4.1 Introduction
Recruitment is the first step in the selection process. Recruitment is a process that provides an organization with a pool of qualified job candidates (an applicant pool). Recruitment is an essential responsibility of the HR manager. Knowing how many people to hire, what skills they should possess, and hiring them when the time is right are significant challenges in recruiting—hiring individuals with the skills to do the job but also the attitude, personality, and fit can be a big challenge.
The Importance of Forecasting HR Supply and Demand
Before recruiting, companies must forecast to predict future hiring (or firing) needs and labour market trends. This is the 3-step process summarized below.
Image Description
Each step is enclosed in a rounded rectangle, emphasizing a professional process flow.
Box 1: “Determine the current human resources within the organization” with a checklist icon.
Box 2 “Project the human resources required to fulfill the organization’s mission and goals” with an upward trending graph icon.
Box 3: “Evaluate the discrepancy between the current and required human resources” with a scale icon.
Forecasting Example
Canada’s Wonderland Amusement Park might determine that it needs 100 new employees to handle an anticipated visitor surge. Cora restaurant is short-staffed by a dozen workers because of an unexpected increase in reservations.
After calculating the disparity between supply and demand, HR managers must draw plans to balance the two numbers. If the demand for labour is greater than the supply, this can either interfere with your production/service levels or increase your costs. Examples of these costs are hiring temporary workers at higher costs than anticipated, including temp agency charges, encouraging current workers to put in extra overtime, subcontracting work to other suppliers, or developing and introducing labour-saving initiatives.
If the supply exceeds the demand, it will impact your organization’s profitability. You may have to deal with overstaffing by not replacing workers who leave, encouraging early retirements, temporarily laying off workers, or (as a last resort) firing workers, which will negatively impact morale.
Once the forecasting data is gathered and analyzed, an HR professional can see where gaps exist and then recruit individuals with the right skills, education, and backgrounds to fill those gaps!
“The Recruitment Process” from Introduction to Human Resource Management – First Canadian Edition by Zelda Craig and College of New Caledonia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used first paragraph, edited.
“12 Managing Human Resources” from Human Resources Management – Canadian Edition by Stéphane Brutus and Nora Baronian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used section HR Supply and demand forecasting, edited; Added HR specific content; Changed to Canadian example.
