KNOWLEDGE – International Journal Vol.31.5 June, 2019 1243 THE IMPACT OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION PRACTICES ON EMPLOYEES PERFORMANCE: CASE SMEs IN POLLOG REGION - REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA Arlinda Mazllami Ministry of Economy, Republic of North Macedonia, mazllamia@gmail.com Abstract: The Republic of North Macedonia is facing with global trends and integrating processes toward to the European Union. Enterprises operates in the environment with the constantly changing and very unsecure circumstances. Managing of human resources has important attention in enterprises in developing countries such as our country. The main objectives of Human Resource Management(HRM) are to find right people for the right job and to achieve effectiveness of employees. To achieve effectivity and to take competitive advantages enterprises must have better recruitment and selection strategies. Employees are the main sources ideas and innovations, they build and keep relationships with the clients, they have crucial role for the enterprise to be sustained and to be competitive in the trade. The main objective of this paper is to identify and analyse practices that enterprises in Pollog region use to recruit and select employees and how these practices affects the employees’ performance. The research methodology is statistical, analysis, synthesis and comparative methods. The primary data is collected from the responses of structured questionnaire dedicated to enterprises in Pollog region and how they applied the practices of recruitment and selection processes. Different recruitment challenges using internal and external sources are finding in this research paper. The study revealed that the use of mediums, portals enables enterprises to recruit committed and productive employees. It is also determined that the selection should be appropriate and in this way to reduce the enterprise costs. Keywords: recruitment, selection, employee’s performance, enterprise. 1. INTRODUCTION The management is defined as the process of performing works with and through people. Human resource management (HRM) is a compressive and coherent approach to the employment and development of people(Armstrong,2014). People now consider as the most important asset in every business. Every organization needs people to do works to achieve overall goals. The employees of the companies are the source of ideas, creations and innovations, they keep relations with costumers, from them depends the company’s reputation in national and international markets. Human resource management is important factor in building effective and efficient enterprises. Best HRM practices are very important mainly for companies that like to attract and retain good staff. If people notice that companies values their employees, than they increase their chances of applying for employment and they become more loyal after being employed. This implies that good management of human resources results in a reduction of staff risk and risk of damage of companies’ reputation. Human resource planning seeks to place the right employees in the right jobs at the right time and at the lowest possible cost, thereby providing the means for the organization to fulfil its mission (Bernardin, 2003). Recruitment and selection as a parts of HRM are very important activities of competitive strategy. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Recruitment is the process of attracting qualified labour force for the positions needed. The recruitment process is interdependent with other HR activities especially with the selection and human resource planning activities. Recruitment is a process through which the enterprise attempts to attract a qualified workforce. According to Edwin B. Flippo-Recruitment is a positive function of searching for, finding and attracting applicants for job openings. For entrepreneurs and SME’s the focus of recruitment and selection is often different than it is for larges companies. Whereas large companies focus on matching person to the job requirements, entrepreneurs and SME’s focus recruitment and selection activities on finding people with skills that organisations don’t currently have and who fit the values and culture of companies (Robins and al, 2014). That are external and internal factors that influence recruitment process. According to James Breaugh (1992) the external factors includes:  Legal environment,