Week 1 – LINDSAY'S BLOG

The Case for Recruitment & Selection

Depending on the companies strategy, some well-known companies may want to focus their competitive strategy towards innovation and marketing in order to become a market leader. Certain companies may not invest more in recruitment and selection because they don’t have a problem finding highly qualified workers that want to work for their company per their reputation or brand. For example, Nike hires a lot of their top employees from word of mouth and referrals because everyone knows their products, and people like the culture of Nike and their brand. Because of this, companies like Nike might put more money into their innovation of new products and marketing strategies because they know qualified people will always want to work for their established image, and they count on high levels of new innovation each year.

Other reasons can be that companies don’t always know how to implement a highly effective recruitment strategy, so they don’t want to “throw away their money” if they don’t know how to create a recruiting plan, companies don’t want to take the investment risk in people and recruitment because they won’t be able to see immediate results and would have to wait months or years to see affects, and sometimes companies just don’t think that recruitment and selection takes a priority over other aspects of a company that might need more investment.

Some strengths for a company investing in other aspects aside from recruitment and selection can be simply that they save money to put forth in other departments, it may align with their competitive strategy more to invest elsewhere, companies can invest more in their current employees and assets that they already have to keep them around, and companies don’t have to take the cost return gamble that even affective recruiting can risk if more funds were allocated there. Some weaknesses to an organization not prioritizing recruitment can be that they miss out on returns for long term investments of quality candidates for their company, the company could result in having a high turnover rate, they can lose money from training and on-boarding employees that are not really fit for the job, and companies not hiring quality employees could hinder their reputation to the public when marketing.

Job Application Experiences

The last job I applied for was and Executive Management Internship with Target that I completed during summer 2019. I had an overall great experience in all aspects of the recruitment and hiring process with Target. I applied for the internship through an Oregon State job portal right before Target was about to be at OSU for a career fair. When I applied online, I was email notified in a very timely manner, and was also emailed by a real recruiter that engaged with me personally. The personal aspect is/was very important to me, compared to other internships that I was applying for where I was only sent automated and scripted messages for next interviews that all candidates get sent. With Target, I was always talking to someone real, and that made me feel important.

The OSU Target recruiter sent me a personal email explaining that I made it to the first interview stage, and that she wanted to meet me before hand at the career fair the following day to chat and get to know me as a person before the first interview. Meeting her at the career fair in the casual setting to talk really set me up for success for the first interview because I felt so comfortable engaging already with my recruiter. I also really appreciated that she gave me her cell phone number and told me I was welcome to email or text her with any questions or concerns at any time. I was feeling the welcoming and comforting culture that Target is all about from the very beginning of my recruitment.

I was passed on to interview after interview, and was eventually offered the internship job. Throughout the interviews with each new person up the chain, my recruiter was still emailing me every day on how to best prepare for each interview, while also giving me background on each person I was going to be talking to next. I didn’t even really know what I was getting myself into with the internship and did not really have a desire to work for a large retail company like Target, but I was open minded and excited for the new experience because I knew I was going to be apart of a very accepting and real culture that I knew from my recruitment process. Even though I was unsure, I accepted because I knew I was going to work for a company with a healthy culture and great people that welcomed and pushed me to succeed.

During my internship, and I fell in the love with the HR aspect of Target in stores, and I have happily accepted a post grad job with Target doing HR now – even when I never would have thought to start a career with them. The entire application and recruitment process really helped me go into the internship with a positive and open mind to learn new skills and enhance my strengths, as I began to know Target would be a great company to work for.