I certainly have a counter argument for Professor Hardy’s belief that “recruitment and selection is any companies most important function and that failure to effectively staff your organization will inevitably result in its failure”. I can agree that the concept of recruitment and selection is important to the success of a company but it is not the most important or key factor. Of course there is many factors that play a role in the success of a company but I personally believe management and leadership within a company is the most important.
But first in answering the question to why might organizations decide to allocate more resources toward marketing or product design rather than using those resources to do a great job of employee recruitment and selection?
I can see companies deciding to make this decision because they can see the extra money being spent on marketing or a better product design making up for employees not being the best. Lets say you hire an average salesman to sell a car. If you have a basic car and average salesman than not a lot of cars will be sold. Though you can use the angle of if you have the top product and best car on the market than an average salesman can sell and sell and sell. When people really want a product because it’s the best or everyone knows about the product then this makes up for the quality of recruitment and selection practices a organization uses.
When a organization decides not to prioritize recruitment and selection in favor of other aspects of the business it comes with potential strengths and weaknesses. To start off with some of the weaknesses they include the potential of lost hiring expenses, lost business, lost time due to correcting mistakes of bad employees, dissatisfaction among the organization is contagious, and also litigation fees. All of these potential weaknesses/negatives have to do around a cost argument. Though potential strengths are possible by the organization focusing on marketing and product design. Like I said before having a stronger focus on either of these areas can certainly help make up for maybe not having the best employees.
With that being said even if either of those areas doesn’t help you cans till focus on those because it will only help. I also think by focusing on management and leadership within the company will elevate everyone’s performance. Most heavily improving those employees who were not the best hire and use leadership qualities to guide, inspire and initiate action moving forward. Just because the employee’s selected in the process didn’t turn out to be the best fit they can be groomed into where they need to be.
