Investigating Recruitment and Selection Practices of SMEs Travel Agencies in Penang, Malaysia

Tourism is one of the main contributors to Malaysia’s economy. Amongst important players in tourism are travel agencies. Realising the crucial role of the travel agencies, recruitment and selection of the right employees are paramount. At present there is dearth of literature in recruitment and selection pertaining to travel agencies in Malaysia and other developing countries. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate on how SMEs travel agencies in Penang, Malaysia exercise recruitment and selection to equip capable employees. This research utilised a qualitative research technique for data collection, where five key persons of selected travel agencies were interviewed at their premises in the mid 2010. The research findings support previous studies pertaining to recruitment of small ventures elsewhere where SMEs usually use methods that are convenient, inexpensive and directly controllable by their businesses such as direct applications, personal and employees referals, and newspaper advertising. But walk-in interview, job fairs, help from employment agencies are not usually applied. As far as selection proses was concerned, travel agencies in the study considered priority on personal characteristics, knowledge and working experiences of candidates pertaining to the industry. While the owners of travel agencies have their own basic requirements that applicants should fulfill, no specific guidelines to hire new workers are established. In conclusion, SMEs travel agencies in Penang prefered traditional and informal recruitment and selection methods. In order to equip themselves with competent employees SMEs travel agencies in Penang should also exercise the current trends of recruitment and selection methods such as online advertisement, psychological test and aptitude test.