Online recruitment practices and effectiveness

Online recruitment began concurrently in the U.S.A. And in England during the early 90s through web sites known as job banks. These had just a few thousand of open job positions where scope of putting employers in contact with job seekers was a very remote possibility. Since the early days, there has been a virtual explosion of sites offering jobs and the inherent technology associated with this system has grown phenomenally much to the advantage of both recruiters as well as jobseekers. Presently, just typing "Job Search" in popular search engines like Google or Yahoo returns millions of web pages with the subject. This is apart from the independent job portals and exclusive job sites that also offer similar services. ("Online Recruitment, State-of-the-art Job Search Strategies," 2007)

Evolution of online recruiting from the beginning until present date:

Online recruitment started in the form of independent job sites through the Internet known as bulletin board systems in the 1980s. The Personal Computer -- PC revolution took the world by storm during the 1990s transforming the corporate scenario and job hunting completely as only the U.S. universities and the military had Internet access during its nascent stages. Currently more than 75% of the Fortune 500 companies use online recruitment and almost 118 million people are posting their Resumes on Internet portals like www.monster.com across the globe and country specific sites like www.naukri.com and www.timesjobs in India. Companies are aggressively scouting for the best talent across the globe through online recruitment. Recruitment through the Internet allows organizations to exploit huge talent beyond their own geographies apart from being cost effective. (Torres-Coronas; Arias-Oliva, 2008)

The other advantages are the quick response time, broad array of applicants and worldwide accessibility. Particularly for recruitment, it has proven a shorter recruitment cycle and lower cost per-hire. For instance, fashion footwear giant Nike has demonstrated that use of e-recruitment has reduced the average time to fill job positions from 62 days to 42 days and a significant reduction of recruitment cost by 54%. U.S. started the global trend of online recruitment when Taylor initiated www.monster.com in 1994 with just 20 clients and only 200 job openings. This site pioneered online recruitment in the U.S. And is acknowledged as the leading Internet recruitment portal globally. Monster.com began the new concept of posting and storing resumes online and is now operational in more than 19 countries. On an average the company has 6 million visitors on a monthly basis and 804 of the Fortune 1000 companies use monster as the leading recruitment portal. (Torres-Coronas; Arias-Oliva, 2008)

The launching of the online recruitment corresponded with a business culture which was gradually becoming more and more worldwide with the beginning of new trade reforms like the NAFTA and disintegration of political barriers such as the Berlin Wall. Nevertheless it was not just the political and economic transitions that led to the Internet Revolution which we are experiencing in our everyday lives. It was the idea of making Internet ubiquitous which brought online recruitment as a mainstream concept. It was Tim Berners Lee who launched the concept of the World Wide Web in the year 1991 to the academic scientists which was a harbinger to recruitment through the Internet. The U.S. was the leader in online recruitment due to its greater Internet penetration. Moreover the U.S. culture fosters sharing work experience in a more open manner compared to a lot of other cultures and thus posting resumes on websites was never a difficult choice for applicants. (Torres-Coronas; Arias-Oliva, 2008)

Recent developments and future prospects of online recruitment:

Because of cost advantages that online recruitment offers, it will become a more powerful and crucial arsenal in the current economic climate and since organizations continues to endeavor to draw and induct key talents. Research shows that the following trends will shape the recruitment industry in the forthcoming years. These are (i) businesses must align human resources, public relations and marketing and stay focused on basic organizational values (ii) businesses must discover means to network with passive job hunters (iii) businesses must mediate and use of peer-to-peer relationships (iv) businesses must increasingly use the second generation of web technologies i.e. Web2.0 that includes blogs, web-based communities and hosted services inclusive of social networking sites to create and maintain personalized relationship online. ("E-Recruitment," 2009a)

Particular scope for online recruitment cover (i) Customized messages through multimedia as well as social networking sites (ii) Making use of specific web channels appropriate to candidate talent pools. (iii) Making use of employer and employee blogs to create personalized relationships with the talent pool available in the market. Taking it further, some employers are even making use to Web 3D and using its unique advantages with candidates in a live and virtual settings. An online 3D setting allows users to interact among themselves and also their surroundings in real time, symbolizing novel channels of innovation like the virtual world of Second Life. ("E-Recruitment," 2009a)

2) Different forms of Online Recruitment:

Online recruitment can be either in the form of corporate recruitment or third-party recruiters. Corporate recruiters permit potential job applicants to post their resumes straightaway on their job sites thereby eliminating the presence of any other intermediaries. Statistics show that 80% of the Fortune 500 companies of the world make use of their corporate website for recruiting. The growing influence of third-party recruitment portals like Monster.com corresponds with the job ads of newspapers identifying thousands of employment vacancies. Employers are normally charged a fee for job posting for certain duration by job portals. It is important to note that usually third-party recruiters and corporate recruiter partner to provide the most ideal recruitment and career solutions in favor of candidates. The major online portals are monster.com, careerbuilder.com and Yahoo that are growing at a healthy 32% annually. (Torres-Coronas; Arias-Oliva, 2008)

Online recruitment appears to proliferate with some long-standing problems of Corporate America like employees who seem never to be satisfied having a lack of 'knowledge' workers and supervisory personnel. Statistics indicate that a normal American employee has at least eight alternative jobs to choose from in the age bracket of 18 and 32 years. The online revolution pioneered by monster.com in America in 1994 set the ball rolling for emerging economies such as India and Mexico representing an ever growing job market. Close on it heels, in March 1997, www.naukri.com, an Indian company started with its maiden Internet portal related to recruitment. Then, India had just 14,000 Internet subscribers. The scenario has completely transformed with www.naukri.com evolving into India's largest e-recruitment portal with 3.5 million users and 15,000 corporate clients. The other players are timesjob, careerindia and jobstreet. (Torres-Coronas; Arias-Oliva, 2008)

With the rising popularity of technology and Internet becoming increasingly having a mass appeal, online recruitment has also become very popular with employers and employees alike. A lot of job seekers like using online recruitment sites because of their ease of search and finding open job positions are so easy. Comprehending the manner in which recruitment job sites function, will help one understand the potential of online recruitment. Employers might deposit a fee for posting their open positions on a specific job site, and might also pay such fees based on the number of resumes they get and any special handling or processing which they desire to web site to assume charge of. The site becomes responsible for advertising and promoting job positions site to facilitate in attracting the most skilled candidates possible.

Recruiters are able to promote their vacancies directly to the website's community of candidates, or look for databases for the potential candidates they are in need of. There are two types of sites. One of them is recruitment sites which list the job vacancies where prospective candidates apply directly to the company. Websites like www.stepstone.com collect links of various websites to different recruitment sites and agencies enabling candidates to browse general recruitment sites and also find holiday work and vacancies or hunt for recruitment that are specific to sectors. The second category is the sites run by the Recruitment Agencies themselves. As these are run by third-parties, they are driven by sales and need job seekers to fill their job vacancies. The candidates register their applications with their Resumes for a response. ("Online Recruitment," 2009)

Recruitment agencies operate in two ways. First of all they approach companies and offer potential candidates from their own files or database and then also by advertising jobs on behalf of companies and producing a shortlist of candidates for a forthcoming interview. With the proliferation of Internet, online recruitment sites have grown in popularity and increasingly specialized web sites have come to the forefront. Online recruitment sites are there who specialize in a specific profession, geography or a particular city or within a community. These sites usually have greater job postings and are normally the first choice of employers who do not like to handle huge quantities of resumes that usually arrive from one of the bigger sites. Online recruitment continues to be immensely popular and successful for it industry; other technical positions i.e. largely jobs that need definite skill-sets, temporary recruitment, graduates and other senior positions ("Online Recruitment," 2009)

3) How companies utilize these different forms of recruitment to their advantage:

Companies are varying their recruitment paradigms to sell to an unbelievably competitive job market. One of the method that is increasingly being used is through Internet Ads which are hailed as one of the most cost effective and the by far the most effective form of recruitment. Latest market surveys reveal that almost 95% of the U.S. employees are recruiting candidates through the online mode. Companies will le investing close to half a million dollars with the next few years in creating and upgrading their own websites and posting positions with job search services. This is because online recruitment comparatively involves less cost and is easier to manage than print and the turnover time could be almost immediate. Statistics reveal that there are 30,000 job boards throughout the world and 2.5 million resumes online which corroborates the fact that online recruitment will be the frontrunner in this century as the primary mode of choice for job-searching. (Falcone, 2001)

It is important the World Wide Web, the different Usenet site and the website of the companies should not be the sole outreach efforts that will be undertaken. Instead companies are increasingly integrating the web into their overall recruitment strategies. Among the modes companies utilize these different forms of recruitment to their advantage are posting job opening on Usenet groups. Usenet groups are listings, by date, of hundreds or even thousands of comments on a specific topic. Usenet is a diverse, worldwide discussion forum which is divided into several thousand newsgroups where participants are free to add their comments on the subject by e-mailing their resumes. The most interesting part is that Usenet sites are free, easy to use and several commercial online ad services include Usenet postings in their package. Large companies maintain their job listing in their own corporate website with an appropriate link and hence they justify the investments associated with transforming a corporate web site into a recruitment portal. Fortune 500 companies with easily recognizable names attract web-traffic due to their brand names that are immensely successful in online recruitment. (Falcone, 2001)

According to a study, respondents who were asked to list three businesses with the best recruitment section which they had either visited or used, named Goldman Sachs (www.goldmansachs.com) McKinsey and Company (www.mckinsey.com), the Boston Consulting Group (www.bcg.com), PriceWaterhouse Coopers (www.pricewaterhousecoopers.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) the most latest paradigm of online recruitment concentrates on employment branding which implies how a company distinguishes itself from its peers. Companies with properly managed websites have easily recognizable and attractive recruitment image or brand leads in online recruitment. Almost 75% of the Fortune 500 companies have their own websites with active and passive job seekers which are growing fast. Besides, more than a million corporate website exists in the World Wide Web which continues to post jobs regularly. (Falcone, 2001)

The various online recruitment methods that are used are (i) businesses register their website address with Internet Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN which guide users to their own sites on the basis of user's 'search' regarding employment opportunities which continues to be a free service. (ii) Hypertexts 'links' are also placed that leads directly to the company's web server from other Internet Services, thus letting viewers to jump from a particular site to another with the click of a button. (jjj) Companies also run banner ads on other websites, inclusive of Chat rooms which can also direct the link to their sites from these link sites. The scenario is fast transforming into a totally new paradigm where professionally qualified prospective job seekers already in a job and looking for change no longer look for keyword-based searches like "employment," "job opening" or "career opportunity" on the Internet. Instead they become part of virtual communities where people having similar interests hang around to talk shop or improve their skills. (Falcone, 2001)

The growing popularity of online recruitment can be ascribed to the student's community's proximity to this form of recruitment compared to other recruitment sources. Their growing years has been associated with Computers and is habituated to seek a broad spectrum of information on the Internet. Moreover, surveys reveal that online recruitment might be especially effective when companies are seeking applicants in information technology or when companies possess a marked goodwill in the marketplace. Companies increasingly adopt online systems as they consider it to have greater potential in coming across individuals with unique sets of talents and proficiencies than conventional recruitment. This is because online recruitment let businesses to lay a wider umbrella labor market and thus may have increased likelihood to target qualitatively better candidates compared to other sources. Also the volume of applicants is quite large as the online process is much simpler and faster compared to conventional paper system. (Guetal; Stone; Salas, 2005)

Online systems let employers to customize their recruitment policies to particular labor markets through specialized websites or job board to select applicants with unique skills and backgrounds. However, online recruitment might not always enhance the quality of job candidates, but is possible to inflate the number of candidates applying for jobs. Businesses increasingly make use of online recruitment systems for several purposes like drawing candidates, communicating advantages regarding the organization and evaluating the knowledge, skills, proficiencies and other needs. For instance some companies use software like 'Resumix' for scanning resumes of applicants for keywords and give them instant feedback regarding their selection or otherwise. Other establishments like PriceWaterhouse Coopers, JP Morgan Chase use online aptitude tests, personality inventories or simulations to evaluate critical thinking and decision making skills of candidates. (Guetal; Stone; Salas, 2005)

Considering the increasing use of online screening systems, analysts have debated that several advantages exists like these tests might be more objective and thus less prejudiced by non-job related factors such as race, age or gender for instance than more subjective selection methods like interviews. Using the same logic, the use of keyword systems to filter out resumes might tell apart speedily whether applicants fulfill the job requirements and sometime provide applicants instant feedback regarding the status of their applications. One of the possible advantages of online recruitment systems is that companies are able to provide applicants with unique set of information regarding their companies and supply them a greater realistic scenario of work profile of the company. For instance, some companies allow applicants to go through the company's activities through virtual systems and others make use of extremely creative means of providing applicants with real-time job previews. Aside from the realistic information provided by online recruitment, HR experts are aware that some applicants opt for jobs and organizations that align with their personal values, beliefs and attitudes. Consequently, a lot of organizations highlight information regarding their strategic goals and culture on their website so that applicants are able to arrive at informed choices before joining such organizations. This phenomenon is known as person-organization fit and research points that communicating information regarding organization's culture impact employee's retention rates. (Guetal; Stone; Salas, 2005)

4) Effectiveness of these recruitment methods and if companies continue to use them or not use them:

The Internet has put a significant effect on the way organizational processes are managed including Hunan Resources -- HR management systems. For example recent surveys reveal that 70% of corporate presently use Internet-based Employee Self-Service -- ESS systems to maintain employee records. 80% conduct online recruitment and 40% use web-based portals to communicate HR policies. The Internet is speedily transforming the recruitment processes in three important ways. These are (a) facilitating the attraction of both internal and external job applications (b) extending a virtual realistic preview of organizations and jobs and (c) evaluating the effectiveness of the recruitment process in more ways than one. The proliferation of online recruitment has risen to phenomenal extent in recent years. For instance, in 1997 roughly 58% of large companies posted job vacancies on the Internet and presently nearly 100% of businesses place job opening through their own websites or commercial sites. (Bidgoli, 2003)

The gradual shift to web-based system has resulted in a proliferation of national and international job banks for instance www.hotjobs.com which facilitates applicants to compare and evaluate a broad spectrum of positions. The use of online recruitment lowers the cycle time associated with traditional recruitment methods and streamlines a lot of the labour-intensive administrative processes for instance reviewing resumes, sending follow-up letters in favor of applicants associated with the recruitment processes. Online recruitment also helps in streamlining the recruitment process which puts a positive impact on the job applicant's image of the organization. Various web-based 'Enterprise Resource Planning -- ERP' systems like SAP and PeopleSoft have inherent capacity to search employee records automatically to find out which employees are qualified for job openings and help in matching between employee knowledge, skills and proficiency levels and job-based profiles. (Bidgoli, 2003)

Online recruitment aids organizations in accessing the effectiveness of recruitment processes and technologies. For instance companies are able to monitor the web-based portals of competitors to find out the types of intake strategies. Apart from that online systems help HR managers in evaluating the cost, timelines and effectiveness of recruitment processes. Recruitment through the Internet also increases the speed and timeliness of the recruitment process, enhancing the company's ability to evaluate the recruitment process. (Bidgoli, 2003)

Companies are increasingly taking advantage of online recruitment due to the unique advantages of facilitating selection decision making in several ways. These are (i) use of latest resume screening software. For instance on receipt of an online resume, web-based software can be used to scan the resume through key word search and other search techniques to find out in case the applicants fulfill the basic skill and education. (ii) in case of large number of candidate, businesses use interactive voice response technology to screen job applicants. Hence in this manner, Internet-based screening systems may decrease the time taken to fill job vacancies and enhance the process of screening a deluge of resumes or job applications. (Bidgoli, 2003)