Selection Strategies in the Civil Service
There are seven main selection strategies that the civil service uses in selecting new employees or promoting employees to higher positions. Choosing an efficient and relevant strategy is important as it determines the productivity of the department. Following a single strategy strictly can be detrimental to the civil service. Therefore, it is important to achieve a delicate balance during selection. The best balance factors in technical merit, diversity and experience when selecting recruits.
In an ideal world, hiring of all service jobs should be by merit. Merit is where the technical qualifications of the applicants are the most important factors which are considering when hiring (Berman en set. al, 2020). The one with the best technical qualifications gets the job. Merit is indeed the primary philosophy of civil service systems. However, society is structured in a way where some people are disadvantaged because of who they are. Things such as racial discrimination and gender bias which exist in society have made some people, through no fault of their own, to lack access to the facilities where they can improve their technical skills. Therefore, they will always seem less technically capable than those who enjoy the benefits of these hierarchical social structures and hence would lose out on job opportunities.
Seniority should be a factor in selection but not a major factor. Indeed, jobs in the civil service require people that have experience working for the organization. Nevertheless, seniority should only factor in if the candidates have similar technical merit, because it is possible for a junior employee to have better skills to execute the job that a person who is above them in the organizational hierarchy.
Affirmative action should not be phased out, at least not yet. As long as there are dominant races, cultures and gender, there will be a demographic that is deprived of opportunities because they are in the minority. Affirmative action ensures that they get a chance for equal employment. Patronage appointments, on the other hand, should be significantly decreased and ultimately become phased out. Patronage should be replaced with a merit-based system to increase the professionalism, expertise and efficiency of the civil service.
Reference:
Berman, E. M., Bowman, J. S., West, J. P., & Van Wart, M. R. (2020). Human Resource Management In Public Service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems.