Business English | Recruitment and Selection

Episode 234 Business English Recruitment and Selection

Disclaimer

I am using an automatic transcript service as it is not possible for me to do it on my own and I cannot afford human transcription at the moment. The service claims to have about 95% accuracy, which means there will still be some mistakes, so my apologies for having a less than perfect transcript, but I hope I can afford human transcription soon and I will solve this problem. However, the service is pretty good, and the transcript is almost perfect.

Transcript

Welcome to a new episode from English plus podcast. This episode is about business English and we will talk about recruitment and selection. We will talk about recruitment, applying for a job and selection procedures. But before we do that, let me remind you that you can find the transcript of this episode in a link.

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[00:01:02] That being said, let’s start with our episode about recruitment and selection. Now let’s start with recruitment. The process of finding people for particular jobs is called recruitment or especially in American English is called hiring both recruitment and hiring have exactly the same meaning. And that is finding people for particular jobs.

[00:01:24] And give them this job. Of course you can say, give a job to somebody, but we’re talking about business English terms, how we can properly say them in English or especially in a business English context that is recruitment or hiring. Now, someone who has been recruited is called a recruit. Or a higher in American English.

[00:01:44] It’s all about the big word recruitment recruitment. We understand now what it is, but there’s also recruit that we can use as a verb. So if you are recruited somewhere, you are a recruit, you are a recruit. That means you have been recruited. And especially recently you don’t call a person a recruit after two years of employment, of course.

[00:02:07] A recruit is a freshly hired person, a freshly recruited person. So you can use this word also to talk about this person who’s been newly hired in the company and call him or her obviously a recruit or an American English. You can call a hire. You can say, for example, this is the latest hire of the company, or this is the latest recruit of the company, the latest person they hired, or they recruited.

[00:02:33] Now the company employees or hires those people and they joined the company. Now a company may recruit employees directly or use outside recruiters. They might have their own recruitment department, especially for big companies, but some companies prefer to handle this, but some companies prefer to use outside recruiters.

[00:02:58] Recruiters can be recruitment agencies or employment agencies. That’s what we call them. Obviously outside recruiters, especially those who work with companies. There are not a team of one. Usually they are agencies and some of them are actually very big. They usually take commission for finding the right person for the job and doing this on behalf of the company.

[00:03:19] Now we call them recruitment agencies or employment agencies. Both are the same thing. Sometimes there are specialists and these outside specialists called headhunters. These are special kinds of recruiters. These can be used to find people for very important jobs or persuade them to leave the organizations they already work for and come work for another company.

[00:03:43] The regular recruitment is different from headhunting. Regular recruitment is simply you place an ad for a job. People apply for this job, and then you select the people. Of course, we will talk in more details about this in this episode, but in general, that’s recruitment, but head hunting is different.

[00:04:00] Headhunting. If a company is eyeing somebody, especially a manager, a CEO, or something in another company. And usually this person is very important in the company where he or she works. And if you want to bring this person and hire this person in your own company, it wouldn’t be a very easy task. First of all, because this person already has a job, maybe already has a very good job, a very good paying job.

[00:04:27] So he wouldn’t want to, or he wouldn’t think about coming down to your company and working for you. So you will have to pursue a person to leave his job and come work for you. And this is the job of a headhunter. Now for head hunting. There are some people who specialize in that. There are some recruiters actually who specialize in head hunting because those are big deals for big companies.

[00:04:51] So we said outside specialists called headhunters may be used to find people for very important jobs and to persuade them, to leave the organizations, they already work for key people recruited, like this are head hunted in the process of head hunting. So this is like we said, recruitment recruited. If you recruit key people like this to work for your company, you can say that these people are not only recruited.

[00:05:16] Of course they are recruited, but they’re not only recruited. They’re headhunted. So that was about recruitment. Now let’s move on to talk about applying for a job. We talked about it from one aspect and that is recruitment. Now let’s talk about it from another aspect and we will talk about it from the point of view of Fred.

[00:05:33] Fred is an accumbent, but he was fed up with his old job. He looked in the situations, vacant pages of his local newspaper, where a local supermarket was advertising for a new accountants position. So the first word I would like to focus on here is situations vacant pages. This is the place where you will find advertisements for jobs that you can apply for.

[00:05:57] So he applied for the job. That’s the word we use when you apply for a job, he applied for the job by completing an application form and sending it in. So usually when you apply for a job, there is a certain application form that you have to fill in and send. And that is the application. Sometimes it’s called recruitment application.

[00:06:19] Sometimes it’s called job application, but it is an application form. Application form is a general word for application where you have to fill in and send, but it can be, as I told you, it can be called a job application, fill in the job application form and send it to the company. Now let’s talk about another example.

[00:06:37] Another person, Harry is a building engineer. He’d been working for the same company for 10 years, but he wanted to change. He looked at jobs with different engineering companies on a jobs website. So he or Harry didn’t look for jobs in the situations, vacant pages. He looked for a job on a website, on a jobs website, and there are very famous and many jobs website out there.

[00:07:00] I’m sure you know about them. What did he do? He made an application. He sent his CV. The CV is short for curriculum VTA and usually nobody says that they all say CV or resume in American English and American English. They don’t use CV that much. They use resume. What is that? What is the CV or the resume?

[00:07:18] It’s a document describing your education, qualifications and previous jobs that you send to a prospective employer. Now of course, CV is a special topic we can talk about at a different time, because you will have to know what to include, what not et cetera. And it’s a very important topic to talk about in business English.

[00:07:36] But for now we’re talking about Harry who sent in his CV, this document and a covering letter. Now the covering letter it’s sometimes required. Sometimes it’s recommended. Sometimes you can send it anyway, this covering letter or in American English, we call it cover letter. It explains why you want the job and why you are the right person.

[00:07:55] You explain it. Yeah. In writing other than just what you put in the CV about your qualifications, education, et cetera. So that was applying for a job. Usually these are the ways people use to apply for a job. They can look in the situations vacant. They can look on job websites. There is this application form or a job application form you apply for the job.

[00:08:16] You make an application online. For example, you send in your CV or resume. Sometimes you send those with a covering letter or a cover letter in American English. And that is how you apply for a job. And these are the words you can use to describe applying for a job. And now let’s move on to our third and last part of this episode, and that is the selection procedure.

[00:08:38] So we talked first about recruitment, how it happens. And we said that some companies have recruitment departments have their own, some use other recruiters to do that. And we talked about how people apply for a job. But here, we’re going to talk about the selection procedures. It doesn’t matter. Who’s doing the recruitment, whether it’s an agency or if it is a department in the company, it usually happens the same way.

[00:09:02] Now let’s take a look at another example and we will talk about key phrases and words we need to know about when it comes to the selection process. Now that Marsh Schmidt is the head of recruitment at a German telecommunications company. She talks about the selection process and the methods that the company uses to recruit people.

[00:09:23] Now, let’s see what she said and let’s learn from what she said about the selection procedures. As you said, we advertise in national newspapers and on the internet, we look at the backgrounds of applicants, their experience of different jobs and their educational qualifications. So the first thing, where do they advertise?

[00:09:43] That’s what she told us. Of course they advertise in national newspapers and on the internet. Well, obviously a lot of people nowadays use the internet for advertising, but here there’s the important thing. She said, we look at the backgrounds of applicants. What is the meaning of the background? When we say, I want to look at the background of somebody in this context, since we’re talking about recruitment, obviously she’s interested in these people’s experience of different jobs, their educational qualifications, qualifications are the degrees, the certificates that you have that qualify you to do certain jobs.

[00:10:22] These are called your qualifications. They can be degrees that you got either from university or from online schools, et cetera, doesn’t matter. And every employer has certain things. They would call qualifications, qualifications needed for the job. And here she talked about educational qualifications. So they look first at their experience of different jobs and their educational qualifications.

[00:10:46] And then she continued on by saying we invite the most interesting candidates to a group discussion. Then we have individual interviews with each candidate. The head of the department is also present. We also give the candidates written psychometric tests to assess their intelligence and personality.

[00:11:05] So Ian, let me stop and focus on a couple of words. We talked before about recruits. Now, recruits are chosen. They were offered the job they accepted. Now they joined the company and they’re called recruits. But before doing that, the people who apply for a job and out of these people say, for example, 10, 15, a hundred, the company is going to choose.

[00:11:27] From those people, one to 10, et cetera. So the whole pool is called candidates. When you are a candidate for a job, that means you are a potential. The company is going to choose who to recruit from those candidates. Not all the candidates are going to be given a job. Not all the candidates are going to be hired, but they are candidates.

[00:11:50] So here, in our example, they choose the most interesting candidates. Some candidates, they are not even invited to a group discussion, but the most interesting candidates are invited to a group discussion and they have individual interviews with each candidate. It’s not only a group discussion. There’s also the individual interview with them.

[00:12:08] Each candidate and the head of department is there. And then they give the candidates written psychometric tests. Now psychometric comes from psychology metric tests, but we use the word psychometric who don’t say psychology metric. So psychometric tests, what are they? These are tests to assess the intelligence and the personality of those candidates.

[00:12:28] They just want to get a feel of what the candidate is like. And of course the interview, the individual interview and the group discussion can tell them a lot about the candidates. Now, what do they do after this? She said, after this, we shortlist three or four candidates. We check their references by writing to their referees, previous employers, teachers.

[00:12:48] And so on that candidates have named in their applications here. After they do this, after the group discussion, the individual interviews, the psychometric tests, they even shortlist. That means they choose from these candidates. That might be, as I told you, 20 a hundred, it doesn’t matter. They shortlist.

[00:13:06] They choose the best of the best because already those candidates were the best of all the people who applied for the job. And then out of these candidates, they shortlist three or four candidates. So the best of the best, but that’s not all, they just need one. They want one of those now to be able to decide.

[00:13:25] They check something else. Not only their experience, their educational qualifications, psychometric tests, et cetera. They check their references. They check their references by writing to their referees. Now, referees are those people who are usually previous employers, teachers, and people you put in your CV as references to you.

[00:13:46] So the recruiters can contact those people and ask about you. And here after they shortlist three to four candidates. That’s something very important. They check their references by writing to the referees. And if the references are okay, she says, we ask the candidates to come back for more interviews.

[00:14:04] So if everything is okay, they come back for more interviews. Finally, we offer the job to someone and if they turn it down, we have to think again, some applicants may get other job offers at the same time as ours. If they accept it. We hire them. We appoint someone only if we find the right person. So here finally, after doing all this, after checking all these things, they offer someone the job.

[00:14:30] If they turn the job down, if they say no, if they reject now, sometimes they reject because maybe the salary is not that good. Or maybe as she said, Some applicants may get other job offers at the same time as ours. And then they see that other job offers might be better. So they just decide to turn down their offer.

[00:14:48] If that happens, they have to think again about other applicants or maybe they could go to the shortlist to those three or four candidates. They chose one to offer the job. Maybe if one of them turn it down, they may give it to one of these three or four shortlisted candidates. And finally she said something very important that they appoint someone and appoint is just like hire.

[00:15:09] They appoint someone only if they find the right person. So it’s not about having to choose from this pool that they have at hand at that moment, if they don’t find the right person, they don’t hire, they don’t appoint just anybody just because they need one. And that’s very important for recruitment and selection.

[00:15:25] Yeah, that’ll be all for today. I hope you understand the world of recruitment and selection a little bit better. I hope that you learned some words you can use. If you want to talk about recruitment and selection in this episode from business English series. Now, before I leave you, let me remind you that you can find the transcript of this episode in a link.

[00:15:43] I will leave in the description and you will also find a link to Patreon, which you can take and support our show by becoming a patron of English plus podcast. You will also find another link that will take you. To our mailing list, you can subscribe and by subscribing you will get updates every two weeks and we will select some of our premium PDF practice worksheets and send them to you as a token of our gratitude.

[00:16:05] That being said, thank you very much for listening to another episode from English plus podcast. This is your host, Danny. I will see you next time.