candidates better. Moreover, line managers know about the needs of the team as well as technology better. But if a line manager has no knowledge about Human Resource management, and they are exactly the decision makers in recruitment process. It could be risky if they hire a wrong person in the organization, where organizational performance will be influenced a lot. So we think offering more human resource management training to line managers will be more and more important. Employee branding is also another valuable finding in the Hifab case. This is actually a key function of the human resource manager in Hifab. We believe this strategy will be involved more and more especially for service companies like Hifab. When every employee understands company image and value well, the organizational performance will be significantly improved.

6. References
[1]Foot, M and Hook, M . Fifth Edition, (2008), Introducing Human Resource Management, Prentice Hall/Financial Times [2]Industrial Relations Service (IRS), (2007), Determining the needs of the job, Employment Law Reference Manual [3]Annual Report of Hifab Gruppen AB, (2009), Hifab Gruppen AB [4]The Homepage of Hifab Gruppen AB. http://www.hifab.se. latest visited on Nov. 23rd, 2010 [5] The Interview of HR Director of Hifab AB, Lars Ander on Oct. 1st, 2010 [6] Internal materials offered by Human Resource Department in Hifab AB
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Roles in Recruitment Process

Human Resource Manager Interview

7. Appendix
Human resource management Interview Questions
Theme: Recruitment process (At the beginning of the interview, you can state which information cannot be involved in this interview, final report and presentation) Company profile and HR responsibilities 1. Can you give a short description of the company Hifab Gruppen AB? 2. Can you explain briefly about your responsibilities? 3. How is HR apartment structured in your company? Who are involved in recruitment processes in your company? 4. What are your main duties in recruitment processes? Job advertisement formulation 5. How to figure out the employment plan in your company? Who are the main decision makers? 6. Who are responsible in formulating the job advertisements? 7. How are job titles, major duties and requirements for vacant positions formulated? Recruitment process 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. What is recruitment process structured in your company? Whats the application process in your company for job seekers? (steps) What are main forms of the interviews? (Telephone? in person? long distance?) How many interviewees involved usually? Specific personnel to do interviews? How many interviewers involved in each interview? Group interview? Do you have planned questions to candidates in the interviews? Do you have any method to avoid and reduce discriminatory questions? 14. Which types of questions were involved frequently in the interviews? (Closed questions, leading questions or open questions) 15. Who formulate the interview questions? 16. How long is each interview normally? How does one interview cost? Candidate evaluation 17. How do you filter and evaluate CVs and profiles of the candidates? IT system supports? Who are the main decision makers? 18. Do you have a standard assessment system to evaluate the candidates? 19. Which factors matter when evaluating a candidate? Which factor(s) most significant? 20. How to make final decisions of employment? 21. Do you have any special strategies or heritages used in recruitment in your company?