The Difference between Recruitment & Procurement

Recruitment is among the most essential parts within an organisation, but conducting recruitment needs thorough investment in both time and money. Recruitment requires specific budget and time allocation that will go to job advertisements and a series of hiring processes like candidate interview, screening, onboarding, etc. Given that recruitment often takes up so much time and investment, there are times businesses turn to take advantage of procurement to help finish a project faster. Procurement is often seen as a short-term yet effective solution to get work done. 

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However, you might ask, if procurement seems effective in helping businesses grow, why do we need recruitment? Here is the explanation. 

Procurement 

Procurement is often a fancy term used in marketing to find and retrieve something, usually an item or a service. Plenty of businesses have a procurement department which is usually filled with a group of dedicated employees who make buying decisions for the company. 

When procurement is implemented in human resources, it becomes an operative function. Chris Emrick, Project Manager at Dematic, defines procurement in human resource as resource gathering, getting the best deal possible for resources. It is concerned with procuring and employing people who possess necessary skill, knowledge and aptitude. Generally, people who have a reputation to do work (via reference or referral) are enough for a contractor to be hired. 

For example, if a project needs specialised labour or merely more labour hours than inhouse staff can provide, HR can procure contract labour. When the need for the product or extra labour is done, the resource could be exhausted. In many situations, procurement could be defined as hourly labour with some note. 

Recruitment

More than just procuring labours, recruitment is an asset gathering, and as most businesses define, employees are the most valuable asset in a company. It is the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulating them to apply for jobs in an organisation, therefore recruitment might need more time and investment to complete. 

A recruited employee would commonly work full-time or part-time within an organisation and employers would end up depending on them to do jobs. Employers should also provide development, benefits, and other incentives a full-time worker gets. 

In short, recruiting is more about the long term investment through rough edges, while procurement is an immediate recruiting for certain project/work needs. 

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