1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
An online examinationsystem for recruitment of staff is an application that establishes a network between the organization and applicants. The organization enters answers the questions that displayed in the exam. These questions aredisplayed as a test to the eligible students. The answers inputted by the applicants are then evaluatedand their score is calculated and saved. This score then can be accessed by to determine the passes students or to evaluate their performance.Online Exams System provides the platform but does not directly participate in, nor is itinvolved in any tests conducted. Questions are posted not by the site, but users of the site.
According to Yu, Hsiao and Cho (2014), online examinations are convenient, and fast. Online examination has three main purposes:
The formulation of questions for a test is often treated with doubts and suspicions. In a typical online examination system, the questions are strict and set with care. Although the exam questions is in the multiple choice format (objectives), the questions are chosen at random. All students have the same questions but the order of questions is different. Since the order of the question differs on each computer, the motive in students to cheat is reduced. Cheating at examinations is unacceptable. It is common knowledge that people are likely to cheat in a network environment but this is wrong as cheating at examinations is unacceptable as it affects the fairness of an examination. This situation implies that to overcome the tendency to cheat is the major challenge in online examinations.
Every organization is made up of employees, and before employees are recruited, information pertaining to them is obtained, processed and analyzed after they have applied to determine their qualification for employment into a given position. For every position, there are certain skills and qualifications needed. The performance of the individual is a function of employee ability, motivation and opportunity (Boxall & Purcell, 2003).
Short-listing of employees also known as Recruitment and selection, forms a core part of the central activities underlying human resource management: namely, the acquisition, development and reward of workers. It forms an important part of the work of human resource managers – or designated specialists within work organizations. It has an important role to play in ensuring worker performance and positive organizational outcomes. It is often claimed that selection of workers occurs not just to replace departing employees or add to a workforce but rather to put in place workers who can perform at a high level and demonstrate commitment. Recruitment is important for organizations since it performs the essential function of drawing an important resource, human capital, into the organization (Boxall & Purcell, 2003; Parry & Tyson, 2008;). It has a strategic aim as it focuses on the need to attract high-quality people in order to gain a competitive advantage (Parry & Tyson, 2008; Malinowski et al, 2005). Recruiting people with the right abilities reinforces the organizational goals (Boxall & Purcell, 2003).
Conducting examination before employees are recruited is very important as their level of success in the exams will reflect their level of competence or ability. Online examination widens the spectrum for organizations to reach out to more applicants and to get the best. It is on this premise that this research study is set to examine the design and implementation of an online examination system for recruitment of staff.
1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Many organizations do not have competitive personnel and this negatively affects the productivity and image of the organization. In addition, there is no effective structure to recruit staff that is able to stand up to the responsibility of their duties. Many organizations still adopt the manual method of recruiting and the applicants are limited to those in their immediate environment. Organizations are unable to reach out to a wide spectrum of applicants so as to be able to recruit the best employees. The traditional examination for recruitment is usually characterized by cheating which hampers the credibility of recruited employees. There is need for a more effective system that is able to reach out to a wider spectrum of employees and thereby promoting the recruitment of well qualified staff.
1.2 AIM OF STUDY
The aim of the study is to design a computer based test application for staff recruitment for prudential global service limited.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The following are the objectives of the study;
1.4 METHODOLOGY
The system development will make use of Microsoft Visual C# as the front end design tool and MySQL as the database.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of the study is that it will bring to light the relevance of adopting online examination system for employee short-listing or e-recruitment system and the need for its adoption by organizations. It will help organizations solve the present challenges they are facing in attracting eligible and professional employees by providing a software system that processes the application of different applicants. It will also save them time and cost of recruiting.
1.6 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This study covers the design and implementation of acomputerized examination system for the recruitment of staff for prudential global service limited.
The application is divided into two modules; one for the admin to set questions, time for each question, etc. and the other module for the applicants to answer questions.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The scope of the study is limited to only the examination process. It will not entail the application process of how applicants’ information is being captured.
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Examination: A test designed to assess somebody’s ability or knowledge in a particular subject or field
Employment – the condition of working for pay
Application – a formal and usually written request for something such as a job, a grant of money, or admission to a school or college
Short-list – to put somebody or something on a final list of candidates for a position or award
Recruitment – to enroll somebody as a worker or member, or to take on people as workers or members
Human resources – the field of business concerned with recruiting and managing employees
Management – the organizing and controlling of the affairs of a business or a sector of a business