Difference between Recruitment and Selection

 Difference between recruitment and selection has been described by Flippo as, “Recruitment is a process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating and encouraging them to apply for jobs in an organization. It is often termed positive as is stimulates people to apply for jobs, selection on the other hand tends to be negative because it rejects a good number of those who apply, leaving only the best to be hired.” Recruitment and selection differs in following manner:

1.    Difference in Objective:

 The basic objective of recruitment is to attract maximum number of candidates so that more options are available. The basic objective of selection is to choose best out of the available candidates.

2.    Difference is Process:

 Recruitment adopts the process of creating application pool as large as possible and therefore. It is known as positive process. Selection adopts the process through which more and more candidates are rejected and fewer candidates are selected or sometimes even not a single candidate is selected. Therefore, it is known as negative process or rejection process.

3.    Technical Differences:

 Recruitment techniques are not very intensive, and not require high skills. As against this, in selection process, highly specialized techniques are required. Therefore, in the selection process, only personnel with specific skills like expertise in using selection tests, conducting interviews, etc., are involved.

4.    Difference in Outcomes:

 The outcome of recruitment is application pool which becomes input for selection process. The outcome of selection process is in the form of finalizing candidates who will be offered jobs.