Once the firm has determined its staffing needs, it needs to hire the best employees to fill the available positions. As Figure 5.4 shows, the hiring process has three components: recruitment, selection, and socialization.

Recruitment is the process of generating a pool of qualified candidates for a particular job. The firm must announce the job’s availability to the market (inside and outside the organization) and attract qualified candidates to apply.

Selection is the process of making a “hire” or “no hire” decision regarding each applicant for a job. The process typically involves determining the characteristics required for effective job performance and then measuring applicants on those characteristics, which are typically based on a job analysis (see Chapter 2). Depending on applicants’ scores on various tests and/or the impressions they have made in interviews, managers determine who will be offered a job. This selection process often relies on cut scores; applicants who score below these levels are considered unacceptable.

The staffing process is not, and should not be, complete once applicants are hired or promoted. To retain and maximize the human resources who were so carefully selected, organizations must pay careful attention to socializing them. Socialization orients new employees to the organization and to the units in which they will be working. Socialization can make the difference between a new worker feeling like an outsider or feeling like a member of the team. We discuss the socialization process in more detail in Chapter 8.