You have been asked to submit an academic report of 2500 words to the HR director of only one of the following organisations:- Wiggle, Enterprise, IBM or BAE. The report asks for a critical discussion of the current recruiting and selection strategy and practices within the chosen company and whether this offers a suitable strategy (i.e. aligned to overall corporate strategy) and practice to attract and retain graduates over the next 5-10 years. Therefore, you should also highlight any relevant future considerations.

The assignment has been designed in order to allow you to consider how the theory of human resources; specifically the topic areas we have explored to date have been implemented in practice within an organisational context.

The report should encompass consideration of the corporate strategy of the organisation as well as critical focus will on their current graduate recruitment and selection practices. The report should highlight recognition and understanding of the recruitment practices used and possible advantages and disadvantages to the graduate market. Finally, you should suggest some possible changes to make recommendations for improvement.

A suggested report structure is the following:

1. Introduction

Briefly set the context (internally and externally) for the organisation you have chosen. Consider the aims, values and strategy of the organisation.

2. Overview and discussion of the current recruitment and selection practices

Give a brief overview of the current graduate recruitment and selection practices of the organisation. Identify and discuss, using your wider reading from practitioner and academic literature, relevant examples and models of best practice available to HR practitioners for recruiting and selecting graduates. Critically evaluate (compare, contrast and offer comment) on your organisation’s practice in general with the literature you have reviewed.

Note it may be that if your chosen organisation is in the I.T. sector then it would be best to focus on that industry when making comparisons rather than organisations that have a completely different employee profile.

3. Suggest possible changes of improvement for the recruitment and selection of the future graduate market

Make recommendations for future improvements (within next 5-10 years) improvements and justify your reasoning. You could for example look at the processes for effectively managing attraction using social media or evaluate online selection processes.

4. Conclusions

Finally draw some conclusions. Discuss the extent and feasibility of improving graduate recruiting and selection strategies for your chosen organisation more generally and specifically for your recommendations that you have made.

The key words are critically evaluate. A description of “What they do in X organisation” will be inadequate. You are expected to analyse and evaluate, and thereby subject HR recruitment and selection practices to robust scrutiny in the pursuit of continuous improvement. In addition, a failure to properly ground your work in the academic HR literature will also be inadequate. This is an academic piece of work with a practitioner focus and it must be properly researched and referenced.

You are expected to demonstrate that you have undertaken the breadth and depth of reading including academic and practitioner literature.

Your work must be correctly referenced using the Harvard system.(6th edition).

You must include a full bibliography.

You will also be expected to integrate theory and practice in your assignment.

Your report should relate academic concepts, theories and professional practice to the way organisations operate, in a critical and informed way, and with reference to key texts, articles and other publications and by using organisational examples for illustration. You do not have to criticise your organisational practices, the nature of a thorough critique is to identify both good practice and areas for improvement if there are any.

Word Count :The assignment should be written and presented in a report format with a maximum word count of 2500 words excluding bibliography. Thus headings and subheadings are recommended to guide and aid the reader and help structure your report.

Referencing: reference sources using Harvard conventions. Reference should be made to the primary source, except when the primary source can no longer be obtained. Poor citation of sources will result in a loss of marks.

you should ensure that all sources are fully cited in the bibliography and that indentation or quotation marks (as appropriate) are used when quoting.