UNIT 3

Employee Engagement: Preparing recruitment plan, E-recruitment (using various job portals), searching
& downloading applicant profile by using job portals, selecting recruitment source, preparing
recruitment budget, employer branding, formulating a recruitment strategy (specifically for
Managerial/Executive jobs),Selection process, Use of assessment centre’s, selection errors & minimizing
selection errors, Reliability & Validity tests, Choosing the types of interviews.

Everyday connotations of engagement refer to involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm,

absorption, focused effort, zeal, dedication, and energy. In a similar vein, the Merriam -Webster
dictionary describes the state of being engaged as “emotional involvement or commitment” and as
“being in gear”. This chapter focuses on engagement at work, a desirable condition for employees as
well as for the organization they work for. Although typically “employee engagement” and “work
engagement” are used interchangeably, this chapter prefers the latter because it is more specific. Work
engagement refers to the relationship of the employee with his or her work , whereas employee
engagement may also include the relationship with the organization . As we will see below, by including
the relationship with the organization the distinction between engagement and traditional concepts
such as organizational commitment and extra-role behavior becomes blurred.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT – WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS

In the last few years, the management theory of employee engagement has gained increasing
recognition. This theory tackles the question of how a company can achieve its strategic goals by
creating the conditions for human resources to thrive and for each staff member, manager, and
executive to eagerly deliver their best efforts in the best interest of the business.

The theory makes so much common sense that it is even difficult to define it. In fact the difficulties here
are entirely caused by the past history of failed practices and wrong theories in the field of
organizational management. With employee engagement theoreticians and best practices have finally
caught up with reality.

Briefly, according to the theory, the leaders of an organization have to ensure that all staff members
function at their highest capacity in their jobs: that they are fully “switched on,” we might say, bringing
not just their body to the job, but their minds also. That they are fully committed to and involved in the
work the same way an entrepreneur would care for her business or the way one cares for one’s own
household. This is called being engaged: being fully involved with great interest in an activity that really
holds one’s attention and in which one has an urge to do one’s best.

This really is common sense. Which employer would not want its workers to be switched on at work? So
what do we need the theory for? We need the theory as a tool to demolish the bad management
practices rooted in hundreds (if not thousands) of years of mismanagement. The fact is that very few
employees are fully engaged in their work, and few leaders know how to go about changing that.
According to studies conducted in the UK only 12% of the work force (in any company on average) are
actively engaged, while the European average is slightly less yet (Towers Perrin, European Talent Survey,
2004). But even so, that figure is based on employees’ own assessments, how the employees judge their
own level of engagement, and one would suppose that such self-assessment is informed by the human
propensity to inflate one’s own contribution. According to the same study 65% consider that they are
“moderately engaged,” which means that they rationally care for the job but they don’t bring their
whole emotional capacity into it. Another result confirms this conclusion telling that more than half of
employees feel that they are actually not giving their best, whereas only 40% on self-assessment said
they did (Macleod, Brady: The Extra Mile. 2008. Prentice Hall). And according to the consulting firm
BlessingWhite only 31% of employees are actively engaged at their work (BlessingWhite (December
2010). Employee Engagement Report 2011. http://www.blessingwhite.com Retrieved 2010-12-12).
Imagine how a football team would fare if only 12% of the players were actually engaged in the game
and the rest had their minds on their next vacation, their upcoming dinner date, or some jokes they had
read on the Internet. The thing is that successful sports teams have always been driven by the principles
of engagement even if the concept might not have been explicitly spelled out.

A theory, or a concept, serves two functions: firstly, as a symbol to make us aware of a new way of
thinking of something. (Intuitively we have always known that an engaged workforce will outperform a
passive one. The new theory makes us aware of what we have always intuitively known.) And secondly,
to provide advice on how to achieve the ideal state promulgated by the theory. In regard to employee
engagement, I think that the first function is already hugely valuable – once you start thinking about this
you will find means to achieve it. But employee engagement is also about charting the course that the
leadership should take in order to fully engage all the staff members in the business of the firm, or as it
is popular to say nowadays: provide a road map for engagement. In my view this culminates in creating
a corporate culture of engagement, or an engaging culture, which will serve as a perpetual automatic
means of sustaining engagement on all levels of the organization. I will venture to tell in this book how
this is done.

I am not a big fan of definitions but if they are not too rigid, a definition may serve as a guideline for
thinking about the underlying idea. Thus, I would define employee engagement like this:

 Employee engagement is about striving to ensure that each employee fully cares for his job, the
company he works for, and its customers, and ensuring that the employee is always committed
to do his best in these respects. This will be manifest in the way the employee shows proactive
enthusiasm for the job and takes ownership of his tasks. Employee engagement is a two-way
street, a reciprocal relationship of trust and respect between employer and employee. To bring
about engagement the employer (executives and managers) must clearly and extensively
communicate and show what is expected from the employee and coworkers, empower the
employees within the level of each one’s competence, as well as create the working
environment and the kind of corporate culture in which engagement will thrive.

Or more briefly we can say:

 Employee engagement is about how to achieve a company’s strategic goals by creating the
conditions for human resources to thrive and for each staff member, manager and executive to
eagerly deliver his best efforts in the best interest of the business.

There has been a host of management theories that are easily confused with employee engagement on
a superficial level. Among these: the theory that the employer must ensure the employee’s happiness at
work or job satisfaction (especially popular since the 1970s); employee commitment (fashionable since
the 1980s); and employee empowerment (in vogue since the 1990s). These are all connected also with
the idea of motivation. I would not say that these theories are necessarily wrong, but that it is better to
think of them as deficient and misleading when applied on a stand-alone basis beyond the teachings of
employee engagement. But by merging them all into a unified whole with the addition of some other
cardinal new insights into management, they add up to the proper engagement theory. Below I will
briefly discuss these predecessor theories.

ENGAGEMENT vs. JOB SATISFACTION

In a discussion with people not previously familiar with the concept of employee engagement, they
initially associate the concept with the management theory popular with progressive companies
especially in the 1980s and 1990s, according to which employers should guarantee an employee’s job
satisfaction. The idea was that the happier people are within their jobs, the better they perform.
Engagement specialists agree with me in thinking that this was a misguided theory. The problem is that
the theory set out a one-way street, where the contributions towards the employee’s satisfaction were
coming from the employer, while there were no clear pronouncements as to what was expected from
the employee in return. The problem was aggravated by the habit of doing employee job satisfaction
surveys with the idea that the higher the level of employee satisfaction the surveys evidenced, the
better the management was. The extreme consequence of this was that management was tempted to
“bribe” the employees, that is, buy their satisfaction with unwarranted benefits, perks and a theme park
job environment, while not adequately demanding that they reciprocate the contribution. Now it is
increasingly recognized that satisfaction per se does not lead to better job performance; on the
contrary, it is quite conceivable that an employee is satisfied with his job precisely for the reason that it,
for example, gives a decent salary, good benefits, a nice environment, whereas the employee will be
able to concentrate his time and energy on other things that matter more beyond the work, things with
which he is more truly engaged. Satisfaction may mean contentment and actually contradict the need to
challenge the status quo and be innovative, which is precisely what is expected from an engaged
employee. Satisfaction does not capture the aspects of urgency, focus, and intensity which are essential
to true engagement (Macey, Schneider, Barbera and Young: Employee Engagement. 2009. Wiley-
Blackwell).

The job satisfaction surveys are based on an inherent logical contradiction or confusion as to cause and
effect. There is the classical problem of whether the chicken or the egg comes first. Are companies with
satisfied employees successful because they have invested in the satisfaction of the employees, or do
employees report satisfaction because the successful company has in reality intuitively been running
engagement policies? And how do we know if the success has come from job satisfaction policies or
from something else, perhaps the success has other reasons and the profitability of the company has
only allowed it to share the benefits with employees. (Of course, that is nice, too.)

Job satisfaction is also a question of comparatives. A person can report job satisfaction for various
reasons, most of which remain unconscious. And we always need to keep in mind the human propensity
to be dissatisfied with one’s lot.

One more problem with job satisfaction surveys is that they are exclusively designed to ask the
employees how satisfied they are with their jobs, and by consequence with their management and
employers. But I think it would be equally relevant to ask managers (on various levels) about their
satisfaction with the employees. This would already put us on the two-way street.
ENGAGEMENT vs. COMMITMENT

Until recently when engagement theory gained recognition, progressive leaders and HR people spoke
about employee commitment. And now the specialists debate what the difference in these two
management paradigms is, if any. Some claim that they are different terms for the same thing, but I
think that these theories are distinct. We could say that engagement represents a higher evolutionary
stage of commitment, being a more refined and complete theory.

Here I need to point out that I am not one for parsing over concepts, and all the more not one to think
that a certain concept inherently means one thing or another. But what I want to point out is that, as I
have understood it, the commitment theory is lacking certain key elements present in engagement
theory and contains other elements that don’t go in the right direction.

In my view commitment theory is more based on compulsion, on creating such conditions that the
employee will feel compelled to work for the organization, whereas engagement theory aims to bring
about a situation where the employee by free choice has an intrinsic desire to work in the best interests
of the organization. While characterizing commitment as one-sided compulsion, we could say that
engagement is reciprocal; both employer and employee engage. Somewhat simplifying we could also
say that in commitment the person is rational about her commitment, she weighs pros and cons;
whereas in engagement the person makes a personal choice, not because his calculations show so but
because he wants to. It is a more emotional choice. Management guided by commitment theory also
wants to bring about the emotional bond, but contrary to engagement theory, it is done by trying to
make the employee feel that he owes something to the company for past favors; or by binding people
with spectacular salaries, or an even more popular form of temptation, stock options and other
incentive programs. The problem with all these methods is that they might well work in terms of
succeeding to retain the people. But…will the people thus retained be really engaged to make the best
efforts for the company? I doubt it.

We could also understand engagement as the behaviors of commitment plus the intrinsic motivations of
engagement.

An analysis of Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of commitment helps to differentiate between
these two theories (Meyer, JP and Allen, NJ (1991). A three-component conceptualization of
organizational commitment: Some methodological considerations, Human Resource Management
Review, 1, pp. 61-98). These scholars divided commitment into three component categories: affective
commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. The two later components point
to the compulsion character of commitment.

Continuance commitment is said to be based on the deliberations of the gains versus losses of working
for an organization. In this thinking the person remains in the organization if the perceived cost of
leaving it would be higher than the benefits of staying. Naturally all the factors that go into the
calculations are not directly measurable in money, and include, for example, questions of status, or of
one’s membership in a community, and so forth.

Normative commitment is about the person’s perceived or real feelings of obligation to stay with an
organization because of a sense of obligation.
Normative commitment is about the persons perceived or real feelings of obligation to stay with an
organization because of feelings of obligation.

According to proper engagement theory management would not try artificially to bring about
continuance and normative commitment, but the remaining component, affective commitment, is more
suitable for the engagement paradigm. It is defined as the employee’s positive emotional attachment to
the organization, the “desire” component of organizational commitment. In this case, an employee is
said to strongly identify with the goals of the organization and desires to remain a part of the
organization because she wants to.

ENGAGEMENT vs. EMPOWEREMENT

Engagement differs also from another management concept which has been popular in the last two
decades, empowerment. Empowerment is the idea that you have to endow your employees with
authority to make business decisions. It is certainly very important to empower your employees to take
decisions within the scope of their tasks, and in this sense empowerment is an important feature of
engagement. But the problem is that empowerment does not make sense and it is not properly
enforceable without considering all the other aspects of employee engagement. You may properly
empower only employees who are adequately engaged. One important aspect of the question is that
you also need to have the right people on board; you cannot empower just anybody. And most
importantly you need to back up empowerment with a corporate culture that operates on the principles
of engagement. A culture of self-disciplined and self-organizing people is needed to establish the right
levels of empowerment for different levels of job duties and competence.

ENGAGEMENT vs. MOTIVATION

Engagement is about motivation. But here we need to turn around the question from as the traditional
understanding of motivation. The Merriam-Webster defines “motivation” either as “the act or process
of motivating” or “the condition of being motivated.” It is typical that in a context of management
theory people refer to motivation in the sense of “the act or process of motivating,” with the stick and
carrot mentality of how to propel an employee to act in a desired way. But in engagement theory we
mean the other sense of the concept “the condition of being motivated,” that is, the task of
management is to bring about such conditions that the employee feels intrinsically motivated, or self-
motivated as I like to call it. The motivating force has to be internalized so that the drive to do one’s best
comes from the inside and not by external pressure (positive or negative) and control by management.

Guided by the traditional usage of the concept, employers were racking their brains in order to devise
attractive new ways to externally motivate their employees. What comes to mind most easily in this vein
of thinking is salary, salary, and more salary, and pay in form of bonuses, or other incentives such as
stock options and other material benefits. Yes, and job titles, and positions in the hierarchy. Not to
forget punishments of various kinds. When this is the management thinking then it creates a system of
constant bargaining: you do this, you get this; if I don’t get this, I don’t do that.

In engagement theory the idea is reversed. Here the employer strives to tap into the intrinsic motivators
of the person, to create such working conditions and relationships within the company (its executives,
managers and employees) that people have an inner motivation to do their best. Obviously salary and
material benefits remain important, but they are no longer the sole drivers of motivation.
Here we then move from efforts to motivate one or another behavior with sticks and carrots to start the
engine that ignites the employee’s inner motivation. We create the conditions for the person to be self-
motivated by the job and the general work conditions.

ENGAGEGEMENT IS ESSENTIAL FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS

As I stressed above, engagement is not practiced for the purpose of ensuring employee satisfaction,
although that usually follows from proper engagement. Rather, companies invest in employee
engagement in order to ensure the success of the business strategy and ultimately profit and
shareholder value. Surely, nobody can doubt that people that are genuinely interested in their work and
each day do their best for the sake of it create more value than non-engaged people.

Levels of engagement directly affect: customer service, quality, productivity, innovation, staff attraction
and retention, lower levels of absenteeism, and other things.

For those who continue to doubt, we can point to various surveys and studies that confirm this:

 A European wide study demonstrated that companies with higher average employee
engagement have significantly higher operating margins relative to industry standards (Macleod,
Brady: The Extra Mile. 2008. Prentice Hall). 88% of highly engaged employees believe they can
positively impact the quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the
disengaged (Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study 2007-
2008 http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=HRS/USA/2008/200802/
GWS_handout_web.pdf). Most importantly this means that employees actually are concerned
with quality and they feel bad if they don’t experience that the company management
reciprocates this concern. This was confirmed by another study: 84% of highly engaged
employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organization’s products,
compared with only 31% of the disengaged (Seijts, Gerard H. and Dan Crim (2006). “The Ten C’s
of Employee Engagement”. Ivey Business Journal) .

 What was said above is also true for customer service (another aspect of quality): 72% of highly
engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the
disengaged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement). This means that there is a
real reason to consider that the disengaged are that way because they do not experience that
the company reciprocates their concern for customer service. A study by Gerard Seijts and Dan
Crim confirmed that an employee’s attitude toward the job’s importance and the company had
a greater impact on loyalty and customer service than all other employee factors combined.

 Again, the same considerations are valid for the concern for cost control: 68% of highly engaged
employees believe they can positively impact costs in their job or unit, compared with just 19%
of the disengaged.

 Correlations between employee engagement and desirable business outcomes such as retention
of talent, customer service, individual performance, team performance, business unit
productivity, and even enterprise-level financial performance have been shown by Rucci et al,
1998; McKay, Avery, Morris et al., 2007; and Schneider, Hanges, & Smith (2003) (McKay, Avery,
& Morris (2008). Mean racial and ethnic differences in sales performance: The moderating role
 of diversity climate. Personnel Psychology, 61, 349-374; Rucci, Quinn, Kim (1998). The employee-
customer profit chain. Harvard Business Review, pp. 83–97; Schneider, Hanges, & Smith (2003).
Which comes first: employee attitudes or organizational financial and market performance?
Journal of Applied Psychology) .

 It has been found that a company that manages to engage it employees is 87% more likely to
retain the best talent (Lockwood, Nancy R. “Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive
Advantage: HR’s Strategic Role.” HRMagazine Mar. 2007: 1-11).

 In a study involving the company MolsonCoors it was shown that frequency of safety incidents
were five times less with a team of engaged employees as opposed to non-engaged employees
(Lockwood, Nancy R. “Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage: HR’s
Strategic Role.” HRMagazine Mar. 2007: 1-11).

WHAT AN ENGAGED EMPLOYEE IS LIKE

A maximally engaged employee puts discretionary efforts into each task and is fully committed to the
work both intellectually and emotionally, and is willing to put in as much time as is necessary to get the
work done. His intellect is switched on to its full capacity, so he analyzes any given work situation with a
view to finding the best solution for the customer and the company. He does not take the rules and
traditional methods of doing things at face value, but instead proactively challenges the way things are
done and brings in fresh ideas to improve the processes. He does not just go through the motions;
rather, he makes an effort to do his very best. The engaged employee is intrinsically concerned with
quality, costs, customer service, and safety, as was reported above in reference to the studies.

In table 2 follows a list of selections from the engagement literature about adjectives and characteristics
that consultants and scholars use for describing an engaged employee:

TABLE 2. WHAT ENGAGED PEOPLE ARE LIKE

 Absorbed in the work – “time flies at work”

 Maintains the focus for an extended period
 Feels a strong emotional bond to the company
 Is enthusiastic and passionate about the job
 Expands the work role, flexible, not tied to a job description
 Adapts to change
 Wants to develop the job related skills
 Does not need reminding and prodding
 Feels a sense of urgency
 Is persistent
 Takes initiative
 Is goal-oriented
 Conscientious
 Accountable, feels a sense of ownership
 Responsible
 Dedicated to the work
The central idea behind employee engagement is that the company leaders should make active efforts
to bring about these positive characteristics in the employees. They do this by creating the appropriate
corporate culture of engagement and self-discipline. But we do need to acknowledge that there are
differences in the individual capacity of people to engage, and for some people no amount of
engagement effort will bring about the desired outcome. This is why staff and recruitment policies will
still be a crucial element of a proper engagement strategy. The company has to hire and retain people
who are suitably self-disciplined and self-motivated for a culture of engagement.

If engaged employees are like that, then what are non-engaged employees like? The easy answer is that
they demonstrate the opposite characteristics; let’s point out some of them. The non-engaged
employees don’t really care about the work and the best interest of the company. They come to work in
order to get their salary and without much other motivation. They don’t really contribute to the
business, or worse yet, push it in the wrong direction. Their work hours are spent lounging around with
coworkers, in private phone- calls, surfing the internet about non-work related matters, and so on.
Among the younger generations Facebook is the center of the universe of the non-engaged.

They are not interested in what is going on in the company, they don’t ask questions about the business
and don’t offer any useful input, doing only the minimum that is actively required from them. Initially
when new in the organization or young in their field they might have been enthusiastic and inquisitive,
but after years of being hammered down by apathy and neglect from bad management, they turn sour
and start to resent the dismal conditions in which they have been stranded.

I frequently think about the paradox of terrible service and even the sometimes inhuman conditions
which Russian doctors and nurses inflict on their patients at Russian state- owned clinics and hospitals. It
is a paradox as I also see the young talented and enthusiastic people that graduate from medical
colleges and universities. I know that patients and their relatives often need to procure medicine and
supplies themselves, as the hospital cannot offer what is needed, or worse, does not want to offer it. I
have heard about cases where relatives need to bribe doctors to give treatment and bribe nurses to
change seats and even to be able to urinate and defecate. The attitude of the staff is often harsh, cold,
impassive and indifferent. I wonder how these people, who in their private life are caring and loving
mothers, fathers, relatives and friends, switch on to such behavior. But the reply is quite simple. They
initially joined the clinic or hospital full of hope and energy. But over time they see their hopes crushed
by bad management, underfinancing, dilapidated physical environment, corruption and the ensuing bad
morale. At the same time I can point out that in privately owned and financed clinics and hospitals in
Russia, the situation is already far better. They have normal material conditions, and anyway, even if
surrounded by bad practices, private operators are driven by clients, patients, although the focus might
not yet be quite up to the needed levels. At some point the behavior of most people starts to mirror the
conditions they are put into and the behavior of the people around them. This same observation is true
for the Russian police. Fortunately, the Russian president Putin has been able to increase the prosperity
of the country so as to allow in recent years strong measures to improve the material conditions of both
health care and law enforcement. This is the condition sine qua non for a healthy organizational culture
in those spheres. The next step would be to actively teach the culture of engagement to the respective
managements and to implement it on a large scale across the country.

Non-engaged employees actively defend their job turf in the sense of trying to avoid any new tasks and
not wanting others to interfere in their own. They rarely turn to coworkers for help or offer it
themselves. “I’m doing what I’m being told to do. I will do nothing more and nothing less.” Here
teamwork does not come naturally.
If the manager finds that he has to spend a lot of time tightly managing a person, then it is a clear sign of
a possible case of non-engagement.

WHAT CORPORATE CULTURE IS AND THE DRIVERS OF ENGAGEMENT

In my view the paramount issue about employee engagement is the corporate culture: Engagement has
to be anchored in a corporate culture that stimulates and sustains engagement, a self-sustainable
culture of engagement.

In the final analysis, a company is a collection of people working together. What their work results in
depends on the way they work and on their working practices: in short, their culture of working
together. From this simple insight we may define a company’s corporate culture as the way business is
done in the firm. Corporate culture is therefore the aggregate reflection of all actions of a company,
decisions and behavior of its management and all of its employees, as well as all the business practices
and business processes. Knowing this, we know how to modify a corporate culture to suit our goal of
innovation, customer service and employee engagement: We simply need to work simultaneously on all
aspects of the corporate culture, that is, the organizational structure and all the business decisions and
their implementation have to be so designed as to bring about engagement. We need to change the
behaviors and rules and practices which the behaviors reflect. But changing behavior is not, as many
think, an issue that should be left to psychologists. Changing organizational behavior is a leadership task
for the executives involving all aspects of the business.

Corporate culture is the aggregate reflection of all actions of a company, decisions and behavior of its
management and all of its employees, as well as all the business practices and business processes.

We should not perceive corporate culture as one aspect of the business along with other areas of
business such as strategy, marketing policies, assets, financials, organizational structure, and others.
Instead we stress that the sum total of all those issues is the corporate culture. As Lou Gerstner said:
“Culture is not just one aspect of the game – it is the game” (Gerstner, Louis: Who Says Elephants Can’t
Dance? 2003. HarperCollinsPublishers). Therefore to make a firm more successful and profitable
management has to ensure that all the strategic choices and attempts to change are reflected in the
behavior of all employees, in the corporate culture itself. Knowing this about corporate culture, we
realize that all strategic choices that aim at growth, improved profitability and long-term success will
have to be implemented at the level of the corporate culture. If the corporate culture does not change
so as to reflect the new strategy, then the strategy fails. Too often the results of a strategic change
remain lackluster because company management focuses too narrowly on the material assets involved
in the strategic decision and the related financial and technological aspects while ignoring the need to
change the behavioral practices that affect the overall performance.

We say that corporate culture is the aggregate performance of each individual employee, but the
performance of the individual is influenced by a multitude of factors. These factors form the constraints
or drivers of a corporate culture. The behavioral elements that add up to a corporate culture are
dependent on many considerations starting from the broadest of all categories, that of human nature.
But the beauty of engagement theory is that we need not worry about attempting to change human
nature. Instead we make use of the insights into the ways of bringing out the best of human nature in a
culture of engagement.
ENGAGEGEMENT DRIVERS – WHAT INFLUENCES A CORPORATE CULTURE

I have chosen to illustrate the engagement drivers (or drivers and influences on a corporate culture) by
dividing them into 12 categories as was done in table 3.

TABLE 3. Engagement Drivers

1. Trust, fairness, respect

2. Alignment
3. Communication
4. Empowerment
5. Efficient processes
6. Organizational structure
7. Self-discipline
8. Total focus on customer satisfaction and quality
9. Behaviors required from leaders and managers
10. Individual drivers:
11. Individual drivers – quality of life
12. The job itself
13. Pay and rewards
14. The soft side of corporate culture

I will below expand on these and present the main features of all these engagement drivers under
separate headings. But first I need to alert the reader to the various misconceptions about the nature of
corporate culture which circulate in academic literature.

PREPARING A RECRUITMENT PLAN

The following steps can help make sure your business has an effective recruitment plan:

Determine your recruitment goals

A recruitment plan should be based on your business goals. For example, are you planning to expand or
change your business? What skills are required to accomplish this objective? From there, you should
establish specific recruitment goals. One goal will be attracting the best people to work in your business.
The best people will make a direct difference to your bottom line, helping to raise your service and
quality level. People who are less than dedicated to your business can compromise customer
experiences.

Some other recruitment goals may be:

 Attracting a higher standard of candidate

 Attracting a candidate who has skills you currently do not have in your organization
 Promoting your company as a dynamic place where people want to work

Determine your overall recruitment needs through having well established business goals.
Review job descriptions

Take time to review the job description, which may need to be changed since the last person was hired.
Or, if it is a new position, you may need to create a new job description. You may want to talk to the
previous person in the position and get their input on how the job description could be improved, and
what the highlights of the job were. Make sure the description includes all of the critical job related
components.

Consider people-finding strategies

How you find staff for your business can be divided into short-term and long-term recruiting techniques.
Short-term techniques are designed to generate an immediate selection of candidates. Long-term
techniques involve developing relationships with key people and the community, and promoting your
company as a rewarding place to work. The focus is on keeping long-term relationships with people who
have the potential to work for your organization.

It may be a good idea to plan to use both short and long-term recruiting strategies. Developing long-
term relationships can include strategies like offering scholarships to university students, donations and
sponsorships to community organizations, or opening up your business for high school practicums.

As well, there are always two pools of candidates available: employees already working for you, and
external candidates. Promoting from within can help create a culture that shows that hard work is
rewarded, and you may find that the most qualified person for your job posting is already working for
you. Friends and acquaintances of employees are always a good place to start. You may want to think
about offering a recruitment incentive to encourage employees to spread the word (for example, a cash
incentive or gift certificate if the person they recommend is hired).

When posting your advertisements, ask yourself if you’ve selected newspapers, journals, websites and
mailing lists that reach a diverse pool of applicants. Be sure to allow sufficient time for both internal and
external recruitment.

Use alternative labour pools

Have you considered hiring co-op students, immigrants, aboriginals, people on social assistance or
EI, persons with disabilities, or baby boomers? Sometimes the right person for the job may not be from
the most obvious pool of applicants.

Appreciate the perception of your workplace from the outside

How your workplace is perceived or positioned will affect how candidates respond to job postings. To
stand out in the job market, employers must offer something different from competitors. For example,
many tourism employers provide seasonal hiring; an inability to offer permanent, full-time positions can
set limits on the selection of candidates. Yet this can be turned into something more appealing by
offering ongoing summer employment from year to year.

If you’ve had trouble in the past generating suitable responses from job postings, ask yourself how you
are perceived as someone to work for and how your employees feel about the business. An anonymous
employee survey might prove helpful to find out how you compare to competitors in terms of salary,
work environment, vacation, and job duties. And remember that money is not always what people are
looking for—frequently, it’s the intangible benefits that keep potential employees interested.

Keep a short list

Once your job ads are posted, be sure that you are clear about your selection criteria. What skills do you
need to add to your business? How will you choose one candidate over another?

Short-listing is the first step in identifying the candidates who display the skills and selection criteria you
are looking for. Shortlisting—when done well—can cut down on interviewing time later on. You may
want to draw a simple grid with your selection criteria on one side and the names of candidates on
another. Your selection criteria can then be listed in order of importance, with marks assigned to each
candidate according to whether or not to interview when you review resumes and cover letters.

Be sure to notify short-listed candidates of the interview date and time as soon as possible. It’s also
often a good idea to keep a small number of applicants on a reserve list in case some of the short-listed
candidates are unavailable.

Hone your interviewing technique

Before interviewing, develop job-related questions so there are no awkward pauses, and so you remain
in charge of the interview. Be sure to ask open-ended questions that allow the candidate to tell you
about themselves, such as "What are some things you would like to avoid in a job? Why?" and "In your
previous job what kind of pressures did you face?"

Check thoroughly before making a job offer

Have you obtained a signed application, conducted reference checks and scheduled background checks?
Have you determined a salary offer based upon market, qualifications and internal comparisons?

Follow through after a candidate has accepted

Have you confirmed the offer in writing and advised other employees within the company? Be sure to
make arrangements for the candidate’s start date well ahead of time. You’ll also want to advise the
other candidates that the position has been filled.

With the right recruitment plan in place, you'll be in a better position to hire the best people for your
company.

Sample generic health care provider recruitment plan

It is imperative to have an all-encompassing recruitment policy for your organization.

Sample recruitment policy:

To develop a long-range recruitment plan; organize a recruiting schedule based upon the
historical supply and demand for each major healthcare discipline; and implement the plan
within the organization.

A goal should be developed for each discipline (dentist, ancillary, hygienist, assistant).

Sample goal:

To recruit (number) dentists this year based on resignations, terminations, attrition or

growth.

Strategies, structure, and ongoing activities are important to the process.

Sample strategies:

 To concentrate our efforts on health care professionals who are completing training
programs, government obligations or military service.
 To anticipate the competition by contacting prospects early.
 To have a continuous, year-round schedule.

Sample structure:

 The official recruiting cycle for (Name of teaching institution/ program)

will commence (Month and date) of each calendar year.
 All recruiting efforts within the institution will be coordinated through the human
resources/personnel department/coordinator or his or her designee.
 The organization’s recruitment committee will review the recruiting objectives no later
than February 1 of each year.

Sample of ongoing activities:

 Complete follow-up action with healthcare professionals who have interviewed.

 Schedule site visits for healthcare professionals from previous recruiting efforts.
 Obtain legal contracts for healthcare professionals who will commence practice.
 Recruitment committee will meet at least quarterly to review plan of action and develop
strategies for implementation.
 Attend as many in-state health professional recruitment fairs as possible.

Sample annual recruitment plan

Quarterly Activities

JANUARY – MARCH
Survey active medical staff to determine:

 Provider needs/practices needing assistance

 Need for new practices in the community.
 Mail second recruitment letters to practicing dentists (first letter sent in October).
 Compile statistics from January medical staff survey.
 Prepare for initial provider/practice assessments.
 Complete follow-up action on providers who have completed site visits in December
and January.
 Establish funding limits for calendar year from finance department.
 Prepare opportunity descriptions.
 Update printed recruitment materials.
 Identify residency programs and contact program directors/advisors.
 Identify recruitment conferences and exhibit possibilities.
 Meet with the provider recruitment committee to explain this year’s campaign and their
involvement (for example, interviews). Fine-tune the campaign with their input.
 Conduct initial provider/practice assessments to clarify provider recruitment needs in
response to January medical staff survey.
 Mail second recruitment letter to next year’s graduating students/professionals (first
letter mailed in October).

APRIL - JUNE

 Begin preparation for dental school marketing seminar (seminar about how to market
practices and what to expect in recruiting).
 Meet with administrator to establish recruitment priorities.
 Send third recruitment letter to next year’s graduating dental students.
 Semi-annual dental/provider manpower recruitment committee meeting.
 Assist newly recruited providers by facilitating their arrival and transition.

JULY - SEPTEMBER

 Register a search with the ADA/VDA and other placement services.

 Contact dentists in government service (National Health/Indian Health Service Corps).
 Write other healthcare administrators in the region regarding a search for a healthcare
provider for the community.
 Contact state licensure board for names of provider licensees and send letters to.
 Inform pharmaceutical and medical supply vendors of provider searches.
 Contact military installations in region for names of providers leaving service and ask
about opportunities to communicate with them.
 Contact medical specialty associations to obtain information on meetings, publications
and placement services.
 Identify provider recruitment opportunity fairs for the coming year.
  Dental school opportunity fair.
 Request dental school alumni affairs office to publicize opportunities.
 Post employment opportunities/vacancies with state health department, dental training
programs and state primary-care associations.
 Obtain available provider computer lists for mailing to next year’s graduating students.
 Visit dental training programs.
 Contact military dentists younger than 45 years.
 Send fourth recruiting letter to graduating students (in final year).
 Conduct consumer research to further identify need for dental providers.
 Write and place national journal ads for November and December to target practicing
dentists.

OCTOBER - DECEMBER

 Continue dental provider training program visits.

 Meet with administrator to establish recruiting priorities for the coming calendar year
and prepare for next month’s provider recruitment committee meeting.
 Send letter of introduction to next year’s graduating dental students (second letter to be
sent in March).
 Contact academic dentists younger than 45 years.
 Mail letter to practicing dentists (second letter to be sent in January).
 Semi-annual provider recruitment committee meeting.
 Prepare medical staff survey to identify provider manpower needs and issues.

Attachment 1

Graphic Summary of the Recruitment Process

Preparation for 2. Prospects 3. Suspects 4. Applicants 5. Candidates 6. Finalists 7. Hired

cruitment

evelop health Identify new Provide Provider In-depth phone interview Complete Regular
ofessional plan candidate description sends CV interviewing communicatio
of process before sta
opportunity date
(ies)
epare practice Targeted Determine CV screened Prepare for site visit Finalize contract Professional
sessment direct mail interest/nee according to negotiations orientation
ds of criteria
providers

etermine role of Display at Follow-up Candidate Provide examination copy of Hospital

rrent professional with tracking & contract privileges
ofessional staff assemblies requested referral
information system

etermine salary Advertise Personal follow-up with candidate

nd benefits

evelop in-house Marketing Candidate tracking and referral

cruitment introduction system
stem to
professional
sites

evelop Direct Reference & credential check

omotional contacts
aterials (cold calls)

aft specimen
ntract

etermine
lection criteria

evelop
cruitment plan

Roles and tasks at various levels of the process will vary according to practice and to source, personality
and individual needs of the candidate.