Meaning & use
recruitment
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Meanings
noununcountable
The activity of finding suitable people and persuading them to join a company, organization or armed force.
Grammar: No plural in this sense; often followed by of or for: recruitment of volunteers.
Patterns
- the recruitment of someone
- recruitment for something
- recruitment into something
The hospital has launched a major recruitment drive for nurses.
Recruitment is slow in the winter because few people apply.
She works in recruitment and spends her days interviewing candidates.
noununcountable
The process of signing up new members or supporters for a group, cause or activity.
Grammar: Used for groups, not just jobs: recruitment into a club.
Patterns
- recruitment into something
- the recruitment of someone
The chess club focuses its recruitment on first-year students.
Online recruitment by extremist groups worries many parents.
Volunteer recruitment picks up before the annual festival.
Word forms
| plural | recruitments |
|---|
Common combinations
- a recruitment drive
- The school ran a recruitment drive to find more coaches.
- recruitment agency
- A recruitment agency sent her three job offers.
- recruitment process
- The recruitment process took six weeks.
- graduate recruitment
- Graduate recruitment starts every autumn.
- military recruitment
- Military recruitment rose after the advertising campaign.
Synonyms and how they differ
- hiring
- Hiring focuses on the act of giving someone a job, while recruitment includes searching and attracting candidates beforehand.
- enlistment
- Enlistment is used almost only for joining the armed forces, whereas recruitment is much wider.
- staffing
- Staffing is about having enough workers in place, not about the act of finding them.
Opposites
Word family
- recruit verb
- to find and enroll new people
- recruit noun
- a person who has recently joined
- recruiter noun
- a person whose job is to find candidates
- recruiting noun
- American term for the recruitment process
Commonly confused: recruitment or retainment?
recruitment vs retainment
Retainment is about keeping something or someone; recruitment is about bringing new people in.
Practice
The company's ______ team interviewed fifty applicants for ten open posts.
Choose one answer.
Recruitment team is the natural compound for people who find new staff. Retirement and resignation are about leaving, and recruitment's is the wrong form.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “recruitment”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.