Essentials of Employee Recruitment: Individual and Organizational Perspectives: An Introductory Chapter

In this book, we have taken on the task of providing a comprehensive summary of the field of employee recruitment. Recruitment involves making individuals aware of a job opening, influencing them to apply, maintaining their interest in the position until an offer is extended, and influencing their choice to take the position (Barber, 1998; Breaugh et al., 2008). Such processes were of course very important to organizations at the time we chose to take on this project, as many employers have struggled to fill positions (Mitchell, 2022) and during the past year, and United States’ unemployment has been at its lowest level in more than 50 years (Saraiva & Dmitrieva, 2023). Even when labor markets and postings draw large pools of applicants, recruitment research maintains its level of importance, because companies must still compete to attract and hire talent that best fits their strategy (see Nyberg et al., 2024, this volume). As Rynes and Barber (1990, p. 290) famously noted, "…there are both conceptual and empirical reasons for believing that most vacancies are eventually filled with someone…the most interesting questions often involve not the numbers, but the characteristics, of those attracted.”.