Filling a role well starts long before an interview — and the contract offered at the end shapes how flexible, secure and committed that working relationship turns out to be.
A business doesn't recruit for its own sake — a vacancy always exists for a specific reason, and understanding that reason often shapes how the business should go about filling it. The organisational structure you met in 3.4.1 defines the roles a business needs; recruitment is the process of actually putting people into them.
Expanding into new stores, markets or product lines (see 3.1.7) creates entirely new roles that didn't exist before.
Resignation, retirement or dismissal all create a gap in the existing structure that needs to be filled to keep operations running.
Maternity or paternity leave, long-term sickness, or a sabbatical can require temporary cover so a role's responsibilities don't simply stop.
New technology, a new legal requirement (see 3.2.5), or a change in strategy can create a role that simply didn't need to exist before.
Why a vacancy has arisen matters practically, not just academically. A short-term absence usually calls for temporary or fixed-term cover rather than a permanent hire; a brand-new role created by growth may need someone with skills nobody currently on the team has; and a resignation might be an opportunity to reconsider whether the role should be restructured entirely rather than simply refilled exactly as it was.
Internal recruitment fills a vacancy with someone already working for the business, usually through promotion or transfer. External recruitment fills it with someone from outside the business entirely.
Notice that filling a role internally always creates a second vacancy somewhere else in the structure — promoting a sales assistant into a supervisor role leaves the sales assistant position empty, which then has to be filled in turn, whether internally or externally. A business relying heavily on internal recruitment therefore still needs a steady stream of external recruitment lower down its structure to keep the whole system supplied.
Filling a vacancy well is rarely as simple as posting an advert and picking whoever applies first — AQA wants you to understand a clear sequence of stages, each producing something the next stage depends on.
Reviewing what the role actually involves day to day — its tasks, responsibilities, and the skills genuinely needed to do it well. This is the foundation everything else in the process is built on.
A formal document, based on the job analysis, listing the role's duties and responsibilities — used to advertise the vacancy and set clear expectations for whoever is eventually appointed.
A separate document describing the ideal candidate — the qualifications, experience, skills and personal qualities needed, often split into "essential" criteria a candidate must have and "desirable" ones that would be a bonus.
The vacancy is advertised (internally, externally, or both) and candidates submit an application form or CV, giving the business its first pool of candidates to assess.
Interviews, tests, assessment centres and references are used to narrow the pool down to the single best-matched candidate, judged against the person specification created earlier.
Each stage exists to reduce the risk of a bad hire before it happens. A business that skips job analysis and simply reuses an old, outdated job description risks advertising for skills the role doesn't actually need anymore, while attracting the wrong candidates entirely. A person specification that clearly separates essential from desirable criteria helps a business avoid rejecting a genuinely strong candidate simply because they lack one minor, non-critical skill.
Selection methods vary considerably depending on the role and the number of applicants. A small local business might rely on not much more than an application form and a single interview, while a large graduate recruitment programme often uses a full assessment centre — a day combining group exercises, case study tasks, psychometric tests and multiple interviews, designed to observe how candidates perform under realistic pressure rather than just how well they answer questions on paper.
Investing time and money into recruiting well isn't simply about filling a vacancy — a genuinely well-matched hire delivers measurable benefits that a rushed or poorly-run process is far less likely to achieve.
A candidate whose skills genuinely match the person specification needs less time to become fully effective in the role, and is less likely to make costly mistakes while learning on the job.
The right person in the right role, understood properly through job analysis, is far more likely to consistently meet the standards a business (and its customers) expect.
Employees who are genuinely well suited to a role, and who understood what it involved before accepting it, are less likely to become dissatisfied and leave — reducing the cost of recruiting all over again.
These three benefits reinforce each other in practice. A well-matched hire who stays with the business for years builds deeper product knowledge and stronger customer relationships over time than a series of short-tenured replacements ever could, directly supporting both productivity and quality — which is exactly why the upfront cost of a thorough recruitment process is usually far cheaper in the long run than repeatedly recruiting for the same role because of a poor initial match.
Once a candidate is selected, the contract they're offered shapes how many hours they work, how secure their income is, and how much flexibility both sides have. AQA wants you to know four main types.
Usually comes with the fullest set of benefits — paid holiday, sick pay, pension contributions and a clearer path for career progression — but requires the greatest ongoing commitment from the employee and the highest fixed staffing cost for the employer.
Gives employees flexibility to fit work around other commitments such as childcare, study or a second job, and lets employers cost-effectively staff up for predictable busy periods without paying for hours they don't need.
Allows a business to retain two skilled, experienced employees who each need reduced hours — for example, returning from parental leave — while still covering the role's full responsibilities, though it requires careful handover and communication between the two job-sharers.
Gives an employer maximum flexibility to offer work only when it's needed, and gives some employees welcome flexibility too — but leaves income genuinely uncertain from week to week, which has made this type of contract one of the most publicly debated in recent years.
The benefits of full-time versus part-time employment aren't simply about the number of hours — they reflect a genuine trade-off between security and flexibility for the employee, and between commitment and cost-control for the employer. A business with steady, predictable demand throughout the week is well suited to full-time contracts, since there's consistently enough work to justify them. A business with sharp peaks and quiet periods — a café busy only at lunchtimes, a retailer busy only at weekends — often relies more heavily on part-time staff to avoid paying full-time wages during quiet periods when there simply isn't enough work to justify them.
Drag each scenario into the recruitment approach it best illustrates.
State two selection methods a business might use to recruit new staff.
Structure guide: two correctly identified methods — 1 mark each, no explanation required.
State and explain two benefits to Denholm Logistics of recruiting its new Shift Supervisor internally rather than externally.
Structure guide: state a benefit grounded in the case study (1 mark), explain it (1 mark) — repeated twice over.
Analyse the risks to Denholm Logistics of employing its two new warehouse assistants on zero-hours contracts.
Structure guide: a single developed line of reasoning grounded in the case study (eg: zero-hours contracts give the warehouse assistants no guaranteed income → this uncertainty could make it harder for Denholm Logistics to attract and retain reliable staff → particularly during the seasonal peaks when it most needs extra help → potentially forcing the business to recruit new staff repeatedly rather than retaining experienced workers).
Recommend whether Denholm Logistics should recruit its new Shift Supervisor internally or externally. Justify your answer using the case study.
Structure guide: a "recommend" question needs a justified judgement — weigh the existing operative's four years of experience and knowledge of the warehouse against the operations director's stated wish for prior supervisory experience the internal candidate may not have, before reaching a clear final recommendation.