THE EFFECTS OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION PROCEDURES ON THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN NIGERIA A CASE STUDY OF OSHIMILI SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF DELTA STATE
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Fatiregun (1992) sees recruitment as that process of assessing a job, announcing the vacancy, arousing interest and stimulating people to apply. Recruiting, according to Mathis and Jackson (1997), is the process of generating a pool of qualified applicants for organisational jobs.
Balogun (1980) defined recruitment or employment as the process by which personnel or manpower resources are made available through appointment as in the case of board members, or directors of government enterprise especially in public organisation.
Nwankwo (1988) perceived recruitment to involve getting all prospective applicants for job position in an organisation. While Abah (1997) defined recruitment as the act of seeking, evaluating, obtaining commitment from, placing and orienting new employees to fill positions required for the successful conduct of an organisation. For him, the recruitment process involves seeking and attracting a pool of people from which candidates who are to fill job vacancies can be selected. According to Cole (2002), the principal purpose of recruitment is to attract sufficient and suitable employees to apply for vacancies in the organization.
Moreso, Zweig (1991) defines recruitment and selection as the set of activities an organization uses to select candidates who possess the abilities and attitude necessary for the enterprise especially with the aim of achieving its objectives. In the same vein Kuntz and O. Donnel (1980) saw recruitment as attracting qualified candidates to fill any vacancies. According to them, it is a process of choosing from among the candidates. It goes further to list three aspects of recruitment that must be borne in mind while recruiting officers, namely the recruitment requirement, organizational policies, procedures and organisational image. Recruitment is more than merely filling current vacancies. It aims at obtaining requisite personnel and building a strong organisation with effective team work. Therefore, it could be asserted that the public service in Nigeria evolved in an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility not only between the colonized and the colonizing authorities but also among the former, some of whom had been co-opted into the colonial system and therefore, alienated from their kith and kin in the society. The situation led to the racial discrimination within the civil service itself, which could not have failed to influence the general perception of the service by the Nigeria people. For example, the Nothernalization policy was introduced to discriminate against the non-northern Nigerians but rather considered the foreign expertises into the northern civil service. In recent years there has been a marked decline in efficiency, selection and recruitment within the civil service. It has lost grip of its traditional roles and has not been able to work out satisfactory programme of action for effective implementation.
Towards the end of the 1980’s, recruitment and selection were seen as two key issues facing organisation as they prepared for the 1990’s. However, there are difficulties and ambiguities associated with the people’s right and demand to be gainfully employed. Secondly, careful and well-planned recruitment and selection of employees is absolutely necessary, in order to ensure that only the right calibre of staff is employed in an organization. The process of recruitment and selection begins with the manpower plan, which indicates areas in the organization where there are likely to be shortages of people, and the number of people to be recruited to meet anticipated employment needs. This is why Jacins (1971) puts it that if recruitment policies and practices are to be most effective exercise must sought to answer the following questions:
What is the nature of policies guiding recruitment?
What procedures should be used to screen candidates for employment?
What are the requirements of the job to be filled?
What is the use of such tools, interviewing and testing in the selection procedures?
What is the place of promotion in the procurement of function?
Recruitment into the civil service was no longer what it used to be. There were discrimination and favouritism in the recruitment of employees into the service. Adebayo (1985) argues that the level of loyalty and commitment of the people to the goals of the state or public service depends sometimes on the type of political culture they have. The political culture of the people of Delta State Asaba in particular still stresses particularism in the form of intense and over-riding identification with family or parochial groupings rather than more generalisable identification such as with the nation as a whole.
THE EFFECTS OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION PROCEDURES ON THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN NIGERIA A CASE STUDY OF OSHIMILI SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF DELTA STATE