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INTRODUCTION
The integration between the management of human resources and organisation strategy is arguably the prime factor delineating HRM theory and practice from its more traditional personnel management origins. To achieve this strategic integration it is anticipated that each of the bundle of activities making up HRM, as practiced by organisations, will be similarly integrated, vertically, to align with their strategic imperatives. Recruitment and selection has long been recognised as a key activity within HR and this paper seeks to explore the extent to which its practice provides evidence of such strategic alignment.
Prior to the more recent emphasis on strategic alignment, organisational recruitment and selection practice remained relatively unchanged, having evolved into a relatively standardised approach frequently labelled as 'traditional' (Storey and Wright, 2001). This traditional approach has its roots in a psychometric model (Newell and Rice, 1999) where organisational effort is directed at defining the sort of person who will perform a particular job effectively and assessing applicants against defined personal attributes in order to establish a person/job fit. More recently, evidence has pointed to significant developments in recruitment and selection processes particularly in terms of their central focus and sophistication. At one level it is argued that the focus of recruitment and selection has become more strategically driven (Sparrow and Pettigrew, 1988), where a premium is placed on selecting employees against organisational rather than job-specific criteria (Bowen et al, 1991). At another level it is argued that this strategic orientation has required the use of more sophisticated selection techniques and greater involvement of line managers in the process (Storey, 1992;Wilkinson and van Zwanenberg, 1994). Many of these developments have been encapsulated in a strategic variant of recruitment and selection which has been portrayed as the natural adaptation of more traditional approaches to provide greater integration between employee resourcing and business strategy (Thornhill et al., 2000).
An underpinning rationale for the emergence of strategic recruitment and selection (SR&S) can be developed from two interrelated strands in recent management thinking: strategic management and human resource management (HRM). The starting point is that organisations have arguably become more strategic in their behaviour in pursuit of competitive advantage in an increasingly turbulent business environment (Porter, 1985). Strategic behaviour involves an organisation in matching its resources...