Choices and changes of recruitment methods in a Tanzanian city

Abstract

Labour market processes in Tanzania constitute an important but an under-researched topic. This study investigates the recruitment methods of private companies in Mwanza, Tanzania's second largest city. It asks whether employers make use of informal methods more often than formal methods, whether the skills required for a job relate to the choice of methods and whether the vacancy period of a position is linked to a specific approach. A survey consisting of 81 face-to-face interviews with hiring authorities shows that employers prefer informal to formal schemes but tend to rely on formal ones for filling high-ranking positions. Statistically, no influence of the recruitment method on the vacancy period could be found. Additional insights are provided by 10 semi-structured follow-up interviews with respondents from the same group. They suggest an increase in solicited and unsolicited applications that might have caused some hiring authorities to avoid formal methods or modify informal methods. Moreover, it emerges that recruitment choices may be influenced by powerful actors outside or within companies. Future research should explore the benefits and risks of specific recruitment methods as related to the socio-economic context in which they are used, changes in the repertoire of recruitment methods and the role of various actors as potential codeterminants of recruitment methods, especially for lower ranks.

Keywords:

• labour market
• recruitment method
• Africa
• Tanzania
• private companies

Notes

1. Komba, “Background Paper: Building Coherent Employment and Growth Strategies.”

2. Kondylis and Manacorda, “Youth in the Labor Market.”

3. Byemelwa, “Why Tanzanian Graduates Do Not Survive in the Job Market”; Buwembo, “Ten Years Down the Line”; for the South African labour market paradox, see Pauw et al., “Graduate Unemployment in the Face of Skills Shortages” and for Nigeria, see Ovadje and Ankomah, “Human Resource Management in Nigeria.”

4. See Shekighenda, “Local Researchers Urged to Address Emerging Labour Market Challenges.” on the need for research in this area in Tanzania.

5. On the tourism sector, see Saget and Yao, The Impact of the Financial and Economic Crisis, 10.

6. Saget and Yao, The Impact of the Financial and Economic Crisis, 83. Our investigation took place prior to the 2009 crisis. Its effects are, therefore, not considered. However, one can assume that it caused managers to be more restrictive in hiring personnel.

7. Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge,” 559.

8. Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge,” 559.

9. Rees and Shultz, Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market, 199.

10. Rees and Shultz, Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market, 199–200; and DeVaro, “Employer Recruitment Strategies,” 265.

11. See Breaugh and Starke, “Research on Employee Recruitment”; and for an overview, see Zottoli and Wanous, “Recruitment Source Research: Current Status and Future Directions.”

12. Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff,’” 139; and Faberman, “How Do Businesses Recruit?”

13. Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge,” 562.

14. See Roper, “Recruitment Methods and Vacancy Duration”; Gorter, Nijkamp, and Rietveld, “Employer's Recruitment Behaviour”; and Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff.’” Longer vacancy periods and higher search costs may not apply to the Internet as a new formal recruitment method; see Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff,’” 137. For an overview of first investigations of this topic, see Lievens and Harris, “Research on Internet Recruiting.”

15. See Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm, 28–29.

16. Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff,’” 136.

17. Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm.

18. Zottoli and Wanous, “Recruitment Source Research: Current Status.”

19. Kirnan, Farley, and Geisinger, “The Relationship between Recruiting Source.”

20. Reilly et al., “The Effects of Realistic Previews.”

21. In the context of the realism hypothesis, the classification of walk-ins as informal has sparked some debate. See Wanous, Organizational Entry: Recruitment, Selection, Orientation; Zottoli and Wanous, “Recruitment Source Research: Current Status”; Breaugh and Mann, “Recruiting Source Effects: A Test”; Breaugh and Starke, “Research on Employee Recruitment”; Drentea, “Consequences of Women's Formal and Informal Job Search Methods”. We agree with Drentea and retain the conventional categorisation of walk-ins as informal.

22. Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge”; Rees and Shultz, Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market; Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm; DeVaro, “Employer Recruitment Strategies.”

23. Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm, 22.

24. Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm, 22.

25. See Arthur et al., “Human Resource Management in West Africa,” 352–3.

26. For Tanzania, see Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania; Hyden, No Shortcuts to Progress; and for Nigeria Seibel, Damachi, and Holloh, Industrial Labour in Africa.

27. Blunt, “Bureaucracy and Ethnicity in Kenya.”

28. Iyanda, “Adapting Management Practice.”

29. Ovadje and Ankomah, “Human Resource Management in Nigeria,” 178.

30. Debrah “Human Resource Management in Ghana,” 199.

31. Kamoche, “Contemporary Developments in the Management”; Kamoche et al., “New Directions in the Management.”

32. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie.

33. See Nyalali, Aspects of Industrial Conflict, 207–9; Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania, 140–2.

34. For similar results for another African country, see Cheater, The Politics of Factory Organization.

35. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie, 112–6.

36. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie, 118.

37. Newenham-Kahindi, “Human Resource Strategies for Managing Back-office Employees,” 19.

38. Debrah and Budhwar, “Conclusion: International Competitive Pressures,” 246.

39. Debrah, “HRM in Tanzania,” 75.

40. Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma.”

41. Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma.”.

42. Trulsson, Strategies of Entrepreneurship; Egbert, Netzwerke als unternehmerische Ressourcen.

43. Trulsson, Strategies of Entrepreneurship, 246–50.

44. Egbert, Netzwerke als unternehmerische Ressourcen.

45. Egbert, Netzwerke als unternehmerische Ressourcen, 70–2.

46. See Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie; Newenham-Kahindi, “Human Resource Strategies for Managing Back-office Employees”; Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma”; Trulsson, Strategies of Entrepreneurship.

47. See United Republic of Tanzania, Education for All: The 2000 Assessment; Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma.”

48. Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm, 28–9.

49. Oral communication by National Bureau of Statistics, Mwanza. For 2008 internal statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics give 556,733 inhabitants for the two city districts of Nyamagana and Ilemela. The head of the office estimated a city population of approximately 700,000 people in 2009.

50. Murphy, “The Challenge of Upgrading African Industries”; Mwanza city Council, Mwanza city Profile.

51. Seven advanced sociology students of Saint Augustine University of Tanzania in Mwanza assisted in the research process under the supervision of Fischer.

52. See, for instance, DeVaro, “Employer Recruitment Strategies”; Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff’”; Russo et al., “Employers’ Recruitment Behaviour”; Russo et al., “Search Channel Use and Firms’ Recruitment Behaviour”; and Gorter and van Ommeren, “Sequencing, Timing and Filling Rates.” Four questions relating to methods used when filling the latest high-ranking and low-ranking position resemble those analysed by Russo et al., “Employers’ Recruitment Behaviour”; Russo et al., “Search Channel Use and Firms’ Recruitment Behaviour”; and Gorter and van Ommeren, “Sequencing, Timing and Filling Rates.” Two questions in respect of methods used for hiring the most recent employee and the vacancy period are similar to questions from the Multi-city Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) 1992–1994, see DeVaro, “Employer Recruitment Strategies.” One question in our questionnaire asking about external versus internal recruitment is mentioned by Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff,’” who refer to the Chicago Metropolitan Employer–Worker Survey (MEWS) of 1981.

53. This question asked about the most important problem respondents face when employing new personnel and what strategies they use in order to solve these problems (for results, see Interpretation and conclusion section).

54. For findings, see Fischer, “Tanzanian Women's Move”; and Fischer, “Recruitment and Female Labour.”

55. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie; Newenham-Kahindi, “The Transfer of Ubuntu and Indaba Business Models.”

56. Mkenda, “The Impact of Globalisation.”

57. Egbert, Fischer, and Bredl, “Different Background – Similar Strategies.”

58. United Republic of Tanzania, Central Register of Establishments.

59. See Egbert, Netzwerke als unternehmerische Ressourcen; Egbert, “Networking and Entrepreneurial Success”; Egbert, “Business Success through Social Networks?”

60. The number of total recruitment processes is inferior to 2 × 81 = 162 due to non-responses.

61. The Mann–Whitney test divides all vacancies into two groups, depending on which type of recruitment was employed in order to fill the vacant position. Then all observed vacancy periods are sorted in ascending order. The positions of the vacancies in the resulting series are added up over both groups. Then it is checked whether the sum is significantly larger for one group as would be expected under the null hypothesis of independence between vacancy and type of recruitment.

62. See Cameron and Trivedi, Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications, 592–7; see Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data, for a detailed description of the Cox model.

63. Trulsson, Strategies of Entrepreneurship.

64. Breaugh and Starke, “Research on Employee Recruitment,” 422.

65. Kirnan, Farley, and Geisinger, “The Relationship between Recruiting Source.”

66. Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma.”

67. United Republic of Tanzania, Key Findings for Integrated Labour Force Survey, 4.

68. Mascarenhas, Gender Profile of Tanzania, 25–33.

69. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie.

70. E.g., Holzer, Hiring Procedures in the Firm; Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge”; DeVaro, “Employer Recruitment Strategies and the Labor Market Outcomes.”

71. Debrah, “Human Resource Management in Ghana.”

72. Fischer, Unsere Fabrik, unsere Familie.

73. Munga et al., “The Decentralisation-centralisation Dilemma.”

74. See Rees, “Labor Economics: Effects of More Knowledge”; Mencken and Winfield, “In Search of the ‘Right Stuff.’”

75. Such as in Breaugh and Starke, “Research on Employee Recruitment.”