Running head: CASE STUDY #5

Running head: CASE STUDY #5

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CASE STUDY #5

Case Study #5

Recruitment Sources

This case focuses on recruitment sources and their effectiveness. Horvath (2015) describes recruitment sources as, “…the means through which job seekers learn about job openings or organizations,” (p.126). Dexter, the manager of nonexempt employment, works for Keepon Trucking Company and is trying to figure out the effectiveness of certain staffing processes, which included the recruitment sources being used. In order to fill 100 spots for a 3-year job, three types of recruitment were used. Dexter now wants to study the three type of recruitment sources used to see how effective they were.

Effectiveness of Recruitment Sources.

Yield Ratios. Each recruitment source listed varies in their yield ratios depending on the number of applicants, offer receivers, and new hires. In order to get the yield ratios, the offer receivers were divided the number of applicants, and the new hires was divided by the applicants as well. For the newspaper ads, the number of applicants was 300 so this would act at the denominator in both equations. The offer receivers’ equation would read as 70/300, while the other would be 50/300. This would result in yield ratios of 23.3% and 16.7% respectively. These ratios show that employee referrals produced the highest ratio among the other sources, showing a better chance for applicants to be hired and offered jobs.

Time Lapse. Following this same method for the employee referral and employment agency, those would be 50% for both offer receivers and new hires for employee referrals, and then 5% in each category for the employment agency. Then there is the time lapse for each type of recruitment. The employee referral averages 10 days to start and 10 days to offer. The second best would be the employment agency which would offer the same average on days to start but the days to offer increases by 10 to equal 20. This increase is also seen in newspaper ads with a day to start average of 10 like the previous two, but in the variable of days to offer, 30 days would be the average.

Retention Rates. Employee referrals have a better average out of the three, a trend that continues when it comes to retention rates. Employee referrals saw a retention rate 90% with 27 of their 30 new hires staying on. Newspaper ads had 35 of their 50 new hires staying on after six months which produced retention rate of 70%. The employee agency surprisingly was only able to retain 8 of their 20 employees resulting in a 40% retention rate. This data shows that employee referrals seem to be the most effective in this case. They provide the best ratios in the topic of staffing data in each field that it has been compared to the other sources.

Reason for Differences.

A huge difference is the numbers of applicants. With the employee referrals having a significant smaller number of applicants than newspaper ads and employment agencies, there allowed for a higher yield ratio in comparison. By decreasing the pool for the other two sources or even increasing the offer receivers, there would be a significant increase in the yield ratios. These numbers were more efficient due to the fact that employees understand what is required of a prospective employee more than newspapers ads and employment agencies can tell. They know the inner most workings of the organizations and what they are looking for in an employee. This knowledge allows an employee to refer people that they know are right for the job. Even with this, since the managers know the work the employee who referred the candidate, they will trust their referral, making it easier in the selection process.

Newspaper ads can just offer a small description of what an employer is looking for. That brief description can only provide so much information which is why the pool is so large compared to referrals. With employment agencies, while most of them work with businesses to choose the right people for certain jobs, not every test is effective and or even custom made for the business. They are usually just people who want jobs, whether they are temporary or not. This could provide an explanation as to why retention is so low among this recruitment source. Employment agencies are known for providing flexible staffing services so sometimes the position they are currently working in may not be something that are going to have for more than six months.

Recommendations

An idea is for Dexter to find the average tenure for some employees and test his ratios, time lapses, and retention rates against those. Instead of using six months which is not even a long time, it might be beneficial to see these numbers based on a five-year scale. Employers must be looking for employees that can fill more permanent positions so Dexter could benefit from seeing a trend. Starting at six months, then one year, and then three years, ending at five years. This would allow more data to see which recruitment source is effective, not just for the short term but for the long term as well. If Dexter is able to do this, then it would just provide more solidified data for him to base decisions off of. This would allow his company to see what source they should be investing more time and effort into promoting in the future.

Another recommendation would be for Dexter to compare the data he has gathered with other reputable companies who have conducted similar research. This might allow him to expand on and maybe include more variables in order to make his research more focused. For example, the case explains how all applicants were, “subjected to a common application, (Heneman, Judge, & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2015, p.667). This needs to be more specific so these potential employees can be aware of what they are getting into. This could be a reason why retention is so low among the employment agency. These applicants are just being given something generic, not specific to the company, so the idea of what the company is, is not what they are exposed to when the get the job. As stated above, employment agencies may not be hiring workers who are permanent. This may be something that Dexter looks into to make sure the data he collects is on new hires staying on board for a long period of time. This could be affecting the data he received from his research.