The Challenges of Recruitment and Selection of Employees in Zimbabwean Companies

Recruitment and selection of staff in Zimbabwe comes with challenges that the human resources manager must grapple with. This paper presents findings from a research carried out in 10 companies in Zimbabwe on the challenges that they face with recruitment and selection of staff. Identified challenges include brain drain, high labour turnover, scarcity of skills and expertise in the labour market, and unemployment. Other challenges include costs associated with recruitment. Smaller companies compete with bigger companies which can better absorb the costs associated with recruitment and are also capable of paying better salaries. Lack of human resources planning, geographical location of jobs and use of information technology in advertising are other challenges that employer organizations face when recruiting and selecting employees. These challenges have led to a lack of transparency in the recruitment process, untrustworthiness of employees, and favouritism involved with both external recruitment and internal promotions. Better management of the recruitment and selection process assists the organization in making realistic decisions about a prospective candidate. Better management implies proper human resource planning and writing accurate job descriptions to ensure that precedence is given to the competencies necessary for the achievement of the companys objectives.