Strategic Recruitment and Selection Strategy
Recruitment and selection are the major functions of human resources management. They help human resource managers to attract, select, and retain the best candidates for the organization. Recruitment and selection strategies play a vital role in the organization’s performance as they determine the human capital employed toward organization goals and vision. Effective recruitment and selection strategies depend on the alignment with the overall organization’s strategic plan. Delta Airlines’ company’s success in the recent past has been attributed to having the best employees offering quality services. The success depends on the implementation of selection and recruitment strategic plan. This paper focuses on evaluating the importance of the organization-person fit approach and developing a recruitment strategy with a mix of options effective for Delta Airlines company.
Overview of the company
Delta Airlines is a global airline company based in the United States. The company was established in 1967, and currently provide scheduled air transportation for passenger and cargo around the world (Delta News Hub, 2019). The Delta Airlines company is one of the most admirable airline companies in the United States and around the world for international flights. It currently serves more than one hundred and eight million customers each year (Delta News Hub, 2019). The increased globalization and foreign trade have contributed to an increase in global transport demand, which has risen Delta Airlines’ company demand for services leading to an increase in the number of employees.
Delta Airlines’ company headquarter is located in Atlanta. In 2019, the company had more than ninety thousand employees worldwide serving in the various department (Delta News Hub, 2019). This is an increase in the employment rate from 2018, with more than two percent, where the company had more than eighty thousand employees (Mazareanu, 2020). The company operates more than eight hundred mainline aircraft offering customers more than fifteen thousand flights daily.
Delta Airlines’ company employees come from a diverse demographic backgrounds. More than forty-one percent of employees come from ethnic minorities while most of the staff are white. The female company employee occupies more than forty-four percent as the human resource department strives to achieve equal representations of employees despite their gender or ethnicity group. However, the major challenge in the airline industry is the increasing shortage of pilots, mostly female pilots leading to inequality (Mazareanu, 2020). Many roles in Delta Airlines are dominated by men, mostly in top-level management, pilots, and mechanics, while female gender dominated flight attendances roles.
In the 2019 financial years, Delta Airlines company record revenues earning forty-seven billion United States dollars (Mazareanu, 2020). It was an increase from the previous years after it was recognized as the best airline company in 2018. Through innovation alliances with other major companies, the company has experienced tremendous growth and expansion in the past years. However, the company faces huge competition in the market from United Airlines and American airlines.
Delta Airlines is prospects to improve its services in the future. The company predicts growth in revenues with a margin between four and six percent and about forty-nine billion United States dollars (Bursztynsky, 2019). This means there will increase in employment opportunities in the future to cater to the expansion of the business. However, with the disruption of airplane flight due to the current pandemic, the company strives to maintain its revenues by increasing diversified sources of income. Currently, the airline has diversified its revenues sources to include more revenues from the credit card business.
Importance of organization-person fit
The organization-person fit involves the relationship between employees and other organizations. It mostly focuses on how an employee is compatible with a certain organization. Its more of employee values and beliefs on company mission, vision, and cultures (Suwanti et al., 2018). Human resource management plays a critical role during the recruitment and selection process in hiring candidates with the same values, beliefs, goals, and ethics as the organization. Currently, Delta airlines company is one of the most preferred organizations by employees in the United States.
The importance of organization-person fit is based on the attraction-selection-attrition concept where employees are attracted to companies with similar values, and companies tend to hire such candidates during the selection process (Suwanti et al., 2018). The attrition develops as an essential factor to employees who experiences the actual compatibility with the organization and make a decision to either continue working for or leave the company within the probation period.
Organization-person fit has led to the improvement of work attitudes among employees. This is because employees are motivated to perform their roles and duties efficiently as they are driven by the passion of being in the organization. The link between works attitudes and the organization-person fit is the strongest and important factor that human resources managers look at in the selection process (Van Peteghem & Guachalla, 2019). The more an employee fits in a company, the more likely he/she is to show a higher level of satisfaction in their job and organization commitments.
Secondly, organization-person fit tends to increase employee’s motivation and inspiration to achieve the set organizational objectives. Employees feel recognized and appreciated being part of the organization which they grew up admiring and wishing to work on the company one day. Also, employees feel motivated when their values, beliefs, and cultural norms are aligned with their company, hence increasing job satisfaction (Van Peteghem & Guachalla, 2019). Mostly, the poor organization-person fit makes most of the employees to underperform as they are less motivated in carrying their roles despite being highly qualified for the job.
Thirdly, the organization-person fit is more likely to reduce job turnover in the organization as employees are more compatible with the organization (Van Peteghem & Guachalla, 2019). Companies experience high cost every time an employee leaves or increase the cost of hiring and training new employees. Maintaining the high relationship between employees and organizations may save the organization the high cost of turnover. Also, most employees do not enjoy working for organizations that do match well with their personal values, and they may tend to leave the company whenever they find a perfect company with their values.
Lastly, organization-person fit improves employee job performance as well as overall organization performance. Most employee’s performance is well when they are satisfied in their current job as a result of the alignment of personal values with company values. Employees always show a negative effect on the effort they take toward organizational performance when they do not fit with organizations’ values (Van relatesem & Guachalla, 2019). The organization-person fit relate to both employee’s performance on the allocated roles and contextual performance such as employee’s behavior outside the organization. Most companies tend to align employees’ values with company values to maintain a good public reputation.
Approach to recruitment and selection plan
The recruitment and selection plan will provide a clear goal, values, belief, and culture approach supported in the company during job posting. The job post will include a clear definition of what organization-person fit means to the organization. This enables the company to indicate what values it what to share with employees while attracting potential candidates matching with their personal values. The human resource manager should ensure the identified values translate on the day to day activities and behavior to maintain both employees and company values.
The job advert should demonstrate the organization-person fit values to appeal with top candidates in the job market. This is the first step to hiring employees with same organization-person fit. Next is setting the right pre-selection process that provide organization culture fit. It ensures the process does not waste both candidates or company time and resources as it disregards all candidates that do match with company culture despite their qualification.
Lastly is improving the interview process to ensure the candidate selected for the job fit with the organization. The process involves making sure the recruitment process has set the right guidelines that align the company values and individual values. It also ensures the interviewer has good structure of interview question that can help gauge candidates’ values along with company values. It allows the interviewer to understand what to look for in a candidate who have potentials of positive organization-person fit.
Recruitment strategy
A global diversity recruitment strategy will be adopted to accommodate all employee despite their geographical location or cultural diversity (Baum et al., 2016) This is due to the nature of Delta airlines trade that involves both domestic and international flights. The strategy is more concern on bringing diversity in the company so as to accommodate customers from different background. It also concerns about the languages and culture of employees and ensuring the organization has combination that can improve the welfare of customers.
The recruitment process will used mixed option to arrive at the best candidate. To effectively implement the strategy, the plan will use E-recruitment approaches and in-person interview in sources for best candidate. The E-recruitment approaches involves performing a full series of function online and deciding the best candidate for the job.
The E-recruitment approaches will include various process to ensure its effectiveness. First, identifying, defining, and designing job opening (Sharma, 2014). The process involves identity the need for hiring, defining the role and deigning the job advertisement. Secondly, starting the recruitment process but attracting potential candidate through social media. Thirdly, sorting the applicant to identify those that match their personal values with company values. Fourth, contact candidate to assure to ensure the candidate availability. Lastly, closing the deal and socializing with new employee.
The strategy will utilize two e-sources in implementing globalization strategy. The first is through company website on the career section (Sharma, 2014). Delta company have strong website and that can be integrate with recruitment process. It allows candidates to view open vacancies, apply for the job while the human resource manager evaluate the application, screen for the best candidate, and make the final decision.
The second source is through targeted job portal or online recruitment agencies (Sharma, 2014). Mostly the targeted job portal help in adverting for open job opportunities and in screening part of the recruitment process. It also refers the best candidates for the job through matching company values and applicant values.
The in-person method will be incorporated in the E-recruitment process where necessary or use as independent process depending on the type job opportunities. The process will be used to evaluate if the selected candidate can do the job, what the candidate really wants, and if he/she will fit with organization culture and values.
Justification
The E-recruitment approach is one of the effective methods for Delta airline company as it is more cost effective, access to wide pool of application in all country of operation, faster processes, and better employee branding (Sharma, 2014). The sources also ensure diversity in the recruitment process and give an opportunity for worker in the foreign countries to apply and get the job without having to travel for interviews. The company website will be effective in screening any type of employee the company wishes to hire. This is because the company human resource management has full control of the application process. However, the final recruitment process can be removed from some workers such as mechanical and pilots who need to showcase their skills.
The targeted job portal and online recruitment agencies will be effective in reducing the cost of advertainments and burden of sorting and screening the wide pool of applications. It also directs only the qualified and talented candidates who’s matching the company values. The process will be effective when recruiting customer care services, flight attendance, reservation workers, and flight operational workers.
The in-person interview will be combined with e-sources to reduces the cost and time wastage. Mostly, organization such as Delta airline first conduct preliminary interview through the phone or video call before in-person. The source will be used for technical workers such as pilots and mechanical employees. It also used for senior management position such as directors to ensure they do the job if hired.
Conclusion
Recruitment and selection process play a vital role in the organization performance hence the need to align the recruitment strategies with organization strategic plan. The human resources manager must not only look at candidate’s qualification and talents but also look at organization-person fit in the company. Delta airline company is one of the most preferred organization by employee due to its ability to match its values with candidate values. Delta company can utilize a global diversity recruitment strategy that allow inclusion of all people. The strategy utilizes E-recruitment sources such as website and targeted job portal to assess and hire the best candidate. It also uses in-persona source mostly in technical and top-level management workers as it assesses if the employees fit for the organization.