External recruitment is the process of getting people from outside the organization to apply for jobs (Griffin 1998:391). It is the process of finding potential external candidates and encouraging them to apply for and /or be willing to accept organizational jobs that are open. There are many external sources used by various organizations. The sources are:
1 Advertising: It is the most familiar form for attracting job seekers. Normally, the most useful advertisement in one that specifies the exact nature of the job, the qualification required and the salary range. As a source of recruitment, advertising has got many attractive merits but it is not free from drawbacks. However, effective job/employment advertisement must be attractive, interesting, desire creating, prompt action generating and non-discriminatory and legal. Different media can be used to advertise the job vacancies.
2 Placement agencies: They are the head hunters acted on behalf of the appointing firms. Today educational institutions, ranging from high schools to universities, generally have placement offices to assist their graduates in finding work. There are various placement agencies engaged in clientele service. They are public agencies, private agencies, management consultants, temporary help services, schools, colleges and universities, professional organizations, executive recruits.
Public placement agencies are also known as employment exchange, unemployment office, employment service or employment security agency, act as job bank and provide service with little or no charge. These agencies suffer from a poor image as a source of unskilled or poorly qualified works. But study in USA reveals that more than 70 percent of the company surveyed made use this service.(Lynton, 1979, Bureau of National Affairs, 1988).
Private Placement Agencies receive requests from the employer and search capable candidates and send them to the employment organization for interview with or without any screening. They are paid either by employer or by job seekers.
Management consultants are executive search firms supply executive on a continuing basis under contract. They undertake screening tasks too. They are specialized in searching.
Schools, Colleges or universities have their own placement offices where prospective employers can review credentials and interview graduates (DeCenzo and Robbins, 1997). Vocational technical schools provide lower level applicants; business or secretarial schools provide administrative staff personnel, while graduate schools and universities provide managerial level personnel. Organization may directly contact with these academic institutes for the applicants for their vacancies.
Temporary Help Service (THS) is a viable source of employees when individuals are needed on a temporary basis. It is useful to meet short-term fluctuations in personnel needs. Many employers today are supplementing their permanent employee base by hiring contingent workers i.e. temporary workers, part time workers, just in time employees, badli workers etc and thus, the contingent work force is big and growing (Thomson, 1995: 45). Survey reveals that 84% employers under study use such agencies or services (Bureau of National Affairs, 1998: 1 –10) and part-time workers numbered 21 million or about 17% of the U.S labour force in 1993 (Thomson, 1995:46). This reflects that benefits of contingent workers are obviously are higher than the difficulties involved with it.
Professional organizations like Institute of cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB), Institutes of Personnel Management Bangladesh (IPMB), Engineers Institute of Bangladesh, Labour organization, Military organization and other like organizations in Bangladesh and elsewhere of the world act as standing source of supply of qualified professionals to their respective disciplines.
3 Internship is a part of academic programme in which students are placed in an organization on temporary basis under part-time or full-time employment in a job of interest to the students. Both organization and student exposed one another through this internship and organization may use it as a strong source of qualified applicant for the vacancies open or to be opened.
4 Unsolicited applicants such as walk-ins, write-ins through letter ,e-mail etc are one of the major sources of recruitment. Usable applications are kept in an active file until a suitable opening occurs. A high proportion of firms consider walk in applicants an important source of recruits, particularly for office- clerical and production positions (Bureau of National Affairs, 1988:6-7).
5 Relatives and friends are also a very intimate source of recruitment. It is a very old and traditional source for getting qualified job applicants.
6 Innovative Sources: Employers are turning to relatively non-traditional sources of applicants (Wender, 1990:6-15). The table contains some of those innovative external recruiting methods generally are used for screening and attracting people to apply for the vacancies (Fyock, 1991:32-35):
7. Electronic Recruiting: Electronic recruiting also known as cyber-recruiting or recruiting on the Internet presents a major change to the way in which companies traditionally recruit personnel. It is recruiting via internet and intranet. Here, there is a web site address of a company and the company posts their vacancies by location and occupation via their own web site or online job centres. It can include detailed and comprehensive information about the job and the company; reach large numbers of potential applicants and expect an almost immediate response. Candidates, in turn, enjoy the speed, accuracy, and convenience of instantly seeing only those vacancies that match their requirements.
Follow