A Review on Recruitment and Selection: OCBC Bank Singapore Study

This report provides a comprehensive review of recruitment and selection practices, focusing on a case study of OCBC Bank in Singapore. The report begins with an introduction to human resource management (HRM) and HR planning, highlighting the importance of recruitment and selection in organizational development. It explores factors influencing recruitment and selection, including external and internal considerations, as well as the concept of recruitment and selection within an organization. The report delves into different types of recruitment, the stages of selection, ethical considerations, and the importance of recruitment and selection for organizations. It also examines theoretical frameworks like the HR Planning and Analysis Model and the Guest Model. The methodology section outlines the research philosophy, approach, design, data collection, sampling, and analysis techniques used in the study. Finally, the report concludes with a review of the literature, identifying gaps and providing a summary of the key findings. The report is designed to provide valuable insights into the recruitment and selection process within a real-world context, offering a practical understanding of HRM principles.

Running head: A REVIEW ON RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
A review of Human Resource Management on Recruitment and Selection: Study based on
OCBC Bank Singapore
Student’s name:
Name of the University:
Author’s note:

1A REVIEW ON RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
Table of Contents
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Human resource management and HR planning.......................................................................3
1.2 Factors governing recruitment and selection.............................................................................4
1.3 Concept of recruitment and selection within an organisation...................................................5
1.4 Theoretical understanding of human resources management....................................................6
1.5 Types of recruitments within organisations...............................................................................9
1.6 Stages of selection that are taken by HR managers.................................................................12
1.7 Ethics in recruitment and selection within an organisation.....................................................15
1.8 Importance of recruitment and selection for organisations.....................................................16
1.9 Gap in literature.......................................................................................................................17
1.10 Summary................................................................................................................................18
Research Methodology..................................................................................................................19
1. Introduction................................................................................................................................19
1.1 Research philosophy................................................................................................................19
1.2 Research approach...................................................................................................................20
1.3 Research design.......................................................................................................................20
1.4 Data collection process............................................................................................................21
1.5 Sampling technique.................................................................................................................22
1.6 Data analysis technique...........................................................................................................23
1.7 Ethical considerations..............................................................................................................24
1.8 Reliability and validity testing.................................................................................................24

2A REVIEW ON RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
1.9 Research timeline.....................................................................................................................25
1.10 Summary................................................................................................................................25
Reference List................................................................................................................................27

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Literature Review
1. Introduction
In the literature review section, scholarly papers have been reviewed including current
knowledge and substantiate findings. In this section, secondary sources of information with
original and experimental works are reviewed about recruitment and selection process. Human
resource management is widely accepted factor for employees’ high performances and this
management system must follow the organisational ethos. Recruitment and selection process of
the organisation is a wheel for organisational development as it helps the organisation by putting
talent within it. Ideal human capital of an organisation depends on recruitment and selection
process. Critics’ viewpoints and arguments are presented in this literature review section. Gap in
literature is given in the literature review section so that gap of the critics’ concept can be
clarified.
1.1 Human resource management and HR planning
Human resource management is a function within a firm mainly concentrated on
selecting, managing and directing the employees to work. According to Brewster and Hegewisch
(2017), HR management is dealt with various issues in the organisation related to performance of
the employees, compensation, organisational development and benefits of the employees and
employee motivation. HR department within organisations play strategic role to manage the
people and recruit new employees to maintain productivity and culture. In recruitment process,
HR department discusses with the Board of Directors in finding the measurable impact of staff
programming and resourcing. On the other side, human resource planning is the method of

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identifying the current and future employee resources needs of an organisation to grab the
organisational goals (Beardwell and Thompson 2014). The strategic plan of the organisation
must align with the human resource management system. In developed countries, most of the
employees are ageing and in developing economies, demand for the knowledgeable workers lead
to successful HR planning within the organisation. HR planning starts with the recruitment and
selection and this planning is the cornerstone of ensuring the human resource requirements. In
recent time, positive psychology is needed in the workplace to cope up with work environment
and HR department finds it hard to find suitable employees (Shen et al. 2016). Similarly, the
employees are finding it difficult to get rid of the fear of redundancies.
1.2 Factors governing recruitment and selection
External Factors:
The situation in labour market has a predominant role in determining the selection and
recruitment sources of an organisation. When the employment is high within the organisation,
the organisation enjoys good flows of qualified applicants. On the other side, when the
organisations are in tight labour market with low employment, the organisations have to
advertise heavily to recruit the employees in local employment agencies. As pointed out by
Chelladurai and Kerwin (2017), labour market situation in most of the local areas are significant
for recruiting supervisory, non-managerial and line-managers posts. In addition, when the
organisations want to recruit the higher posts, they advertise on the external agencies to attract
the experienced talents. External factors of selection and recruitment are associated with the legal
and political consideration as some of the countries have reservation system for minorities group
in employment. India, South Africa and other Asian and African countries have this kind of

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reservation quota for the employees. This decision is political matter and organisations have to
follow this while recruiting and HR department has to deal legal factors like with the
compensation, safety of the employees and health condition and retirement benefits of the
employees (Brewster et al. 2016).
Internal Factors:
Recruitment policy within the organisation is important as some of the organisations
follow the internal recruitment and some follow external recruitment process. The employees
need to know about the company as it must fit with organisational culture. In developed
countries, it is commonly seen that employees like to work on ‘part-time’ and ‘full-time’ basis.
Employees’ tendency to work on shift and timing are important factors to justify the hiring
system. Multinational companies follow some distinctive recruitment and selection process
called polycentric, geocentric, regiocentric and ethnocentric. As commented by Reiche et al.
(2016), in polycentric approach, the candidates are recruited in the multinationals from host
countries in the operation of subsidiaries companies, whereas, in geocentric approach, the
multinational companies recruit the employees from irrespective of the nationalities.
Ethnocentric approach is another process of recruiting the candidates in international business
based skill required and candidates’ willingness to work in mix culture (Sparrow et al. 2016).
Organisation also follows the cost of recruiting factor in selection and recruitment process. Large
organisations take technological help in recruitment and cost of software is high. The solution of
reducing the cost of recruitment is proactive personnel practices.

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1.3 Concept of recruitment and selection within an organisation
As stated by Greiner (2015), employee recruitment is the practice carried on by a firm for
the purpose of attracting and identifying potential employees. Most of the large organisations
have recruitment plans to allure employees that can capable of fulfilling organisation’s
objectives. Employees’ recruitment is not only for the fulfilling the vacancies, but recruitment
and selection process is done to add value in organisational culture. According to Nolan and
Garavan (2016), recruitment is the method of searching the candidates for the vacant post and
stimulate the candidates to apply for the job, whereas, selection engages the series of stages
through which the applicants are screened for selecting the suitable employees for the posts.
Recruitment and selection process within an organisation is explained as activities to obtain the
employees in legal way for the sufficient use qualified candidates so that organisation and people
can select each other in long and short-term interest (Shen et al. 2016). On the contrary,
recruitment and selection is a method of attracting a pool of high quality candidates to obtain
from the best. Most of the multinational companies devote resources to make high quality
selection process to grab the candidates. In most of the countries, Information Technologies are
used in the recruitment and selection process rather than traditional method. There are several
stages of selection of employee to judge their efficiency of the vacant post. As opined by
Chelladurai and Kerwin (2017), recruitment and selection process is the source for competitive
advantage of an organisation to attract high knowledgeable employees. In a business process,
human resource management creates a system to support job placement recruitment, selection,
induction, performance appraisal, training and development, employees’ benefits analysis and
health, safety and security. Recruitment policy of an organisation depends on mainly ethics of

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the management and its relative importance on the selection phase. Baum (2016) argued that the
more efficiently recruitment stage is done the less significant the selection becomes.
1.4 Theoretical understanding of human resources management
HR Planning and analysis model:
HR planning process within the organisations defines the accomplishment of HR within
the time-frame. HR planning also suggests the need of the human resources within the
organisation (Shen et al. 2016). Current state of the organisation in terms of human resources is
judged that can meet the business goal. The factors considering the current state are associated
with number of human resources, required competencies and resources need. The organisation
has its mission and vision, competency-based management allows the human resource to
integrate the resource planning with corporate planning. The HR department does the calculation
to measure the current capacity of the organisation and the desired capacity to meet the
organisation’s objectives. As stated by Storey (2016), strategic business plan in this stage is
associated with staffing and hiring new resources. These strategies programmes are evaluated
and monitored ensure the organisation in directing towards the right path. On the other side, HR
planning is an ongoing process to best fit for identifying the workforce shortage and spares
(Ekwoaba et al. 2015). Three factors of HR planning are comprised with forecasting of labour
demand, balancing project labour and evaluating the present employees within the organisation.

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Figure 1: HR planning and analysis model
(Source: Lussier and Hendon 2017)
The Guest Model:
David Guest proposed this model in the year 1987 and this model talks about the fusion
of hard and soft approach of HRM. Hard approaches in HRM are associated with the
organisational viewpoint as employees can be replaced as disposable. Employees are viewed as a
passive factor and quantitative aspect of HRM is judged through hard approach. On the other
side, the soft approach is associated with employees' active participation. It gains employee
commitment, competences, adaptability and contribution to the organisational goals. Soft model
propagates that employees are valued like assets. A humanistic approach to HRM emphasises on

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motivation, communication and leadership (Sanders et al. 2014). The guest model has four
crucial components. First, strategic integration is the ability to control the HRM strategy and
business strategy of the organisation. In order to achieve the goal, congruence between HR
strategy and business strategy is very much needed. Second, flexibility is concerned with
employees' capacity to adopt the changes proposed by HR department in changing working
environment. Flexibility within the workplace carries the connotation of both soft and hard
model. Third, high commitment is associated with two aspects, behavioural commitment and
attitudinal comment that reflect the identification of the organisation. Lastly, quality is based on
mainly pre-assumption of quality services that result from managing people.
Figure 2: Guest Model of human resource
(Source: Guest et al. 2016)
1.5 Types of recruitments within organisations
There are two types of recruitment sources that are widely used in the organisations.
External recruitment sources:

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Organisations use external sources for a mainly higher position where organisation's employees
are unsuitable for certain actions. Large organisations use advertisements to recruit the skilled
workers, higher staffs and clerical posts. Multinational organisations post advertisements in
newspapers, journals and online platforms (Greiner 2015). Good advertisements can attract the
candidates who would be suitable for the organisation. Management of the organisation uses
good ‘person specification' and ‘job description' to attract the potential candidates. In addition,
colleges and universities provide good and skilled employees for the organisations and freshers
provide innovation and productivity at the same time. In the banking sector, the management
recruits the freshers from business colleges to utilise the young mind in flourishing the business.
As stated by Dlaza and Chinyamurindi (2017), close liaison can be observed between
educational institution and companies to recruit the candidates from these institutions. Recently,
organisations are used external recruitment agencies in order to recruit the new employees.
External agencies use casual callers to attract the employees and the agencies play as
‘middleman' between employees and organisations.
External advertisements provide merits of giving suitable persons and external sources
give chance to the management of having exact requirement of skills with training and
education. External recruitment provides the chance of having new ideas and fresh minds.
According to Black (2016), external recruitment can reach large numbers of candidates and the
employees have more experience and knowledge. On the other side, external recruitment
demoralises the employees the employees as they can think the position may belong to them. In
the organisation, the new employees may feel lack of co-operation from existing employees. In
external recruitment, the organisations have to spend money as they have to recruit the external
agencies or advertise on media.

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External Recruitment sources Internal recruitment sources
Press advertisements
Educational institution
Placement agencies
Labour contractors
Employee referrals
Transfers
Promotions
Upgrading
Demotion
Retired employees
Table 1: Types of recruitment
(Source: Landers and Schmidt 2016)
Internal sources of recruitment
Internal recruitment sources within an organisation involve the transfers of the
employees. Transferring involve the shifting of the employees to different places or position to
fill the vacant. Within the organisation, changing the rank and responsibility can fulfil the
organisations' recruitment. The total numbers of the employees do not increase when transferring
occurs (Hunter et al. 2017). In the banking sector, transferring the employees is very common in
changing the rank and the employees get promotions to carry better prestige within the
organisations. Higher responsibilities lead to more pay and promotion does not also increase the
total number of employees. In addition, employees can recommend or suggest their own
preferences from their families and friends. Management tries to look out the prospective
candidates.
Internal sources of recruitments provide the advantage of improved morale of the
employees as the employees see that they can also get higher posts. Employees expect promotion
to carry higher status within the organisation. As commented by Taylor (2014), internal