Reflective Essay: Recruitment, Selection, and HRM Challenges

This reflective essay examines key aspects of Human Resource Management (HRM), including recruitment and selection, work-life balance, and managing diversity. The essay draws upon the author's college project experience, where they were involved in recruiting and selecting students, highlighting the challenges of competition and ensuring a fair process. The author then reflects on their internship experience in an MNC, where they encountered issues related to workforce diversity and the implementation of e-recruitment systems. The essay further discusses the importance of cultural sensitivity and the impact of work-life balance on employee performance. The author provides examples of how the organization addressed these issues, such as offering voluntary leaves and implementing policies to improve work-life balance. The essay concludes by emphasizing the practical learning gained from these experiences, providing insights into potential HRM challenges and how to address them.

Running head: Human Resource Management
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Reflective Essay
Human Resource Management

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Reflective Essay:
Recruitment& selection, work life balance and managing diversity are the challenging
activities of human resource management. The paper will focus on reflection upon the above-
stated topics. Recruitment can be defined as attracting a pool of talent to the organisation
(Banu and Devi, 2014). Selection can be defined as choosing the best suitable candidate from
the above pool of talent (Ekwoaba, Ikeije, and Ufoma, 2015). Work life balance is a situation
of attaining equilibrium in work commitments and personal responsibilities (Haar, Russo,
Suñe and Ollier-Malaterre, 2014). Workforce diversity can be described as the similarities
and differences that exist among the workforce. These can be in terms of culture, physical
abilities gender, race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation (Saxena, 2014).
I learned about them and their various applications during my college. In my college, we
were given a project. The project included tasks related to arts, management and information
technology. There were five team leads and five assistant team leads in the class. Team leads
had to recruit and select students from rest of the college and one assistant were given to
them for any kind of help. Initially by learning about the process of recruitment and selection
I though this is an easy process but after working on it practically I realised the process is
much more challenging than it seems. This basic reason which made the task challenging
was competition in the class for hiring the best ones and deciding whether the particular
candidate will be able to accomplish the task or not. I had to face this challenge the college
level but I realised that in the real market places the completion would at much greater skill
making the process challenging for managers. I and my assistant, first of all, drafted what are
the requirements of the project and what type of work needs to be done. After drafting the job
requirements I designed various posters in electronic format to attract students from different
departments. I highlighted the benefits that students can get by participating in our project
and how could this experience be helpful to them. I circulated this opportunity with the help
of social media. The next thing that was required to be done was sourcing. Sourcing here was
not much challenging as I had to pick the students only from the college. I tried to reach
suitable candidates through social media and also with the referrals of our friends. After this,
I received applications from the interested students. My focus was more on the recruitment
task so that I can get a large number of potential candidates.
For selection to be effective it is necessary to have a large number of potential candidates to
choose from. It is also very important to ensure that the selection procedure should be fair so
that organisation has chances to attract talented workforce in the coming future. (Nabi, Wei,
Husheng, Shabbir, Altaf, and Zhao, 2014). According to applications, I did the initial
screening. I choose the applications that can fulfil the tasks of the project and rejected the
rest. After the initial screening, I had a telephonic conversation with the selected candidates.
On the basis of telephonic conversation, some more candidates were rejected due to different
reasons. A lot of selected candidates was now called for personal interview. Drafting the
questionnaire for the personal interview was the much challenging task. I drafted the
questionnaire for the jobs related to my subject knowledge and took help from the people of
other departments for rest of the interview questionnaires. On the day of the final interview, I
was more nervous than the students but I gathered the strength and went ahead for the

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process. I interviewed different candidates with different skill set and aspirations. After the
interview process, I gave a deep thought to each candidate and on the basis of the aggregate
of their positives and negatives I selected the best suitable candidates. I communicated them
about this over the phone and gave them the time of two days to respond. Out of the
candidates that I had selected few were hired by others also. Majority of the students accepted
the offer whereas few denied. At the time of the interview, I had also prepared the list of next
best alternatives. I approached those candidates and gave them the offer. Those candidates
accepted the offer. Next day I organised the meeting of selected team members and
introduced them to each other and their respective tasks. The procedure that I career helped
me to learn various things. I helped me to develop my interpersonal skills. I learned how to
get over nervousness and move ahead. The experience taught me the polite way of refusing
the people, so that scope for approaching them in future still remains. This practical
experience gave me a basic idea of what are the potential issues that can occur and how
managers handle various issues at an organisational level. It also gave me a basic practical
knowledge of the process.
My next experience with the recruitment and selection was at the time of my internship. The
process but on a vast scale, something that was new to me was the system of recruitment of
the organisation. The organisation had e recruitment system. This system recruits the people
online with the use of web technologies. For the organisations dealing in a competitive world,
it is regarded as a boon. It provides ease and various other advantages over traditional
methods (Lakshmi, 2014).While handling the e recruitment system I learned how the process
of recruitment can be made easy with the use of technology. I also analysed that the cost that
was incurred in the traditional recruitment process was much higher than the e recruitment
process. The only drawback that I found with the system is that checking the authenticity in
the online recruitment process is challenging. Also, it is solely dependent on the internet,
therefore, any disturbance in the technology can affect the process.
During my internship, I came across the issues of managing workforce diversity and various
work life balance related issues of the organisation. I was an intern in the HR department of
the organisation. My organisation was an MNC and the employees it belonged to various
nations, ethnicity and races. Interning in the HRM department of the organisation helped me
to know how diversity can be useful for the organisation and how it can create issues for the
organisation. My task was basically to assist my manager and clearly, observe what he does
in different situations. Our organisation had an issue that leaves policy of the company was
allowed leaves only on the occasions and national holidays of the native country. This created
the problem for employees who belonged to other cultures and nationalities. This resulted in
a reduced organisational commitment from the expatriates. To overcome this issue manager
came with the policy of voluntary leaves for all. According to this policy, employees were
given a fixed number of leaves which they can take voluntarily. This created harmony
amongst the diverse workforce. Their organisational commitment also increased as they
thought that organisation also respects and understands their needs. Throughout my training
period, I observed that diverse workforce was beneficial in bringing the creativity and
innovation to the organisation. I have seen people coming up with different productive ideas

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on a particular thing or situation. The challenges that were encountered are fighting
discrimination. I have experienced a situation where new employees were discrimination on
the basis of language. The majority population in the organisation was English speaking
whereas the newly appointed employees were Spanish speaking. They felt discrimination in
the organisation. They were not involved in the groups. They were treated as left outs. This
created the feeling of humility among the Spanish speaking group. To overcome this issue
my manager made some efforts that prove fruitful. First of all, he had a discussion about the
issue with the English speaking population. He explained to them what the other group is
going through. He also organised various ice breaking activities to improve the
communication between the groups. These activities gradually brought the positive results
for the organisation. From the efforts of my manager, I learned how challenges in managing
diversity in the organisation can be met. I also noticed that cultural sensitivity is a very
important quality that a manager should possess. Cultural sensitivity can be defined as
identifying the cultural difference and respecting those differences. It can also be defined as
acceptation and integration of differences (Arell-Sundberg, Horghagen, Hansen, and
Jacobsen, 2017).
I also learned that in culturally diverse workforce employees may get offended very quickly.
For instance, we have two employees one from Japan and other from the USA. The gesture
of hugging is very common in the USA, but when the employee from the USA did this with
Japanese employee he got offended. Here none of the parties was at fault. To avoid such
kinds of issue in the future my manager asked me to prepare a power point presentation for
employees. The presentation consisted of the different social and cultural practices of people
of different nationalities. It consisted of common gestures in different nations and their
respective meanings. The employees were given knowledge of each other’s culture to
establish harmony among them. The presentation also contained guide lines about what is the
accepted culture in the organisation, so that knowingly or unknowingly employees do not
hurt each other. This was helpful to employees as well as enhanced my learning. I also came
to know about various cultures. This experience also developed my insights about managing
the diverse workforce in the organisation.
After the issue of managing the diverse workforce the other major issue that raises challenges
in the organisation work life balance of employees. In the organisation where I was a trainee
many employees complain about they did not get their personal space, they are stuck or
disturbed by professional work anytime. This adversely affects employees performance
because they are the stress level in employees is increased. Younger people cannot work like
their parents did. Today’s generation demands more freedom and control of their life, they
want private space and have various other priorities like friends, family, health and many
others (Ramsdal, 2016).
In my organisation, I have seen a female employee resigning because anytime disturbance
from the office creates troubles for her. She was from the marketing department and required
to handle clients. She had to handle the clients other than hours of her shift. She was not able
to give time to her family and herself. She managed t for two months but finally to resign
after two months and the reason was clear. After that incident management of the

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organisation realised the importance of work life balance. My manager invited the
suggestions from the whole team. The major decisions that were taken in this regard were no
employee will be call for work after his shift, they will not be asked to stay in office for
longer hours, they were allowed some leaves that they can take within the prior notice period,
some employees were also given dinner or holiday packages and weekly fun activities were
also conducted in organisation. I was one who has to seek opinions of everyone and then
report to the manager. After implementation of these decisions the results were positive the
employees were more satisfied and stress level was low.
It can be concluded that globalisation as introduced to various challenges and opportunities.
The thing is similar for human resource management; there are challenges as well as
opportunities. Overall my college and internship experience was helpful in providing me with
the practical learning about potential challenges that can arise in recruitment and selection, in
managing the workforce and managing work life balance of employees. It provided me with
the learning experience of how to deal with those issues and how to convert negatives into
positives. My learning will definitely help me in my future jobs. I learnt that every issue can
be dealt it just requires timely concern from the side of manager.

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References
Arell-Sundberg, M., Horghagen, S., Hansen, T.E.A. and Jacobsen, C.P., 2017. Creative
activities in an international context contribute to cultural sensitivity, awareness and personal
development. Journal of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences, (2).
Banu, P.V. and Devi, B. R., 2014. Introduction to Recruitment. SSRG International Journal
of Economics and Management Studies, 1(2), pp. 8-13.
Ekwoaba, J.O., Ikeije, U.U. and Ufoma, N., 2015. The impact of recruitment and selection
criteria on organizational performance. Global Journal of Human Resource
Management, 3(2), pp.22-23.
Haar, J.M., Russo, M., Suñe, A. and Ollier-Malaterre, A., 2014. Outcomes of work–life
balance on job satisfaction, life satisfaction and mental health: A study across seven
cultures. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(3), pp.361-373.
Lakshmi, S.L., 2014. E-Recruitment: A boom to the organizations in the competitive
world. Journal of Business and Management, pp.2319-7668.
Nabi, G., Wei, S., Husheng, X., Shabbir, M., Altaf, M. and Zhao, S., 2014. Effective
Recruitment and Selection Procedures: an Analytical Study Based on Public Sector
Universities of Pakistan. Public Policy and Administration Research, 4(10), pp.12-20.
Ramsdal, H., 2016. Flexible organizations and the new working life: A European perspective.
Routledge.
Saxena, A., 2014. Workforce diversity: A key to improve productivity. Procedia Economics
and Finance, 11, pp.76-85.