chapter 14
....................................................................................................................................................RECRUITMENT
STRATEGY
....................................................................................................................................marc orlitzky
14.1 Introduction
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Internallabor markets seem to have become noticeably weaker (Cappelli 1999 ).
The ‘new deal at work’ entails the increasing externalization of human resource
processes that large organizations had traditionally internalized. Thus, organiza-
tions now face a strategic mandate to improve, if not optimize, their recruiting
practices because, in today’s increasingly market-based human resource manage-
ment (HRM), eVective recruitment is likely to be the ‘most critical human resource
function for organizational success and survival’ (Taylor and Collins 2000 : 304 ).
This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions
that have been made to the literature on recruitment strategy.^1 Recruitment can
usefully be deWned as ‘those practices and activities carried out by the organization
with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees’
(Barber 1998 : 5 ). This deWnition highlights the important diVerence between two
HR functions that are typically seen as indivisible, or at least diYcult to distinguish,
namely recruitment and selection. Whereas selection is the HR function that pares
down the number of applicants, recruitment consists of those HR practices and
processes that make this paring down possible—by expanding the pool ofWrm-
speciWc candidates from whom new employees will be selected.^2 Thus, as theWrst
(^1) I am grateful to Mark Stephens, who helped with the collection of articles and development of tables.
(^2) Of course, these conceptual boundaries between recruitment and selection become moreXuid in
practice.