Q."Selection is rightly described as a negative process." Explain why.
Selection is called a negative process because its entire method of working is elimination rather than attraction. Starting from the full pool of applicants that recruitment has generated, selection moves through a sequence of stages — screening of applications, preliminary interview, employment tests, selection interview, reference and medical checks — and at EACH of these stages, some candidates are found unsuitable and are dropped from further consideration. The pool only ever gets smaller as it passes through the process; nothing is added back to it.
This is the direct opposite of recruitment, which is a positive process aimed at maximising the number of suitable applicants who come forward in the first place. Recruitment builds the pool up; selection narrows it down. Describing selection as "negative" is therefore a description of its DIRECTION (elimination) and not a judgement that the process itself is undesirable — a rigorous, negative screening process is exactly what is needed to arrive at the right hiring decision.
Selection is negative because it works purely by eliminating unsuitable candidates at each stage, narrowing the applicant pool down, rather than by adding to it as recruitment does.
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