Gatewood, Robert D. ; Feild, Hubert S. ; Barrick, Murray R.
Synopsis "Human Resource Selection"
Human Resource Management (HRM) is a set of decisions systems that organizations can design and implement to increase the performance and productivity of their workforce. The major activities in HRM are recruitment, selection, training, measuring performance, and compensating workers for their performance. The first two of these, recruitment and selection, focus on bringing high-ability individuals into the organization and placing them in the appropriate jobs. Everyone agrees that having high-ability employees is essential to a successful organization. Recruitment activities inform appropriately skilled applicants external to the organization about available positions within the organization. Successful recruitment presents information about the organization and the job to people in such a way that they become interested in possible employment. Recruitment should result in applications from people who have the appropriate abilities for the available job. Selection is the set of activities that gathers systematic information from the applicants and identifies those with the highest ability levels in order to offer employment. Training encompasses the activities that both the new employees and existing employees complete in order to further develop the most important abilities for the job. In the present global, competitive economy, excellent and frequent training is necessary to make sure that employees can continue high performance. Measuring performance and compensating workers are the two fundamental principles for motivating employees. Measuring performance clearly specifies to workers the main outcomes of their work. It also makes goal setting possible, which research has found to be highly motivating in itself. Compensation should be designed so that employees are rewarded at levels reflective of their performance. Think of this as the application of the psychological principle of reward/reinforcement.
