Amazon - Recruitment and Staffing

Recruitment and Staffing

Dewayne Marable

OMM618 Human Resources Management

Cheryl Moore

December 23, 2015

Recruitment and Staffing

        Amazon announced its plans to hire 7,000 workers for its U.S. operation. Two thousand of these workers will be in Amazon's customer service department and the workers will be a mixture of full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees (Isidore, 2013). Ensuring the selection of the right employees is one of the most crucial HRM processes and one of the most challenging decision-making processes in an organization (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014). The ultimate goal is to generate as large a pool as possible of applicants having the requisite knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics associated with the focal job (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).

Recruitment

        Recruitment is an activity of establishing contact between employers and applicants.

Employees are the backbone and most important resources a business can have so it is

imperative that the organization has a highly functioning recruitment and selection process.

Torrington et al., (2011, p. 157) states that the first steps in recruitment should be pragmatic and

straightforward. The best way to accomplish this is to conduct a job analysis. Ideally job skills

analysis should be incorporated with a strategic assessment of HR requirements so that the

organization can be confident that they have the necessary skills contained within the human

capital of the business to achieve long-term organizational objectives (Rivera, 2012b, p.75).  

When starting the recruitment process HR must be sure to maintain nondiscriminatory practices

while determining employee eligibility. Extreme caution must be used to ensure that selection

procedures are appropriately and purposefully designed to address only information that pertains

to a job (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).

        One of the many positions Amazon is looking to fill is that of a warehouse supervisor. The

applicant pool will consist of both internal and external candidates.  Job postings for this position

will be placed on bulletin boards in the break room for internal applicants with newspaper and

television advertisement for external job seekers.   Phillips and Gully, (2009, p.18) tell that

internal recruitment can be beneficial for a number of reasons.  These include offering current

employees' opportunities for candidates can prove to be time consuming and may not be managed

effectively promotion or personal development and it can be considered a lower risk for the

organization. On the other hand, there can also be some disadvantages to internal recruitment.

Employees how are not selected can start to display attitudes of resentment (Phillips and Gully,

2009, p.20). External candidates for the warehouse supervisor position will be filled through an

outside recruitment agency. The reason being Amazon wants to hire the best possible candidate

for this position and an outside recruitment agency is likely to have a large number of potential

candidates, and can take on the responsibility of background checks and the initial

skills assessments.  Hiring from an internal and external pool of making an agency more

preferable.  Rivera (2012a, p.1000) notes that over time organizations can often establish

relationships with preferred recruitment agencies so that the recruitment agencies become

familiar with the job descriptions and person specifications, and this accelerates the process.

Increasingly, organizations are also making use of online recruitment opportunities, and this is

another way of reaching a wide group of potential candidates in cost-effective manner (Girard

and Fallery, cited in Boudarouk and Ruel, 2009, p.39).

Staffing

        Staffing is important because it’s putting the right person on the right job. Choosing the best applicant the first time allows the organization to get quality performance which can decrease turn over.  Using the recruitment agency has made it easier to draw up a short list of potential candidates to fill the warehouse supervisor position.  Now the next step in the process is to narrow down the shortlist and begin the selection or staffing process.  The selection will begin with psychometric testing and follow up with an interview.  Psychometric testing will test the applicants’ aptitude or how quickly or easily one will be able to learn in the future (Youssef-Morgan, 2014).  Aptitude tests evaluate the test taker’s level of reception, comprehension, and retention and are designed to measure fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence (Youssef-Morgan, 2014). Ability refers to what one can demonstrate present. The cognitive ability test is primarily designed to access the applicants’ mental abilities.  Cushway (2014, p.26) explains that psychometric test can be useful if an organization is looking to recruit an individual with particular personality traits in order to generate a cross functional team.  Because this is a warehouse job which will require standing and lifting a physical ability test will also be conducted.  Physical ability test will measure muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance, and movement quality (Youssef-Morgan & Stark, 2014).