RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION: THE SITUATION IN THE CIVIL SERVICE OF DELTA STATE

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background To The Study

Every employer is concerned and interested in the quality of the workforce in his employment. This is so because human resources is the pivot on which the success of any organization hinge on. It is interesting to mention that the employees or human resources is responsible for coordinating the rest factors of production and activities of an organization. Therefore, the extent to which organization succeeds and the progress attained in the realization of its pre-determined objectives depends to a large extent on the quality and the potentials of its workforce.

Furthermore, uppermost in the mind of an organization is to get the right employees to fill the job positions for expected performances. It is commonly said, an organization can only be as effective as the people who operate the office, store, plant or equipment. The challenges of sourcing applicants with required skill and potentials and the ability to match skills properly with the tasks to elicit desired performance expected was what prompted this research study.

According to Ojo (1998), recruitment is the process of attracting potentials employees to the company. As he further observed, “it is a systematic means of finding and inducing available candidates to apply to the company for employment.

The recruitment process itself may be selective or pre-selective through choosing among the various sources of supply, as well as the decision in which candidates should be permitted to go through subsequent screening procedures. After the identification of sources of recruiting personnel and attracting several candidates for job vacancies, the next stage is the selection of the most suitable persons from the many applicants.

Selection therefore involves choosing from a pool of applicants, those who best meet the job-related criteria. The selection process, therefore, involves a series of activities aimed at identifying the best candidates for job positions from the list of applicants.

Recruitment which is the process undertaken by the personnel department to attract individuals with the requisite skills, experiences and abilities needed to execute tasks in an organization entails that job analysis, job description, job specification should be carefully carried out and predetermined. It is only when these have been properly defined that the recruiters will be in a better position to make contacts with people and the selection of the fits from the unfits facilitated.

It is pertinent to mention that the recruitment and selection of individuals for job has a relationship with the employee performance. Therefore, caution should be exercised to avoid human errors and other factors that often characterizes recruitment exercises. Regrettably, organizations in some cases miss the services of those who can actually contribute to the achievement of objectives due to the hasty way, personal interest, or short sightedness of the recruiters and in more extreme cases other considerations that often times brought to bear and when this is the case, the job holder is equally denied the satisfaction of high performance as it does not take long to find out that the individuals cannot meet the challenges and the demands of the job.

In search of a suitable manpower for the organization, firms use various sources and methods, ranging from television, advertisement, newspaper, employment agencies, magazines and journals. And in so doing encounter problems inherent in the recruitment and selection process that are imposed by government regulations, indigenous employment quota, expatriates quota, union membership, problem pertaining to an organizations employment policy, professional association membership problem etc.

These entire amounts to problem management have to contend with in recruiting and selecting manpower.

The need for recruiting and selection of workers arises in an organization when an existing employee retires or leaves, or is terminated, thereby creating a vacancy or gap, which must be filled. Also when a new line of operation is introduced as a part of a programme of change or expansion recruitment need may arise. When either is the case, it may be necessary for management to first decide on the labour requirements of the organization. This could be done by analyzing the job of the existing employees to see if units of the job of vacant post could be incorporated into the jobs or the existing workers could be assigned to the job.

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

In research study, a good statement of the problems must clarify exactly what is to be determined or solved. It should also restrict the scope of study to a specific question. Thus, the problem of this study is itemized as follows:

1. Recruitment of incompetent manpower in the civil service.
2. Sociological problems which tends to do with influencing the recruitment of manpower in the civil service.
3. Use of employment agencies that are not competent enough to recruit manpower in the civil service.
4. Inadequate process of manpower selection in the civil service which involves selecting people based on their connection with those carrying out the selection exercise.

1.3 Purpose Of The Study

It is a fact that the success of an organization depends on the quality of people who work to achieve the organizational objectives. This is why there is an emphasis on the caliber and quality of people to be recruited and selected into an organization.

Therefore, this study is designed to achieve the following:

1. To identity the problems of recruitment and selection.
2. Ascertain to what extent these problems exist.
3. Proffer solutions to enable employers avert the all devastating problems on recruitment and selection.
4. To identify the problems encountered by those engaged in recruitment and selection process.
5. To offer useful suggestions to management towards the handling of problems in the area of staff recruitment.

1.4 Research Question

1. What are the problems of recruitment and selection in the civil service?
2. Does one source of recruitment provide all the required competent manpower needed by organizations?
3. The organizations that use employment agency, do they perform better than those that do not use employment agency?
4. Does recruitment and selection process used by organizations help for the selections of more qualified manpower?

1.5 Hypotheses

To achieve the objective of this research, the following assumption are made and subsequently investigated to reach an empirical conclusion.

1. There is no relationship between wrong recruitment and selection and employee performance in civil service.
2. There is no positive relationship between the use of employment agency in recruitment and selection of qualified manpower.
3. There is no relationship between job mobility and the performance of the employees of civil service.

1.6 Significance Of The Study

The study will highlight the problems encountered by management in its bid to equip organization with qualified manpower through recruitment and selection.

It will also help in identifying and avoiding this recruitment and selection problem through the approach that will involve less error in the exercise.

1.7 Limitations Of The Study

In carrying out this research it is evident that there are limitations that will fall short of what has been an established interpretation of the findings. One of the limitations are unavailability of text of the subject, also my inability to reach the study subjects, and discuss personally with them which I feel will bring out the best result. But that cannot be possible due to lack of adequate mobility and finance. I will use questionnaire, which I will distribute to my subjects of study personally and though people to be able to cover enough organizations to make my findings reliable. I also intend to limit the area to be covered in the research to the problems encountered by management in recruiting and selecting workers.

The effect of the environment on interview the factors that may make interview unreliable as a selection device and the different technique involved in recruiting and selection. These areas seem to be the most sensitive as far as manpower planning is concerned, hence contributing to the important areas of concern and research.

1.8 Organization Of The Study

Here, we are highlighting what each chapter contains. Chapter one is the basic introduction of the research study. It introduces the study by stating the problems, showing us the purpose of study and bringing out the hypotheses. The second Chapter gives a general review of the related literatures. The third chapter gives us the methodology of the research study that links us to the analysis and presentation of data. In the fourth chapter, the hypotheses are rejected or accepted here and a conclusion is reached in the final chapter. Summary and recommendations for further studies are also made in this final chapter of the project.