selection

The three different types of selection methods used by tesco are interviews, assessment centres and screening.

Business such as tesco use selection methods to gather information about a job candidate’s personality and a get a better understating of why the person wants the job.  Candidates are put into situations that may require them to work in a team, employees such as tesco will observe if a person is able to work well in a team and if they posses the skills that the job requires.

Interviews

Out of all selection methods the most used is interviews,  it is unusual for people to be hired without an interview, there are two different types of interviews these are, structured or unstructured. Roberts, G. (1997). The types of interview that tesco uses are over the phone interviews, face to face or group interviews. They best type of interview to use is face to face as this gives the employers a chance to see the candidate and asses their body language when asking questions.

In an un structured interview the interviewer uses his or her judgement about the performance about overall performance of the candidates. It is the most used interview type by selection agencies for businesses such as tesco as businesses have confidence in these agencies ability to assess candidates without the restrictions of structured interviews.  Candidates are often encouraged to answer freely in unstructured interviews as this will allow them to feel more comfortable and answer more questions with confidence.

The advantage of an interview is that it allows the interviewee to get an idea of the type of person the candidate is by seeing them face to face.  Candidates will also not be able to receive any help that would help them to succeed in a face to face interview as they would be a telephone interview. The answers of the candidate are their own answers and opinions to the questions.  Interviews also allow the business to get a better understanding of the candidate as the answers to questions reflect on the suitability of the candidate for the job position.  The disadvantage of using an interview can be very time consuming and costly due to the time required too assess all the applications and prepare interview questions and compile a feedback report to give to other staff members and choosing the best candidate for the job role. 

Assessment centres

Another selection method that is used is assessment centres. The selection, method is used mostly after candidates have been short listed for the job. The Assessment centres involve application of a number of techniques that over a period of time, they last from at least a day and often a number of days Roberts, G. (1997).  Assessment centres have has a process that ask candidates to complete certain task and make a final decision based on the assessment performance.

The advantage of suing assessment centres is that they use a range of different techniques too assess the possible candidates instead of just one, this allows them to be able to observe different candidates strength and weaknesses as one candidate may be stronger in one task than in a different task where he/she may not be able to performance well in.  The assessment centres have the highest predictive validity out of all the different selection techniques Roberts, G. (1997).  

The disadvantage of assessment centres is that in order for them to help pick good candidates is that they need to be developed as cost effective. This is to ensure that candidate specification is clear and techniques are matched more effectively to the criteria.  The evaluation process needs to be effective for bring results of various techniques into the overall assessment. Roberts, G. (1997

Screening

The screening method used by organisations in the recruitment process means to select which applicants will progress to further stages in the recurring process.  This provides selectors with a clear idea of the qualities and traits to focus on screening the application forms together with poor or good evidence, the reason is that it will vastly improve the quality and consistency of the screening process. The same principles can be applied to curriculum vitae, although the different nature of each candidates CV makes the task more time consuming and difficult. Roberts, G. (1997).  For example in Tele sales usually initial screening of a candidate is done over the telephone.  When a candidate applies for a job they ill call the organisation, a screening person will answer the call and using a script ask questions to the person, based on the answers the candidates give over the phone they are told that the organisation that if the applicant receives a call form them then they have been selected to go through to the next stage if not the they were unsuccessful.

The advantage of screening is that it is not time consuming for the employers as they area belt o go thorough the application forms and find the suitable candidates for the job role. The screening process will help them do this by narrowing the applicants down to the most suitable people for the job, the process is also unbiased as the selectors personal opinion cannot influence which candidates advance as they are only able to make decisions using the data they have collected.  The disadvantage of the process is that over the phone the screening person does not know if it is the candidate answering the questions asked or if it is another person helping out a friend or family member, CV and application forms may also have false information in them, in the process this may be over looked and people not suitable for the job may be chosen in place of much more suitable candidates due to the information they have provided.

An interview that I took part in was at school, the school had organised some mock interviews with local businesses being invited to the school to take part in the interviews. The students were given the business that would be interviewing them. Students were told to dress smart and appropriately on the interview date and told the time of their interviews. The different organisations ranged from engineering firms to universities.  The school gave all of the student’s questioners to fill out what they would like to do when they left school. These questionnaire sheets were given to the interviewers, my interview was with a local engineering firm called Hale Hamilton.  The interviewer asked me some specific questions in relation to the business and why I would like to work there. The type of interviewing was unstructured as she expected me to freely build upon my answers giving detail, as I gave the answers she made notes about my performance and the interview ended. Later in the week the students were given letters that showed a tally sheet with our performance and some feedback from the businesses, in my case the business was happy with  the answers that I had given in the interview and said that Hale Hamilton would have accepted me if the interview has been real. Although the  interview that I had did not relate to what I wanted to do in the future I was able to be relaxed and give good answers to the questions I was asked  this gave good experience on how to conduct yourself in an interview and the type of body language to have

In conclusion business should make sure that when carrying out the selection process they need to analyse the type of business they are and if they have sufficient funds and time to go through process. In the case of Tele sales, over the phone screening may be more appropriate and in a retail business an application form would be more suitable.  If organisations use incorrect methods of selection it can lead to mistakes being made, wrong candidates could be chosen and the organisations may miss out on the correct employee for the job.

References

Businesscasestudies.co.uk  (2012) tesco recruitment and selection [online] Available from http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/tesco/recruitment-and-selection/selection.html [Accessed 30 April

Roberts, G. (1997) Recruitment And Selection. The Cromwell Press: Wiltshire

Mullins, L J. ( 2007) Management And Organisational Behaviour. 8th Ed. Pearsons Education Limited: Essex