Making the recruitment decision for fresh university graduates: A study of employment in an industrial organisation

Owing to the intense need for educated and talented workforce, especially in developing countries, recruiting fresh university graduates has become an important issue for organisations. However, conventional recruitment and personnel selection methods may be unable to fulfil the task due to some uncertainties and complexities such as lack of past work experience or creeping subjectivity into the recruitment process of fresh graduates. This paper addresses the problem by proposing a two-fold recruitment approach which benefits from human resource personnel selection methods and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A study of employment for an industrial organisation in Malaysia was conducted and the proposed model was applied. The study has shown the overriding role of university lecturers for the recruitment of fresh graduates. The consistency and validation of the model was examined through experimental procedures based on consistency test and sensitivity analysis.