IRE348 Recruitment and Selection
Individual Assignment
Due February 26, 2024
Worth 20% of final grade
Description
The purpose of this assignment is to start connecting what you are learning in this course to real world
situations. Working independently, you are to find four recent examples of job advertisements in the
media and use your knowledge of the subject material covered in class to provide an analysis and
critique of their recruitment strategies.
Detailed Objectives:
1. You will collect four job advertisements for jobs in Canada from a variety of sources
(newspapers, professional journals, online job boards, social media). These job ads should
reflect differing levels of quality: two of the job ads should be ones that you consider to be
excellent, and two should be considered poor. Reflect upon what is taught in class to help in
your identification of the quality of the articles (this will help in your writeup).
2. For each of the articles: Provide a two-page, double-spaced discussion of each job ad, critically
analyzing why you feel the ad represents excellent or poor quality. This discussion should move
beyond simple commentary, and should apply your comprehensive understanding of the course
material. You may consider adding in academic literature related to the topic area to build on
course material as well.
3. Here are some examples of areas you might consider using in your discussion (note this is not an
exhaustive list and is meant to just get you thinking about some of the topics to consider. You do
not need to necessarily cover these topics, and papers that only cover these topics will be
considered average):
a. Apply your knowledge of our discussion of legislation issues in class: is the
advertisement compliant with applicable legislation? Think about issues like
occupational requirements, discrimination, employment equity, etc.
b. Is the information regarding the job description sufficient to recruit good candidates?
Think about topics like the job summary, responsibilities, the qualifications and
requirements of the position. Is the job likely to generate a sufficient applicant pool?
c. In what ways (if at all) does the source where the advertisement was posted relate to
the target market of candidates (i.e., think about what types of candidates the job ad is
hoping to target, will it be successful? Why or why not).
d. How successful is the formatting and layout of the advertisement? Consider factors like
the ability to capture attention, interest, desire and action and whether the ad is
successful in these endeavors. In other words: how does the layout, font, colour scheme
etc. contribute to the quality of the ad and its ability to recruit a suitable applicant pool?
Remember: this is not simply a commentary—you are expected to draw on, and reference
course material covered in the course up to week 6. The strongest papers should consider
reinforcing their discussions with additional research relevant to the topic area (and citing these
sources). For example: what does the academic literature say about the topic area, or has there
been issues like the ones you discuss identified in the media?
Organization:
Each job ad should appear before its respective discussion. Ads should be legible, and the full content
needs to be available. If not included in the ad, list the job title, source where the ad was obtained, date
of the job ad (date the job advertisement closes is preferable, though the date the ad was posted to the
source could also be used).
You will draft an 8-page (double spaced, times new roman 12 point font with appropriate margins,
excluding job ads) paper. Bullet point/incomplete sentences are not permitted.
The report is due on Tuesday, February 28th through the online submission system on Quercus. More
details will be discussed in class.