Recruitment vs. Selection: Which Comes First and Why? Can You Share Examples?

Hi!

Is recruitment under selection, or is selection under recruitment? Can you provide an example for clarification?

Understanding Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment and selection are the two stages involved in the process of appointing or placing the best candidate in a job. Recruitment always precedes selection because it is the stage of inviting a greater number of qualified candidates for a job. Selection is the subsequent phase that determines the best-suited candidate among the many prospective applicants for the job or jobs.

Recruitment is the simple process of collecting and combining a list of qualified candidates for any given job, whereas selection is the complex process of screening and choosing the best from the list.

Regards

Understanding the Recruitment and Selection Process

Try to picture this. It's easy.

At the beginning of the (Apr 2016-Mar 2017) financial year, the manpower planning/human resource planning process is carried out where the demand versus supply of human resources (employees) is measured against the business objectives of the commencing (Apr 2016-Mar 2017) financial year.

Each department head will announce their required number of people resources (positions) to meet their department objectives that stem from the business objectives. That's where your jobs come from.

When the plan is finalized along with the Head of HR, you start your recruitment process where you advertise and receive as many CVs as possible for the given position. You then filter out the CVs according to your required criteria and shortlist the candidates you want to meet. End of Recruitment.

Selection begins when you start contacting those candidates, and they appear for interview rounds, clear all tests, and ultimately receive a job offer (offer letter). If they accept, you confirm their appointment and issue an appointment letter on the day of their joining. End of Selection.

You may then have an induction or training program after they join to help them settle in.

You must observe the trends in your industry.

The above is ideally the first few stages in the employee life cycle followed by induction training and annual performance review.

Hope that sets up a very clear image.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi,

Attracting and gathering a pool of talented candidates is recruitment, and when you select the right candidate from the pool created, it is called selection. Recruitment and selection are different terms; first, we recruit and then we select.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Firuzi

Recruitment and Selection are two halves of one process. They need to work in tandem to get the right outcome. I suspect those of you who are treating this process as two discrete processes are doomed to failure. It does not work.

Read my previous postings on this subject.