Online Recruitment

According to BusineeDictionary. com, “Human Resource Management includes activities such as human resources planning, recruitment, selection, orientation, training, appraisal, motivation and remuneration. It aims at developing people through work. ” In human resource management, recruitment is one of the most important processes in an organisation. According to BusinessDictionary. com, “recruitment is a course of action of discovering and employing best eligible applicant, whether external or internal organisation, for a job position in a most suitable and cost effective way. There are different types of job recruitment, such as online recruitment and advertisement recruitment. In the 21st century, many of the organisations using online recruitment to search the best candidate for company, as the internet have transformed job hunting and recruitment. There are few types of online recruitment. One of the methods is professional websites. Example of professional website is www. shrm. org, where some candidates who are searching for human resources job go into that site. They have specific professions, skills and not general in nature. The second type is employer website.
It can be developed by different employers or can be company own website. One example is www. directemployers. com, which is the first supportive, company owned online recruitment set up by Direct Employers Association. The last type is job board. Job seekers become aware of the vacancies where the recruiters post jobs and search for candidates. Example of job board is www. jobstreet. com. (Gosh, nd) In fact, there are still many other methods of online recruitment. Online recruitment has advantages and disadvantages in helping organisation for recruitment and selection.
It has made more efficient on the employment process for every large and small organisation. For those companies who are still using paper applications have practised to use internet for important sections of the hiring process. The first benefit would be the reduce time for hiring. Online recruitment, is also called e-recruitment has enable a manager to have an immediate real-time communication and for everyday and every hour in job search activity. For example, a manager can post a vacancy in a very short time on a career site such as jobstreet. com without imitation. He or she can receive resumes in response immediately. In online job advertisement, the posting normally stays in available status for as long as one month and keeps on to receive candidates’ resumes as job seekers come across it. As compared with the traditional practises, job advertisement in newspaper or journal may take about one week or later but not only for one day. Therefore, employer has to wait till the end of month to receive the responses by applicants, especially for those who need immediate vacancy and special areas industry. Bayt. com, 2009) According to Bayt. com, hiring in e-recruitment gives 70% faster than traditional recruitment practises, and the cycle of recruiting is speeded up at every process of posting, which is to receive applicant’s resumes and filter the information and call for interview. The second benefit of e-recruitment is cost effective. We need money to advertise the job vacancy in newspaper or journal, and this is not cheap for the advertisement. While the online posting is much cheaper as compared with traditional practises.

According to bayt. com, the company post online to a job site such as www. bayt. com would be charged only USD250, which would be more cost-saving than the cost of job advertisement in newspaper or journal publication or the 30% of annual incomes that many personnel managers charge. Bayt. com shows a study that the costs of posting vacancy and searching for candidates on job vacancies can be up to 90% lower than the costs of adapting traditional search agencies and advertising practises. (Bayt. com, 2009) Third benefit is wider reach for manager.
The information of traditional practises are normally restricted by industry, geography, career lever or other limitations while the e-recruitment can have recent and active talent databases that cover all industries, regions, and career levels. The company spent much to make sure the databases are varied, regular updated, relevant and best quality as they need to keep advertising in newspaper for changing, updating information. However, e-recruitment teams can ensure that the portals are always easily viewed by relevant applicants and are visited by the target job seekers which can easily reach to the manager. Bayt. com, 2009) Next benefit would be the wider reach for applicants. The candidates gain benefits from the wider p through internet job sites. With the click of a mouse, they are able to access different types of jobs in different companies, locations and even salaries. They can reach the company faster as they are easily contacted for interview opportunities by just sending their resumes online. (Bayt. com, 2009) E-recruitment offers some screening or filtering tools which enable recruiters to immediately work on the right applicant using many categories on a site such as jobstreet. om, which including locations of residence, qualifications, education backgrounds, skills and past experience and employer. The process of e-recruiting and selecting good quality applicants is very efficient. This technology works by automated search engine which is set up to find the databases. For example employer can key in some of the requirements then the result would match with the candidates’ resumes. (Bayt. com. 2009) In online recruitment, company usually would set up a page like company profile or history for the candidates to view on it.
Through this, employers can use this to create company brand and values to prospective job seekers. Therefore, applicants would make decision on applying that job as they have an idea about company they work for. (Bayt. com, 2009) Furthermore, through internet, recruiter can manage whole recruitment process from one mean, which enable recruiter to advertise vacancies, receive resumes, screen, contact applicants, track activities in internet. Therefore, the paper work is reduced. On the other side, the job seekers can also view their application progress at every step of recruitment process.
This enhanced user experience for both job seekers and recruiters. In addition, both job seekers and recruiters can opt to maintain their confidentiality. For example, applicants can post their resumes online while keeping their names and current company’s name privately. Same thing to recruiters, they can choose to search databases without posting a job position if the vacancy nature is sensitive, and they can post a job vacancy while keeping their company name privately. Employers can also build up database, save high potential or attractive resumes from present applicants for future use. Bayt. com, 2009) Moreover, the manager has full control over the recruitment process through online recruitment, which enables direct contact with candidates which does not need a middle person to do the selection, filtering, and assessment. (Bayt. com, 2009) This is because recruiter can choose the best candidate through their details in resume and match with the position, which does not need so much of red tape. E-recruitment has brought so many benefits to organisations, as well as job seekers. Apart from its benefit, e-recruitment has quite a few drawbacks to the organisations.
First of all, e-recruitment benefits for only applicants who knew internet knowledge. The process is limited to those computer savvy applicants. For those who know the use of internet, they have no problem to search different job websites, do screening, keywords, updating information. Therefore, it brings no benefit for those who do not know to use online job site. (Ghosh, nd) Besides that, company has to be very particular on legal consequences because it may lead to discrimination charge if the company did not aware of word used when posting the advertisement online.
There is one example for Disney world, which was sued for screening applicants’ resumes by using the keywords preferred for Whites. (Ghosh, nd) As online recruitment became a trend, more and more applicants joined and apply for vacancy. The vast pool of candidates does benefits recruiters but also lead disadvantage to them. This is because they have to sit down and do a lot of deep scanning database. They might not view all the candidates which may miss out some of the best potential candidates as they might randomly choose candidates. As a result, applicants face more competition. Ghosh, nd) Furthermore, organisations face some non-serious candidates. Quite a number of candidates post their resumes just to know their employment value. Recruiters could not check whether the candidates are serious in applying job or not. When call for interview, recruiters just realised that candidates are not serious and not interested to join their company. By that time, the recruiters have rejected some serious applicants. (Gosh, nd) The last drawback is disclosure of information. Candidate’s resumes and organisation profile are available to public.
Some candidates who are still working do not want their present employer to know that they are looking for a change. Some of candidates’ particulars such as address, phone number has brought to many security problems. In addition, organisations do not want their competitors know their current situation. (Ghosh, nd) To make e-recruitment more effective, there are some criteria. Firstly we must benefit the selection procedure. Company should consider about different factors to make the procedure effective. Company should analyse and compare the costs and its risks by using return on investment (ROI).
It helps to estimate the return and evaluate the benefits to company. Company should have change management, is to adapt market changes by making policy proactive and flexible. Company should provide guidelines in the policy. As the whole e-recruitment process depends on the availability of candidates in the market, company should consider market labour rate and unemployment rate. Recruiter should not spend too much of time to do screening, choosing candidates because this rates will decide whether to be lenient or stringent. Ghosh, nd) Moreover, recruiter should consider the impact of providing compensation information. He or she should follow legal norms when disclose information such as salary, wage and benefit. Candidates should not be given chances for negotiation. Besides, competitors would know the compensation rate of company. When screening resume, recruiter must take precautions. He or she must avoid using key words that discriminate race, religion, and gender. For example, ‘recent’ university graduates only in an ad are not preferable.
Besides, recruiter should keep updating so that the candidates know the results and changes, otherwise it will not serve any purpose. (Ghosh, nd) Come to the modern impacts of e-recruitment, one of these is speedy communication. Management and staff can communicate with each other though the blogs. So, blogs, vodcasts, podcasts can be added as a tool in e-recruitment. Vodcasts are video podcasts while podcasts are digital media files services. As a result, recruiters cannot blame of being one way communication such as faxes and mails.
Secondly, candidates today can choose the company which is not only look at the financial state but culture. In past experience, employers had privilege to be selective in recruitment process, especially in screening candidates’ resumes which were not fair to candidates. Therefore, image will not influence candidates to apply for company. Next, the number of popularity of search engine ads has increased, which resulting printed ads are phasing out, as pay-per-click is very attractive and convenient. Finally, job board is holding RRS feed, one of it is Google.
For those who do not have any job site, Google offers them to post the jobs on Google Base. This is a group of web feed formats to publish updated works regularly, such as news headline, blog entries in standard format. (Ghosh, nd) In conclusion, traditional practises should not be replaced by online recruitment. It should be made as an enhancement. Online recruitment can be included by traditional practises and recruitment process will be speed up, globalise due to e-recruitment. We should make it as supplement, because both traditional and online are useful.
When only three vacancies and three candidates available in organisations do not have much choice, hence companies prefer to broaden their search and attract a lot of applications. However, when company received two thousands applications for three vacancies, recruiters are not possible to do in depth screening process. While internal search is effective for a method such as campus interview, but without internet, interaction with candidates becomes time consuming when receiving application in hand.
Of course, there are other concerns which companies need take into account, example like managing staff expectations. Recruiter can receive all applications electronically, even overnight. Overall, online systems offer major advantages in terms of improved efficiency, cost saving, and recruiter and candidate satisfaction. References: • BusinessDictionary. com. (2009) Human Resource Management (HRM). [online] Available at: http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/human-resource-management-HRM. html (Accessed: 1 December 2009) BusinessDictionary. com. (2009) Recruitment [online] Available at: http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/recruitment. html (Accessed: 1 December 2009) • Bayt. com. (2009) The Benefits of Online recruitment [online] Available at: http://www. bayt. com/en/career-article-1121/ (Accessed: 2 December 2009) • Ghosh, Arundhati. (nd) E- Recruitment: The Recent Trend of Recruitment Practices [online] Available at: http://www. 123oye. com/job-articles/business-corporates/e-recruitment. htm (Accessed: 2 December 2009)