The Relevance and Purpose of Including Personal Qualities in an Organization’s Recruitment Process

Abstract

The recruitment and selection process is based on finding the right candidate fora job in an orgnization. Deciding who is the right candidate means looking at an applicants formal competencies and personal qualities, something often portrayed in the job ads issued by organizations. This thesis aims to investigate the relevance and purpose of the personal qualities that organizations choose to include in their job ads, and how they can affect a recruitment process. Through qualitative interviews with six recruiters, recruiting for different positionswithin their within two different organizations, empirical material was collected. The interviews sought to find out how and why personal qualities are used during the recruitment process at the two companies, Volvo Car Group and SKF. The interviews showed that personal qualities do not seem to be vital for applying candidates in the first part of the process. The reason for including personal qualities is a mean for the organization to both attract and deter potential candidates. It motivates the recruiters decision for selecting certain applicants in front of others, while at the same time presenting the potential applicants with an impression of the company. The thesis suggest that including personal qualities in the recruitment process will stay a permanent feature, both on the behalf of the organization and its potential applicants to create a better match.