Recruitment and Selection of Public Workers: An International Compendium of Modern Trends and Practices

Abstract

Governments around the globe are facing unprecedented staffing challenges. At the time when governments need to be most adept at luring talent to public service, their ability to do so has rarely been so constrained and complicated by economic, social and organizational pressures. This article provides an overview of the types of recruitment and selection initiatives already in place in many nations that can help the world's governments attract and retain talent. Relying heavily upon examples from the United States and Western Europe, but also integrating experiences from a variety of both developed and less developed countries (LDCs), we describe a series of recruitment and selection “best practices.”

Vieillissement de la population active et gestion stratégique des ressources humaines: problèmes de dotation des administrations de sécurité sociale

“…Compte tenu de la pression croissante pour retenir les travailleurs âgés, il faudrait assurer le transfert des connaissances institutionnelles, livrer une concurrence plus intense pour embaucher de nouveaux talents avec les aptitudes et les compétences requises et fournir de plus en plus urgemment une formation appropriée et efficace au personnel de tous les échelons. Néanmoins, à un moment où il est nécessaire pour les services publics d'attirer et de retenir les talents, leur faculté d'embaucher «devient rarement aussi limitée et se complique à cause des pressions économiques, sociales et organisationnelles» (Lavigna et Hays, 2004, p. 238). Le récent ralentissement mondial n'a fait que renforcer ces contraintes et compliquer davantage le processus.…”

What's the Problem in Public Sector Workforce Recruitment? A Multi-Sector Comparative Analysis of Managerial Perceptions

“…For example, Light [2] suggests that the federal hiring system puts the public sector at a competitive disadvantage relative to the private sector, and without reform, the federal government will have long-term recruiting problems. Lavigna and Hays [5] highlight similar problems in other national governments. Advocates of organizational reforms suggest that managers need more discretion to offer more interesting work, incentive-based compensation, and other worker-friendly personnel policies to attract qualified employees into the public sector labor pool.…”

“…In general, public managers are restricted from offering more flexible incentive structures, more accessible employment processes, and promotion opportunities, which in turn makes it more difficult to recruit a qualified workforce relative to the private sector. [2,5] Other scholars suggest that the constraints associated with nonprofit personnel management are less restrictive than the public sector but more restrictive than the private sector. [24][25][26] Consequently, a sectoral comparison of managerial perspectives suggests the following.…”

“…The condition of local economies is a particularly important confounding factor in this regard. Both Lavigna and Hays [5] and Doverspike [4] mention that a strong economy creates a competitive disadvantage for public sector workforce recruitment, but they offer no empirical validation. Therefore, the models include local unemployment rates which Downloaded by [Anadolu University] at 19:05 26 December 2014…”

How “Pathetic” is Your Hiring Process? An Application of the Lessig “Pathetic Dot” Model to Educational Hiring Practices

“…Some researchers have noted more than 1,500 studies on the problems associated with employee turnover and attrition (Barrick & Zimmerman, 2005). This problem is not unique to community colleges, but is universal among all sectors of industry both here in the United States and internationally (Lavigna & Hays, 2004). Some community college administrators held summits to explore the overarching issues associated with recruiting and hiring community college administrators.…”