Recruitment practices and success for small and medium sized enterprises

This study observes the effects of different recruitment practices of SMEs on quantitative and qualitative recruitment outcomes. Thereby the concepts of Person-Organizations (P-O) fit and Person-Job (P-J) fit are introduced with regards to qualitative outcome measures. The examined practices include traditional forms of recruitment such as network recruitment, but also relatively new constructs such as strategic isomorphism. Results reveal that recruitment practices differ in their influence on applicant pool quantity and quality. It is found out that a specific recruitment source either influences quantitative or qualitative recruitment outcomes, but hardly both.
The findings also show that SMEs use different approaches when recruiting graduate or non-graduate students. Further, practices vary in their effectiveness on these two target groups. Network recruitment, for example, was able to enhance the P-O fit of graduate applicants, but had no effect on the fit of non-graduate applicants.