Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

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The Recruitment Process

Recruitment is a positive process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organization (Chand, 2014). Its goal is to generate as many candidates into the pool of applicant as possible. In general, the recruitment process involves three major steps: identifying job opening, developing job description, and posting available positions (“Human resources: Recruitment & selection hiring process,” 2015). Anything that involves screening, interviewing, and selecting would be considered in the selection process.

Identifying a job opening is an internal decision based on how managers perceive the needs of the company. Generally, there are two circumstances where a company would need to hire new staff member: newly created position and employee replacement (“Human resources: Recruitment & selection hiring process,” 2015). When a company feels the current process is not efficient enough to accommodate its current tasks, creating a new position may be considered necessary. Crucial factors to consider before opening a new position are whether the new position will solve the current problem and whether it will worth the cost. When a current employee gets promoted or leaves the job, there will be the need of hiring someone new. In this case, the personality and competency of the new hire should be the priority considerations.

A typical job description at CIBC has four components: job overview, relevant task, qualifications, and compensation plans. First of all, the job overview of a job description summarizes a typical workday at that position. CIBC emphasizes the value and accomplishment of the employee rather than the specific tasks he/she will be performing in its job overview. Sentences such as “Every day, you will be making a difference in our clients’ lives” (“CIBC Career Opportunities,” n.d.) helps candidates to think positively about the job and will encourage them to apply for the position. Secondly, the relevant task specifically talks about what an employee would be doing for that position. Most statements are clear and comprehensive with specific requirements to give future employees a better picture of the actual tasks they will be fulfilling. Thirdly, qualifications are the skills and characteristics that a candidate has to have in order to perform the task in an efficient manner. For positions such as Customer Service Representative, where there is not much of an education is required, essential qualifications can be client service skills and interpersonal skill. For positions like Investment Risk Manager, a CFA or a post-graduate degree is required (“CIBC Career Opportunities,” n.d.). Lastly, the compensation plan for CIBC includes benefits, stock purchase plan, and other incentives (“CIBC Career Opportunities,” n.d.). On top of these, CIBC also pays its employees an above average salary compares to the industry in general (“Working at CIBC - Reviews,” 2016).

Posting available jobs at appropriate places can help to facilitate the recruitment process so that it is easier for qualified candidates to see what is available to apply. Where to post job opportunities depends on whether the manager wants to hire internally or externally. CIBC posts its job openings through numerous media, and it does have emphasizes on a few over others. We will further discuss the media choice of CIBC in the subsequent section.

Internal and External Recruitment

It was previously mentioned that the recruitment process is extremely important for CIBC and also other organizations, so how to properly recruit is significant to be learned. In fact, there are two types of recruitment: one is internal recruitment and the other is external recruitment. Internal recruitment means that an organization or a company finds and attracts talents with specified skills to perform required job vacancies from within the organization. External recruitment means that an organization finds and attracts capable applicants from outside the organization. Compared to internal recruitment, the external recruitment plays a more important role in the process of recruitment in CIBC because higher positions are more often hired from outside (“I used to work for CIBC...Ask me anything - RedFlagDeals.com,” n.d.). Therefore, it can be concluded that promotion rarely exists at the executive level.

There are many ways available to attract qualified candidates from the outside. Some examples are online recruiting, social networking sites, labor organization, and employee referrals. The methods that CIBC feels most effective are employee referral and social media. Kris Tierney (n.d.), the Chief People Officer who has worked for CIBC for eight and a half years, states that CIBC understands who their talent is, who their market is, or their target market for talent and they implement strategies that appeal to them. According to him, employee referrals is the top talent source for CIBC. This is because the Millennials rely on perceptions and opinions of other people to make their decisions, or to base their decisions, thus, it has been very successful for them to use employee referrals as a key sourcing strategy (Tierney, n.d.). Moreover, referred hires tend to stay in the company longer and learn to perform the tasks faster than traditional hires. (Morgan, 2015)

Besides, CIBC uses social media to find and attract talents in the Millennial Generation because it realizes that social network is more appealed to the younger generation. As a result, LinkedIn and Twitter have been great contributors in helping CIBC seek potential candidates as well. Actually, social media is an excellent method to recruit for not only CIBC but also for all other organizations. “Social media is a historical game changer ... it is now possible for a savvy recruiter using social media to identify and build a relationship with nearly every professional in the developed world. … [social media] allows you to easily and cheaply identify, views the work and then builds relationships with the 80% of top talent that are not actively in the job market.” (Sullivan, n.d.).

In addition to referral and social media, CIBC also put a lot of effort in developing a catchy corporate website to successfully find and attract new employees. Tierney (n.d.) emphasizes that they worked really hard to make their website speaks their language and speak to the things that are important and useful to them – collaboration, growth, and opportunities. The corporate website is also associated with a database that is full of current opportunities, from there; candidates can easily fill out application forms and upload resumes and cover letters.