A.P1
Explain how a large business recruits and selects giving reasons for their processes.
A.P2
Explain how and why a business adheres to recruitment processes which are ethical and comply with current employment law.
A.M1
Analyse the different recruitment methods used in a selected business.
A....
Pearson BTEC Level 3 Extended Certificate in Business
Unit 8: Recruitment and Selection Process
Learning Aim A:
A.P1 Explain how a large business recruits and selects
giving reasons for their processes.
A.P2 Explain how and why a business adheres to
recruitment processes which are ethical and
comply with current employment law.
A.M1 Analyse the different recruitment methods used
in a selected business.
A.D1 Evaluate the recruitment processes used and how
they contribute to the success of the selected
business.
,Unit 8
P1/M1 Business Recruitment Processes
Introduction
In this document, I will be explaining what recruitment processes Apple Inc. use and will provide
reasons why they use these methods.
Company Overview
Apple was foundered in 1976 as Apple Computer1, Inc. by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald
Wayne. They originally started by developing and selling ‘Wozniak's Apple 1 personal computer’ but
have since expanded into the consumer electronics (iPhone, iPad, Mac), computer software (iTunes,
Final Cut Pro, Xcode), and online services (iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Arcade); becoming one of the
largest technology companies alongside Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Mission Statement: ‘Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along
with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution
with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its
revolutionary iPhone and App store, and is defining the future of mobile media and
computing devices with iPad.2
To date, they have over 115,000 employees worldwide 3, with the vast majority being based in the
US. Worldwide, Apple has over 500 retail stores in 24 countries, including 234 in the UK, Australia,
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Italy, Japan, Macao, Mexico,
the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and
the United Arab Emirates 4 respectively.
Workforce Planning
‘The process of ensuring an organisation has current and future access to the human capital
it needs to perform effectively.’5
This form of planning involves the company coming up with processes to monitor the number of
employees and identifying if they need to recruit anymore to meet business demands. When
carrying out workforce planning, the company will look at the skills currently in the business and
decide whether they need employees with newer knowledge, which would better match their
current and possible future needs. The types of skills they will be looking for will differ depending on
the businesses industry, with Apple focusing on develolpers with knowledge in Objective-C and Swift
code and retail assistances/tech support staff (Geniuses) with an indepth knowledge in Apple
products (troubleshooting, repairs etc).
Using workforce planning is relevant to Apple, as it ensures they always have enough employees to
always deliver inovation in their products and services. An example of this is adding staff to the
iPhone development team, as the new skills and expertiese they could bring, would enable Apple to
add to/improve upon the smartphones features. In addition, on and round the time of a new
product launching, they will plan to employ more retail staff in Apple Stores, as this will enable them
to deal with the influx of customers. Finaly, they would use workforce planning to ensure all existing
staff are aware and knowledgeable with the most up-to-date products; this means they can offer
support and guidnece to customers and other departments within Apple.
1
,Unit 8
Reasons For Recruiting Staff
There are many reasons why Apple need to recurit staff, ranging from replacing those with are being
internally promoted and filling spaces created by product developemnt. Firstly, people changing jobs
roles will lead to Apple needing to recrit extra staff, as this ensures they can find someone of the
same skill set to take the job in their place and also because it means existing staff won’t have to
cover the work left by the moving employee. Seasonal fluctuations also have an impact on Apple’s
recuritment, as they need to employ extra staff - on short terms deals - around March, June and
September. This is when they commenly have their keynote and special events6; which lead to more
custom as when the new products are announced, customer flock to the stores to make purchases.
They also hire people in December, as this allows them to deal with the increased christmas demand
in their stores. Product development creates spaces in certain departments, meaning Apple need to
recruit people to not only fill in the roles, but also to find people with partifular skills/experties
which could advance their products further (FaceID). The final reason why Apple may need to recruit
staff is down to internal promotion, with a prime example being Chief Design Officer Jony Ive. When
Ive moved from being the ‘Senior Vice President of industrial design’ to ‘Senior Vice President of
Design’ and then to ‘Chief Design Officer’7, the positions he were leaving had to be filled, as this
ensured their wasn’t a skills and leadership shortage in these areas.
Not having enough staff would have a negative impact on Apple’s success, as it would hinder their
ability to offer premium products and services. Within the Apple stores, not having enough staff
would result in slower service and repairs for customers, reuslting in them considering going
elsewere. On the helpline, not having enough staff would mean longer waits for those trying to call
up; meaning customers would become disgruntled. Whilst in product development, not having
enouigh staff would hinder innvoation and could lead to products being rushed due to there not
being enough people to work on them. This would have an negative impact on the business, as the
products wouldn’t be as good and this could result in less sales.
How Employees Are Recruited
As a multinational company, Apple have a long and thorough recruitment process to ensure they
hire people with the appropriate skills and willingness to follow the companies mission statement.
Their process can be split up into the following 8:
1. Commencing recruitment: Human Resources will identify roles that need filling and will
create a number of documents that relate to the role. These include the job description, job
clasificatrion, suggested salary and a ‘recruitment request form’.
2. Announcements: The posts are made public and the job decriptions are distrubuted to over
340 agencies, organisations and universities.
3. Advertising: Posts are then added to the Apple website and other forms of media, including
printed media (newspapers, specilist magazines) and social media (LinkedIn).
4. Reviewing process: Members of the recruitment team will look through the
applications/resumes/CVs to accept or reject the applicants. This can be based upon their
experience and qualifications. The pre-determined criteria will also be used to decide who
makes it to the next screening process.
5. Face-to-face interviews: Those successful from the previous stage will get invited to an one-
to-one or committee interview. The questions asked will be a mix between those relating to
the job (e.g. Are you familiar with OSX?) and generic interview questions (e.g. What are your
strenghts and weaknesses?)
2
, Unit 8
6. Reference Check: The hiring manager will further vet the candidates by looking over their
references. These include personal, academic and prior work references.
7. Offer: Once everything is decided, the selected candidate/s are made an offer by the hiring
manager.
Job cenres are offices that provide people a place to go and find work. They provide people the
opportunity to look at advertisments, get advice about the avaliability of jobs, helping people
through the application processes and administrating benefits such as ‘Universial Credit’ to
unemployed people.
Recruitment agencies are organisations that help match job seekers with employers. They are used
by businesses as they fill vacancies on behalf of the employer; saving time. This works by them using
the data they have on their database to match candidates to the job description provided by the
recruiting company. They also use online adverts to attract applicants, as this allows them go gain a
large pool of candidates, before they draft out a shortlist. Following this, the company will receive
this shortlist, pick their prefered applicants and ask the agency to organise interviews/contact the
successful applicants.
Apple currently doesn’t use job centers to advertise the roles they have avaliable, however, it could
be advantagous for them to use them as it would enable more focused advertsing to people in areas
where Apple have operations (e.g. South London job centers advertsing jobs for the Bromley store).
Advantages of using job centers include having a wide audience due to the amount of people using
the site and there being no cost to the company to post job listings with the centre. They also offer
training to jobseakers, meaning potential employees can develop their skills further. Disadvantages
include the job centers not being specilist9 - and this means they cannot always cater for specific
roles/or cannot find the necessary/apropriate people for the jobs. Also, as they don’t directly work
for the company, they may not get the right fit of person for the job, as they won’t be working with
them and wouldn’t know if they’d fit the company.
The use of agencies is something Apple should utilise, as it enables them to save time due to them
not having to match people to the specifications of the job. They also use agencies to headhunt
certain people, as this allows them to find the best people for a particular job and pursuade them to
join Apple. In Apple’s case, an advantage of using agencies is that they require a smaller recruitment
team - as the agency does work for some of the job listings and they process others - and that the
agency will have access to a database of different people, meaning they already have data to
remove those who are not suitable - eliminating part of the screening process for Apple. However,
there is a fee involved - normanly for finding the employee or a percentage of their salary for a set
period of time - and this means there is a significatn cost in comparison to internal recruitment.
Finally, the person the agency picks may not be the right fit for the company, as they may not fit into
the culture and values of the business; whereas Apple doing the recruitment directly will lead to the
selecting people who can fit into these values as their interview would display these characteristics.
Internal And External Advertisement
All businesses have the option to use two types of job advertising - internal and external. Internal job
advertising involves the company announcing the job within the company and provides employees
with the first opportunity to apply. Examples include having posts on the company’s intranet,
sending out details of the position in memos and newsletters and putting up advertisements on
notice boards. On the contrary, external job advertising involves posting the job outside the
organisation so that it is visible to the public; this can often include the use of job centres or
3
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