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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Radio Six. Welcome to our program, Business World. Our guest speaker today is Ms Turner, an adviser from a local recruitment agency. Good evening, everyone. Today, I’m going to talk about external staffing.  As we all understand, a new firm has little choice but to hire people from outside the company. Established firms may also hire outsiders for a variety of masons, for instance, to fill positions for which there are no good internal candidates, to accommodate growth, or to attract flesh ideas. External staffing involves recruitment and selection.
     The first step in hiring new workers is to recruit a pool of applicants who are interested in and qualified for available positions. Successful recruiting stresses only the most basic qualifications of a job. For example, a recruitment ad for a financial analyst might specify applicants with degrees in finance. Requiring a degree from a particular school, however, would unduly restrict applicants.
     Recruiters often visit high schools, vocational schools, colleges and universities. In some cases, labor agreements stipulate that new employees be hired from union membership rolls. Many companies advertise in newspapers or trade publications or seek the help of employment agencies. In addition, unsolicited letters and resumes from job seekers can help identify the right person for a job.
     Recruiters have faced a difficult job in recent years as unemployment has continued to drop.
     Indeed, in the past two years unemployment has dropped to a 23-year low of 4.6 percent. As a result, recruiters at such firms as Victory, PeopleSoft, and Cognex had started to stress how much fun it was to work at their companies and to reinforce this messages with ice cream socials, Karaoke contests, softball leagues and free movie nights.
     Once recruiting efforts have attracted job applicants, managers must evaluate each individual and select the best candidate. Testing procedures are placed among the stages and possible outcomes of a typical selection process: applications or resumes, screening interviews, ability and aptitude tests, on-site interviews, reference checks and medical and drug tests. Each organization develops its own mix of selection techniques and may use them in any order.
     First, applications or resumes. A job application is a standardized form that asks the applicant for such information as background, experience and education.  A resume is a prepared statement of the applicant’s qualifications and career goals.
     Second, screening interviews. Companies often find themselves with several applications or resumes for every job opening. Managers thus narrow the field, first on the basis of applications and then by holding screening interview’s to eliminate clearly unqualified applicants. Then the managers interview qualified applicants in greater depth.
     Finally, ability and aptitude tests. For some positions, ability or aptitude tests may be given. Such tests must meet two conditions. First, they must be job related, and second the test must indicate clearly that top scorers are more likely to perform well in the specified job.
     Increasingly many firms are also stressing skills related to teamwork in selecting new employees. Southwest Airlines, Procter & Gamble, and Merck, for example, use current employees, in addition to managers, to interview applicants. These employees strive to determine how well applicants will fit into the company’s culture and how well they will get along with other people in the firm.