3.2. Recruitment, selection, and retention
Recruitment tends to be a high priority in the private sector due to both growth and turnover
rates (e.g., 11–13% in one manufacturing firm was seen to be high). It takes on added
importance because of the difficulty of dismissing employees, which requires government
authorization in each individual case, and because local staffs tend to be inclined to low levels
of loyalty and high ‘‘job hopping’’ behaviors. Multiple methods of recruitment are used by
firms in Indonesia (e.g., word-of-mouth; print advertisements): referral from universities,
recruitment consultants, and the Internet. Advertising is very expensive in the few newspapers
considered to have the reach to make an advertisement placement worthwhile and therefore not
used as frequently as in western countries. Excluding unskilled occupations, the order of
importance of factors in recruitment is generally as follows: age, education, sex, marital status,
and training, with age seen to be important by the most number of employers and training as
the least important (Report, 1997). At managerial levels, patronage still exists but seems to be
L. Bennington, A.D. Habir / Human Resource Management Review 13 (2003) 373–392 383
lessening, but in the public sector, politics and patronage continue to play a dominant role
(Habir, 1995). There is evidence to suggest that there are shortages of ‘‘quality employees’’ in
marketing, finance, and systems. Quality is seen to relate primarily to motivation and
productivity.