Choosing the right personnel is extremely vital for any organization. Each organization, however, has its own requirements as for the personnel’s education, experience, productivity, etc. This being the reason, when recruiting new employees, an organization is looking for definite qualities and characteristics in each of the applicants. This is called a selection process, the process in the course of which the applicants that have the best suiting characteristics are given the job. There are no universal rules guiding the selection process, but, in most of the cases, the applicants have to go through three major stages: short listing, interview, and job offer. The primary goal of the selection process is to assess the candidates’ knowledge and skills and to select those who are worth the job more than the others; the current selection process can be regarded as fair, except for those cases when its basic rules are ignored.
Discussing the primary goal of a selection process, three typical stages of it have to be taken into account. The goal of a selection process depends on the needs of the organization that carries out this process. For most of the companies, this goal is the assessment of all the necessary characteristics of the applicants to make sure that one or several of them suit a definite position. The fulfillment of this goal requires the applicants to go through three stages (as a rule). The first stage is short listing. At this stage, the applicants meeting the basic requirements are selected (for instance, those who have a definite level of education, the minimum required experience, recommendations, etc). The length of this stage depends on the number of applicants whose resumes and CVs have to be looked through. After this, the shortlisted candidates are contacted and the interviews with them are arranged.
At the interview stage, the management considers the applicants more closely. The interviewers assess the applicants’ communication skills, the level of their proficiency, and even their appearance if it is vital for work. Sometimes, the candidates have to go through more than one interview for the management to make sure that they meet all the requirements. This stage is followed by the job offer, though not for all the applicants. This is the stage where the candidate can accept or decline the job offer (this is when the contracts are signed and the salary, if it was not discussed, is talked over). If all these stages take place successfully and the company gets the employees it was looking for, then the primary goal of the selection process is met.
Taking into account the course of the selection process, it can be considered fair enough. Any company has the right to recruit only those people that suit for a definite position; this is why it is entitled to make up its own elements of a selection process. The selection process can be regarded as unfair only in those cases when a particular candidate gets the job without selection, that is because he/she is well-connected or for the similar reasons. Apart from this, the procedures that the selection process involves are fair.
In sum, the selection of the employees is a complicated process that each organization has to go through. The primary goal of this process is to assess the abilities of the applicants and to choose those who suit for a definite position most of all. This process is relatively fair, unless it involves bribery or other unfair practices.