Transitioning from military service to the civilian workforce is both a daunting experience and a formidable challenge for many highly skilled veterans. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the successful strategies of Fortune 500 business leaders for the recruitment and hiring of veterans. Person-organization fit theory formed the conceptual framework for this study. The targeted population consisted of 3 business leaders from 3 separate Fortune 500 businesses in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with successful strategies for recruiting and hiring veterans. Data collected from interviews and supporting documents were coded and analyzed using a mind-mapping technique, and 3 themes emerged: veteran awareness and edification, business leader awareness and edification, and working with strategic partners. The study findings may provide business leaders who lack veteran recruitment and hiring strategies opportunities to access skilled veterans seeking employment. The social implications of this study revolves around potential enhancements to business leaders' understanding of what highly skilled veterans may bring to their organizations' operational portfolio. Additionally, this study may contribute to veteran job seekers' awareness of the importance of preparing themselves for the career transition between military service and the civilian workforce.

While extant research on recruiting has highlighted a number of applicant attitudes that predict future attitudes and decisions, questions regarding how attitudes develop over time and differentially predict applicant job choice have received scant attention. To address this currently impoverished research area, this study utilizes three prominent recruitment frameworks (signaling theory, fit, and image) to theoretically and empirically examine how applicant attitudes towards possible future employers develop over the course of the recruitment process. Also, this study explores the possible divergent patterns of development of these applicant attitudes by examining taking a job offer and passing on a job offer as two separate decision-making processes. Finally, this study investigates the pattern of relationships between proximal predictors of job choice (organizational attraction and acceptance intentions) and applicant decisions to take or pass on a job offer. Participants in this study were 178 undergraduates seeking internships during a five-month recruitment period. Applicant attitudes about organizational image, fit, attraction, acceptance intentions as well as recruiter trustworthiness and timeliness of a consistent set of firms were assessed eight times over the five-month period. Results of this study indicate that recruiting, from an applicant perspective, is a dynamic decision-making process where applicants gather and assimilate information in distinct patterns prior to making job choice decisions. Specifically, across six applicant attitudes that have previously been shown to predict recruiting outcomes such as job choice, applicant attitudes toward the organization they take an offer from increase, and at a faster rate, over time relative to organizations whose offers they pass. These attitudes significantly differ between offers that are ultimately taken and passed on as early as the start of the recruitment process (i.e. image) or as late as slightly more than three weeks (i.e. fit) into a five-month recruitment process.

The ageing of the population and the workforce has become a global phenomenon that has created concern about labour as well as skills shortages. Therefore the continuation of older workers in paid employment is regarded as beneficial to both the economy and to the older worker. The aim of this dissertation is to make an enquiry about what employers are doing to make themselves attractive to these older workers and how they are retaining the older workers already present in their organisations. The methodology has been to construct a review protocol through the formation of a review panel as well as the development of a detailed search strategy that included a transparent inclusion and exclusion criteria. The measurement for evaluating the quality of studies used in this systematic review is presented along with the strategy adopted to extract the data and synthesise the findings. The search results were quite limited due to the limited number of research studies conducted particularly for the first of the two research questions relating to the attraction of older workers into the organisation. However the studies that have been conducted thus far shows a level of connection between the methods that can be used to attract older workers and those identified as being used to retain older workers. Finally, gaps from the systematic review process are identified and further research areas suggested.

The Big City, Big Country Road Show (BC2BC) is a 2.5-year project designed to recruit non-traditional populations, urban and minorities, into post-secondary agricultural science degree programs. Through experiential learning, BC2BC introduces students to various agricultural communications skill sets in an effort to broaden students’ views of opportunities in agriculture. This study attempted to measure Texas urban high school students’ perceptions of agriculture as a subject, a college major, and a career, before and after participation in the BC2BC program in summer of 2007. The study also looked at students’ perceptions of careers attainable with an agricultural degree and students’ general agricultural knowledge levels, self-reported and tested. Pre–and post–test mean comparisons revealed positive increases in student perceptions of agriculture and an increase in self-reported agricultural knowledge levels after workshop participation. The results of this study have implications for year two BC2BC workshops and may serve as a potential model for recruitment programs of underrepresented populations into colleges of agriculture.

Large rivers in North America have been subjected to a variety of hydrologic alterations that have negatively impacted aquatic fauna. These impacts have triggered restoration efforts, including management of flows, to restore or maintain ecological integrity. Ecological data relevant to flow management and habitat restoration is scarce, and conceptual models of ecosystem function have been widely applied to large rivers despite a lack of quantitative evaluation of these models. Here, I examine demographic and trophic dynamics of fishes with divergent life histories and trophic guilds in relation to habitat heterogeneity and flow variability in a relatively unaltered floodplain system: the Brazos River, Texas. Reproductive activity of fishes with three divergent life history strategies was positively associated with long-term river hydrology, although species with alternate strategies exploited different portions of the hydrograph (peak flow versus increasing flow). Despite the positive association with hydrology, low-flow periods were favorable for recruitment, and food resources for larvae and juveniles were denser during these periods. Some species used both oxbow and channel habitats during some point in their life cycle, whereas other species appeared to be almost entirely restricted to one habitat type. Terrestrial C3 macrophytes accounted for a significant fraction of the biomass of most consumer species examined. Small-bodied species in oxbow lakes assimilated large fractions of biomass from benthic algae, whereas this pattern was not observed in the river channel. Frequent flow variations in the river channel may reduce algal standing stocks, and significant contributions from autochthonous algal sources may only occur during low-flow periods. Trophic positions of detritivores indicated that terrestrial carbon sources were assimilated, for the most part, via invertebrates rather than by direct consumption. My results indicate that current conceptual models are too vague to provide accurate predictions for restoration strategies in rivers with variable flow regimes. Flow and habitat management strategies that focus on reproducing key features of historical fluvial dynamics are likely to be more successful than strategies that focus on single indicator species or flow dynamics that differ from the historical hydrograph.

The studies of employee referral have shown that employee referral is one of the most cost-effective recruiting methods. However, few studies focused on the background and cause of its occurrence; and the guanxi between the introducer and referral could also provide as a good resource to referral and result in a great effect to both of the introducer and referral. Therefore, this research aimed at the cause of employee referral; the effects of employee referral on introducer, referral and organization; relationship development between introducer and referral after employee referral; and the effects of guanxi on referral¡¦s job performance, job satisfaction, organization commitment and resignation. The major conclusions of this research are as following: 1. If introducer voluntarily recommends referral and pedals his/her influence, the referral can have a good chance to get the job offer. 2. Positive influences which results from employee referral on introducer, referral and organization are more effective in comparison with negative influences. 3. Both of the introducer and referral take psychological pressures of employee referral, including guarantee of referral¡¦s performance and return introducer¡¦s favor. 4. To avoid being classed as the same type or group without an appropriate understanding, the introducer and referral would decrease the personal contact with each other in the office.

The thesis focuses on recruitment practices of recent business graduates and related issues in two countries, the Czech Republic and Taiwan. Firstly, it concentrates on what recruitment sources, such as internet job portals, job fairs and others, are popular among these particular groups acting in the labor market, and on the contrary, what sources are used by the organizations. Furthermore, the research explores what information companies advertize in their job advertisements and what information recent business graduates seek. It also tries to discover what skills, competencies and experiences Taiwanese and Czech HR professionals value and recommend graduates to have if they want to be successful in the recruitment and selection process. The importance of wants and values of recent business graduates, role of location, universities and culture is described as well. Collected data from the on-line questionnaire survey designed for companies and graduates, both from Taiwan and the Czech Republic, provided the major source of information for answering the main questions of this research. Nevertheless, several face-to-face interviews with HR professionals from both countries were conducted as well. These interviews should have provided more in-depth view on the issues related to the recruitment of recent business graduates and present detailed insights based on their experiences into related practices and topics. Consequently, the thesis gives a comprehensive picture of the issues discussed above and it should help companies, and also graduates from both countries to better match mutual wants and values. The results show that currently, modern information and communication technologies significantly influence the recruitment practices. Therefore, internet job portals and companies¡¦ websites are popular recruitment sources. Moreover, recent business graduates only seldom know what kind of job would suit them the best and thus, this factor influences their later performance at work. As a result, HR professionals recommend them to clarify it. Besides that, base salary and other financial incentives are no longer the main factors that influence graduates¡¦ decision-making in both countries. The survey outcomes show that graduates rather seek career prospects, training and educational possibilities, and also interesting and enriching jobs. They want to be proud of what they are doing, respected by their peers and they would like to further develop themselves.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-121). Also available on the World Wide Web.

This study examined the work experiences of individuals who perform recruitment activities for the California State University. Based at four campus settings, the objectives were to: 1) analyze the ways in which professionals regard and enact system-wide and institutional enrollment management policies; 2) explore their professional orientations in regards to college access; and 3) examine the congruence of system-wide and institutional formal policy and the perspectives of different groups of professionals.The analysis centered on two levels, the institutional and the ground level perspective. The principal data sources that informed the study were interviews and campus level and system-wide documents. To frame the data gathering and analysis, two theories were used to understand the perspectives of the set of professionals; the study modified the classic conceptualization of `street-level bureaucrats' (Lipsky, 1969) and latent social roles of professionals (Gouldner, 1954). For the broader organizational perspective, the study relied on institutional theory and academic capitalism in the new economy to offer context to the university's move to enrollment management. Findings indicate that professionals varied in how they enacted recruitment practices depending on the institutional context. So, while enrollment management practices are being implemented at the Cal State system, the extent to which the actions were strategic was dependent on the campus environment and the priorities of that university.

Locomotion is controlled in large part by neural circuits (CPGs) that generate rhythmic stereotyped outputs in the absence of descending or sensory inputs. The output of a neural circuit is determined by the configuration of the circuit, synapse properties, and the intrinsic properties of component neurons. In order to understand how a neural circuit functions component neurons, their connections, and their intrinsic properties must be characterized. Motoneurons are a useful cell in which to begin investigation of CPG function because they are accessible and provide a measure of the cumulative activity of the circuit. Drosophila is a potentially useful model system for the study of motoneuron intrinsic properties, their contribution to locomotion, and of locomotor CPGs because the genetic and molecular techniques available in Drosophila are surpassed in no other organism and because the Drosophila nervous system is small in comparison to vertebrate nervous systems. Further, whole-cell in situ patch clamp recordings from adult and larval motoneurons in relatively intact preparations are possible. Therefore, the first goal of this work was to investigate whether the firing behavior and recruitment of identified Drosophila 1b and 1s motoneurons is analogous to the recruitment of high-threshold, phasic and low-threshold, tonic motoneurons in other organisms. The second goal was to determine whether active conductances influence motoneuron recruitment in response to synaptic input. The final aim was to investigate how these factors influence CPG output to muscles. Findings from current clamp studies indicate that1b motoneurons are more easily recruited than 1s motoneurons, in agreement with the hypothesis that 1b motoneurons are analogous to low-threshold motoneurons described in other organisms. Further, orderly recruitment of Drosophila 1b motoneurons before 1s motoneurons is not a result of passive properties. Instead, the Shal channel that encodes a large portion of IA in motoneuron somatodendritic regions is a critical determinant of delay-to-spike in larval Drosophila motoneurons. These findings are behaviorally-relevant because the same recruitment order is seen in simultaneous recordings from motoneuron pairs recruited by synaptic input.