Milkround Professionalism in Personnel Recruitment: Myth or Reality?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489010004711 |
| Published date | 01 January 1990 |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| Pages | 28-37 |
| Author | David Knights,Carlo Raffo |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Milkround
Professionalism
in Personnel
Recruitment:
Myth or
Reality?
by David Knights and Carlo Raffo
28 PERSONNEL REVIEW 19,1
P
ersonnel selection rarely follows the
sophisticated model prescribed by the
norms of professional "objectivity". An
assessment of theory and practice in graduate
recruitment.
This article reports on a recent study of the graduate
recruitment process known colloquially as the
"milkround". In particular, it uses a "critical case"
approach to examine whether the recruitment practices
and procedures advocated by social scientists within the
personnel field are realised in practice. In short, it was
hypothesised that the recruitment area where "scientific"
techniques and procedures were most likely to be used
was in the recruitment of graduates. If, as we found, there
is a major discrepancy between theory and practice in the
recruitment of graduates it is anticipated that this would
be even greater
in
relation to other recruitment exercises.
The research was conducted with the full co-operation
of the careers centre at Manchester University and
involved several interviews with recruiters and student
applicants during the milkround. In addition, a number
of visits to local large employers was made to examine,
in greater depth the recruitment procedures and selection
methods1. The article concludes with an attempt to
explain the discrepancy between the prescriptions of
professional policy and the practical reality of everyday
recruitment in terms of the preoccupation with material
and symbolic security that conditions the actions of
personnel managers, as well as most other management
practitioners, in competitively co-ordinated employment
establishments.
Background to the Study
Although the personnel function has grown and developed
from a preoccupation with social welfare to its present
focus on industrial relations and/or manpower planning,
one activity
—
recruitment
—
has sustained the coherence
and continuity of Personnel as a profession throughout
its history.
A
number of explanations may account for the
central role that recruitment and selection have played in
the development of personnel management. While
personnel specialists have continued to claim professional
knowledge and expertise relating to a variety of disparate
responsibilities as a means of asserting their power[1],
only in the
field
of recruitment is the personnel function
so acutely visible, both internally and externally to the
organisation. Not only is recruitment the most visible of
the activities entrusted to Personnel, it is also considered
to be one of its most important functions. Clearly, the
strength and future prosperity of
any
organisation depends
on the quality of its employees. In periods of high
unemployment, the sifting and selection of applicants prior
to line managements'
final
appointment
is a
crucial function
but when labour markets are tight the performance of
Personnel becomes especially important in attracting staff
to the organisation2.
Whether academic or populist, most of the literature in
the
field
of recruitment is concerned with improving the
rather precarious process of selecting the right person
for the right job[2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Prescriptive accounts of
how to organise and run interview sessions and the
importance of selection testing and psychological
techniques of recruitment abound. However, very few
studies examine the practices or take into account the
politically charged contexts (e.g. intra- and inter-
departmental conflicts over power and resources) in which
personnel recruitment takes place3. In an enthusiasm to
prescribe efficient recruitment procedures and techniques,
conventional studies neglect the problematical nature of
meaning
within,
and the specific anxieties brought to bear
by both selectors and candidates in the recruitment
process. Believing
in
the scientific basis of their analyses,
prescriptive authors simply impose what they see to be
their "objective" procedures on personnel management.
In contrast to a growing literature that questions the
appropriateness of a "positivist" scientific approach to
the study of management practices [7, 8, 9, 10], we
concentrate in this article on the way in which personnel
manager practitioners themselves are either sceptical
of
or ignore the prescriptive recommendations of social
scientists. In their everyday recruitment
practices,
we have
found personnel managers to operate with a considerable
degree of independence from the theoretical prescriptions
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