Influence of recruitment and selection practices on employee performance in the Nigerian banking sector: a human resource management perspective

Abstract

Effective recruitment and selection practices remain critical to employee performance, particularly in the Nigerian banking sector where competence, service quality and operational efficiency jointly determine organisational success. Many banking institutions nevertheless continue to experience difficulties associated with mismatch between employee and job, weak workforce planning, and recruitment processes that do not adequately align capability with role requirements. This study examined the effect of recruitment and selection practices on employee task performance among selected deposit money banks in Nigeria, with particular attention to three dimensions: identifying the need for employees, defining job requirements and qualifications, and developing job descriptions and specifications. A survey research design was adopted. The population comprised 220 employees drawn from ten listed deposit money banks, and a census was taken because the population was of manageable size. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered electronically and measured on five point scales. The instrument demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency, with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from 0.80 to 0.87 and an overall value of 0.86. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and multiple regression. All three recruitment dimensions correlated positively and significantly with task performance, the strongest being job requirements and qualifications (r = 0.714, p < 0.01). The regression results showed that each dimension exerted a positive and significant effect: job requirements and qualifications ( b = 0.354, p < 0.001), identifying the need for employees ( b = 0.286, p < 0.001) and job descriptions and specifications ( b = 0.241, p = 0.001). The model explained 61.2 percent of the variance in task performance, F(3, 216) = 113.426, p < 0.001. The ordering of the three coefficients is itself informative, indicating that the specification of what a role requires matters more than either the anticipation of the vacancy or the documentation of the duties attached to it. The study concludes that recruitment quality is established principally at the point where role criteria are defined, and recommends that banks invest in rigorous job analysis and criterion based selection rather than in procedural elaboration elsewhere in the hiring cycle.