Issues and Challenges in the Recruitment and Selection of ...

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Of more specific relevance to the concerns of this report are those issues whichfall within the ambit of employers, in both the public and private sectors. Thefollowing, we suggest, are areas that need to be considered by employers:There is a need for employers, to be more mindful of the signals they send,inadvertently or otherwise, to potential foreign job applicants. The extent towhich immigrants seeking work will exclude consideration of organisationsthey perceive to send negative signals has been highlighted by the research.The implication is that employers, including public sector organisations, shouldensure that they are seen to be immigrant-friendly. This is particularly relevant fororganisations which wish to attract a culturally diverse workforce.There appears to be considerable scope for employers to expand the rangeof media they use in placing job advertisements in order to more explicitlytarget immigrant candidates. There is also a case to be made for stating onadvertisements that applications from immigrant workers will be welcome and/ or that being an equal opportunities employer covers the race ground. Forlarger organisations wishing to attract a more diverse workforce the possibilityof consulting with immigrant communities through their peer-led organisationscould be considered. This strategy could help to ensure that advertising reachesimmigrant audiences and that advertising and recruiting practices are inclusive.In developing job descriptions and defining requirements and eligibility criteriaemployers should be mindful of cultural differences across national boundariesin respect of the requirements for some occupations as well as a more generallack of insight amongst immigrants into what a job might entail in the Irishcontext. Clarity and precision are required in order to minimise confusion andmisinterpretations on the part of immigrant candidates. Employers – andespecially those which have not thus far succeeded in attracting immigrantcandidates – should take greater care to ensure that the descriptions of jobs theyprovide can be understood by non-Irish workers and in particular that they do notcontain implicit cultural assumptions that would not be readily understood bypotential immigrant candidates.Screening and shortlisting procedures, particularly in large volume situations,can be opaque and driven by pragmatism. Auditing the recruitment process is aneffective but costly way of dealing with this issue. However, employers shouldintroduce measures to ensure that no unintentional or implicit biases are at playthat could militate against the short-listing of immigrant applicants.Interviewing and to a lesser extent, testing, are hugely significant in underpinningthe selection of candidates and both present very real challenges to immigrantcandidates, particularly but not exclusively for those for whom English is not their74Issues and Challenges in the Recruitment and Selection of Immigrant Workers in Ireland
first language. The extent of the difficulty that foreign candidates experiencein relation to the interview process may not be fully appreciated by employers.The value of intercultural training of interviewers is indicated here. In general,employers were more aware of the difficulties for immigrants associated withwritten tests but few had sought ways to minimise these. The difficulty infinding effective alternatives to testing must be acknowledged and at the levelof the individual company, addressing this issue may be costly. However, macrolevel approaches including ongoing monitoring and experimentation should beconsidered.Measures to smooth the vetting process – including in relation to references,police clearance, recognition of qualifications and legal entitlement to work –need to be put in place. Greater support for employers in terms of informationand assistance is required, as is better communication of ongoing legislativechanges and easier access to sources of information.If the requirement to have work experience in Ireland is operating as a significantbarrier, particularly for highly skilled applicants, it would point to clear remediesin terms of innovative work experience programmes for immigrants (includingrefugees).4.5 ConclusionLooking at the issue of immigration in the round - taking into account, forexample, the need to maintain competitiveness, to attract and retain adequatelyskilled individuals, to ensure that the legislative and socio-economic contextsare supportive of immigrants, and the need to meet the requirements of thecountry of origin (as in the case of Indian nationals and the transferability ofsocial security entitlements for repatriated migrants) etc. – it would appear, inconclusion, that the findings of this research are likely to become not less butmore important in the future. As previously noted, the emphasis on diversityto date from an Irish perspective has centred on the management of diversitythat exists in the workforce and not to the same degree on the accommodationof diversity in the recruitment and selection processes that effectively ‘control’the resultant diversity in the workforce of any organisation. In the future theemphasis is likely to lie in our capacity to attract people to work in Ireland.As previously noted, Ireland’s experience of inward migration is still a relativelynew phenomenon. To date that experience has been largely unproblematicdespite the dramatic scale of inward migration and this can in part be attributedto the economic and employment growth achieved over the last decade. However,the national and international contexts have changed and the State (including75
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2Issues and Challenges in the Recru
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Chapter 1Exploring the Recruitment
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persecution. Economic migrants enco
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• The third group is the so-calle
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• Green Cards, which have replace
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Employment Services (LES) although
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Unemployment is not the only issue
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Overall, both official statistics a
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issues from the perspective of thes
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Page 78 and 79: BibliographyBarrett, A and Y McCart
Page 80: O’Connell, P and F McGinnity (200
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