RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION CHALLENGES IN NIGERIAN CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS, CAN TRAINING HR STAFF CONTRIBUTE TO ADDRESSING THESE CHALLENGES?

Abstract

In the last two decades, the role of civil society organisations has increased significantly in the global development community as these social groups have come to be relied on to deliver on goods and services required for national development. Unlike the private for-profit and government sectors, the third sector (Civil Society Sector) relies heavily on its people to deliver on goods and services through innovation and commitment. The reliance on people therefore makes it imperative for the CSO sector to adopt practices that develop and improve the HR function of recruitment and selection. However, this is not the case for CSOs in Nigeria as they are plagued with external challenges such as the high unemployment rates as well as internal organisational challenges that are inimical to the adopting practices to improve HR functions such as recruitment and selection. While this scenario exists within the Nigerian CSO space, in practice, the dearth of research on this specific area has made it almost impossible to gain deep insights on the issue in order to work towards finding a solution.

This thesis addressed the training needs of HR staff in Nigerian CSOs required to improve organisation performance adopting a qualitative method through interviews and using the AMO model. The (A) examined skills needed such as leadership, technological or proposal writing skills; the (M) looked at the question of why staff are motivated to address the challenge; and the (O) looked at the opportunities needed. For some participants opportunities were autonomy and the lack of interference from management and for others it was the simple opportunity to be trained.

Training emerged from interviews with participants even before it was proposed as a solution. This suggests that it could contribute to addressing the challenges as the skills identified could be met through training. With regard to motivation, the thesis found that ideal motivation centred around the success of the sector and the opportunity to attend trainings to develop new and already existing skills. The combination of these three components provides more insights on the possibility of training. However, as we found out this is only an indicative point as external challenges may not be easily addressed even with training as proven from the case study evaluation from those who were trained on recruitment and selection 2 years ago.