Selection

Many organisations such as Tesco’s use selection to gather more information about the candidate and to figure their personality and how they really are. This is also use to evaluate the candidate and assess them by given them situations to deal with and to also examine their performance overall. There are different types of selection methods that organisations like Tesco use before selecting their candidates. The methods that Tesco mainly use are:

• Screening
• Interview
• Assessment centres

Screening:

When an organisation uses screening as a method of selection, it means the organisation decides which applicants should go forward to the later stages of the recruitment process. When candidates get screened, their application gets read and the one who match the job requirements get put through for assessment. Screened candidates are usually greater than the candidates who get put through to the finally process as they get narrowed down to the best suitable for the job. Roberts, G (1997). This process is needed to reduce the full response of applicants to a manageable number of applicants that should get put to consideration. The main techniques for screening are application forms and CV’s, telephone screening and biodata.

Using screening does have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of screening is that it saves a lot of time for the employers to go through each candidates application and CV’s and narrow them down to the most suitable candidates. Screen will do that for them which will save a lot of time. Another advantage of screening is that it can provide information of the qualities of the potential candidate which may not get identified by other methods and screening  is also an unbiased method of selection as this can select candidates only according to the information and be chosen from personal opinions of an employer.

Along with the advantages, the disadvantages are that it can give false information as a candidates CV’s may contain false information can this can get scanned through which can be a big mistake and the wrong candidate can be chosen. Another disadvantage is that too many application is involved and by using screening in and screening out method to cut down applicants, good candidates may get rejected and the non suitable candidates may get put through because of the information given in their CV’s.

Interview:

Interview is the most used selection technique for an organisation. In an interview is when an organisation invites a chosen candidate to come in and answer various questions that the employer asks relating to the job or themselves. Roberts, G (1997). An interview can be done either face to face or by the telephone. The most useful way would be face to face as the employer and see and examine the candidate’s personality. There are two types of interview, structured and unstructured. A structured interview is mainly focused on specific information about the criteria and the answers are scored within a scoring range. 

Recent research in UK’s organisations such as Tesco has showed that the most effective structured interview is behavioural and experience interview. This is when the interviewers questions are aimed at past experience and linked with specific competencies then the answers get compared to positive and negative description of the behaviour by the interviewer and then the judgement is made based on the scores. Roberts, G (1997). This type of interview also allows interviewers to assess how candidates cope under pressure which is an advantage for them to decide if the candidate is suitable or not.

An unstructured interview is when interviewers provide the candidate with a free range of question for them to answer then the interviewer judges the answers by looking at candidates overall performance and deciding which they are suitable for the job or not. Roberts, G (1997). Unstructured interview encourages candidates to take over and answer questions freely so they feel comfortable to respond to set questions.

Interview does have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of an interview is that the interviewer can dig deeper into a response made by the candidate and can expand on the answer to find out more about the candidate. Interviews also allow higher response rate which is useful for the interviewer to assess the candidate. Another advantage of organisations using interview as a selection technique is that the interview can be undertaken with less training, does not require a lot of preparation and is very flexible for the candidate. The biggest advantage of an interview is that the interviewer has the chance to assess the candidate performance which is really effective.

The disadvantage of using interview as a selection method is that it can be very costly and time-consuming as the interviewer has to review all applications, design and prepare interview questions, set up interview times with the best eligible candidates, do the interview, analyse each candidates skills after the interview, provide feedback to other staff members and then pick the best candidate for the job. Another big disadvantage is that only one person from the company gets to choose the best candidate in their opinion which may not be agreed by the rest of the employees in the organisation. Some members of staff may think the chosen candidate is not suitable this can cause issues for them to bond with the new employee.

Assessment centre:

This final method of selection is used by organisations as assessment centre is a comprehensive procedure which uses techniques to evaluate candidates who have been short listed for the job. This process involves different techniques and group of assessors to assess different candidates and then make the final decision based on the assessment. The assessment centre involves many interviewers, different types of exercise and candidates are given personality tests for the assessors to evaluate and they will also observe each candidate to see their overall performance and analyse their behaviour toward certain situations. Roberts, G (1997).

This method of selection also has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of organisations using assessment centre is that they focus mainly on the key elements of the role of the job and are very specific in measuring the suitability of the applicants. Another advantage is that they use range of techniques instead of just concentrating on one technique and by using a variety of techniques will help them and the validity of the process is improved. Also, this can be useful for the candidates as they get provided with different activities and opportunities to meet other candidates and the assessors. Roberts, G (1997).

However, the disadvantages of using assessment centre are that some candidates may feel uncomfortable around other candidates and may not be themselves around them. This can affect the chances for them to be accepted for the job role. Another disadvantage is that it can be very time consuming and costly for both organisation and the candidates. This is because it requires organisation to arrange the activities for the candidates and they need to provide many assessors which can be costly. For candidate, due to travel and taking part can become costly and time consuming.

In my high school, year 11, our school organised a mock interview day for the year 11 students to help them prepare for interviews for a job, university or other things in the future. They did this by calling in different people from different organisations, such as BAA, The Army and universities. Everyone had to dress smart for the interview and was giving a time slot for their interview and who they were going to have their interview with. Before the interview, the teachers made us fill in some questionnaires about ourselves and what we would like to do in the future. These were given to the interviewers to evaluate. I had an interview with a principle from Uxbridge College. She had my details in front of her so she knew what to ask me and could analyse my performance. They had given us feedback few weeks after the mock interview took place. This helped us look at where we went wrong and how we can improve that error in the future. The feedback I was given was that I was confident to speak up and answer questions however not confident enough to talk without hesitation as she could tell I was extremely nervous. I found this quiet helpful as I was being prepared for an interview and now have an idea how an interview works. The downfall of this interview was that it didn’t relate to as when it comes to what I want to do in the future but even then it did still help from the feedback to see what I needed to work on.

After looking at how Tesco uses the selection process, in my opinion, I would recommend only a few changes that they could make to improve how they select their employees. Below is a diagram of how Tesco uses the selection process to find the best candidate for their business. 

This diagram shows that Tesco advertises on their website and the national press to let people know they have jobs available. I think as Tesco is a huge business, they could expand by advertising their vacancy on T.V. even though it would be costly, majority of the people in the UK watch T.V and this will give a wider range of people that can apply instead of people who only may see it online or the national paper.

Another change that I would recommend is that instead of sending letters to the unsuccessful candidates, an employer should call up the candidates and tell them verbal. By dong that they can explain what went wrong and it seems more professional.

To conclude this section on selection, I believe business have to use the selection process by looking at the type of business they are, if they can afford to use up the money and time to go through the process. I believe that it is important that organisations use the correct method as it will help them choose the right candidate and not make a mistake by losing out on the right employees. 

Reference:

• Roberts, G. (1997) Recruitment And Selection. The Cromwell Press: Wiltshire
• Mullins, L J. ( 2007) Management And Organisational Behaviour. 8th Ed. Pearsons Education Limited: Essex