The Case for Recruitment & Selection 

Why might organizations decide to allocate more resources toward marketing or product design rather than using those same resources to do a really good job in employee recruitment and selection?

While it is nearly universally agreed that employee recruitment and selection is important for any organization, there are some reasons why a particular business may choose to focus more of their time, money, and other resources elsewhere. In many sectors a company’s business model requires heavy investment in something like marketing. The below image from Web Strategies shows how spending 20% of a firm’s budget is hardly unheard of from some businesses in the business-to-consumer space. This spending is not a luxury, but a necessity that often makes it difficult to heavily invest in employee recruitment beyond what is viewed as absolutely necessary. You might also imagine how a business struggling to push out the latest model of its product that it needs to stay competitive would feel about spending its limited budget on trying to find good employees later when it has a huge need right now.

Source: Leone, C. (2022, November 12). How much should you budget for marketing in 2023? WebStrategies, Inc. Retrieved April 4, 2023, from https://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/how-much-budget-for-online-marketing

What are the potential strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s decision to not prioritize recruitment and selection in favor of a focus on other aspects of the business?

One of the principal issues with deprioritizing recruitment is the fact that you will inevitably end up losing out on opportunities to acquire premium talent. High quality employees do not grow on trees, and if you are not making a concerted and purposeful effort to get them they will slip between your fingers time and time again. Other potential losses or risks include wasted money on poor employees, loss of business, angry customers, and even lawsuits/fines. On the other hand, businesses who focus on other areas could open up room in the budget for use elsewhere, invest in new innovative products or services, expand their marketing campaign to entice more business, or open up new operations. Ultimately, budget allocation is not an exact science and no matter what you do you will have to weigh the tradeoffs and consider what is acceptable.