What is E-Recruitment?
E-Recruitment is the use of web-based platforms, software, and digital communication to attract, assess, and hire job candidates.
Those who are technologically literate and are aware of corporate world are also aware of e-recruitment sites. Every job aspirant desires to have a direct contact with the employers and therefore they prefer to upload their resumes on the job portal or the company’s website. Even the rural applicants prefer to apply online due to technological advances.
A simple email attachment in just one click enables the applicants to reach their dream employers. Recruitment is a tool to search for the suitable candidates. Internet recruitment or online recruitment is suitable to the organisations, which are automated. Though automation came late in Indian organisation, it was systematised by the 1990s.
In August 1981 in Bangalore, Anita passed her MBA exam and was very confident of getting a suitable job. She knew that her qualification is enough to secure a good career. She visited many companies and posted her resume to various organisations in an anticipation to receive positive response but she was least aware that the search for a suitable company will be a tedious and frustrating experience.
Every day she used to scan newspaper for job advertisements and visited each and every organisation just to submit her resume; the postal service was also not reliable. This was the situation with many candidates during that time. The organisations were also struggling to find the right kind of talent.
Similarly, Poineer Electricals in Surat were urgently in need of suitable electrical engineers. They gave advertisement in major news papers but didn’t get any satisfactory response. Few candidates were interviewed but no one was found suitable.
The above two situation can give a clear understanding of the need for e-recruitment, which overcomes the geographical barriers and eases the search of suitable candidates. To enjoy the competitive edge, it is necessary for the successful organisations to recruit high caliber staff. Inability to find suitable candidates is frustrating.
Employers like Pioneer Electricals can now appeal to qualified candidates across boundaries. Same holds true for candidates like Anita. Job seekers can apply for suitable jobs regardless of location. The use of internet has resulted in widespread use of technology and sophisticated tools to advertise and attract wider audience.
Features of E-recruitment
Since e-recruitment has become very popular now, it is time to list some of its features:
Speedy communication
Blogs are much popular now-a-days. Organisations and the employees communicate through the professional blogs. Podcasts (services of digital media files), vodcasts (video podcasts) etc. are considered as a powerful tool of e-recruitment. These are two way communication media, unlike mails and faxes, which are one way electronic communication tools.
Candidate’s preference
In the past, the employers used to have a privilege of whom to recruit and select. The screening process was not very fair. Today, the applicants can choose their employers as the financial position of the company and the market goodwill is known to them. The e-recruitment process gets influenced by the organisation’s image and culture. Candidates prefer the employers who provide career growth opportunities and secured income.
Search engine advertisement
Pay per click is becoming more attractive and convenient. Print advertisements are being phased out due to popularity of search engine advertisements.
RSS feed
Job boards are embracing RSS feed. Hotjobs and Google are more popular. Google allows one to upload the jobs on Google Base even when one does not have their own website. RSS can be read using software – RSS reader. It is a family of web feed formats, which is used to publish frequently updated blog entries, news headlines in a standard format.
E-Recruiting Methods
Following are few of the most preferred e-recruitment methods:
- Job boards: These are the centralised place where the employers publicise the vacant positions of their organisations. Job applicants are on lookout for such openings and apply online. This saves time of both the employers and the job applicants. One of the disadvantages of job boards is that the job openings are very generic in nature.
- Employer web sites: These are company owned and designed websites exclusively to catch the attention of professionals at a senior level. Sometimes, many employers come together and create exclusive talent search websites. Directemployers.com is one of the not for profit employers owned e-recruiting website, the members of which are many fortune 500 organisations.
- Professional websites: Professional websites are created by the professional bodies to promote their own interest and to strengthen their community’s knowledge base. These websites are very specific and the members are from particular knowledge domain. For example, www. shrm.org and www.nationalhrd.org are visited by the HR professionals.
Advantages of E-recruitment
The advantages of e-recruitment can be listed as below:
Cost effective
Internet advertisement as compared to print media and consultancy firms is much cheaper and most preferred by modern corporations. The shelf life of e-advertisement is much longer then the print media.
Time saving tool for both the employers and the applicants
Spreading the manpower requirement on a click of a mouse takes a fraction of second, hence minimising the communication time. The responses are immediate, direct without delays. Worldwide communication is possible.
Widens the search of suitable candidates
Globalisation has resulted in world becoming a smaller place. Industries are not ready to compromise on the quality of manpower and are even ready to hire experts from across the continents. Also, vast pool of applicants could be created.
Provides clarity to candidates
Print advertisements are charges at the rate of per square centimeter and therefore the advertisers struggle to fit the requirement in the word limit. Each additional word means increase in cost due to which the sentences may get misinterpreted defeating the very purpose of communication. Sometimes the profiles remain explained leading to receipt of resume from unsuitable candidates. In internet, there is no word limit due to which all the necessary requirements, profile and instructions could be expressed and explained clearly.
Wide Scope for better match
Clear and detailed information eases the search for suitable match. Due to easy linkage with the other websites, more and more candidates could be attracted and after the job profile matches, the candidates apply.
Standardisation
The applicants are required to submit their applications in the company specified format, which facilitates the consolidation of the information from various sources.
Reservoir
Online application acts as a huge database. Whenever the organisation runs short of employee for a position, the database acts as a reservoir and suitable candidates could be called.
Reduced paper work
The data is collected online, due to which the paperwork is substantially reduced. Administrative work such as postages, filing, consolidating information and other manual documentation gets lessened.
Disadvantages of E-recruitment
After going through the advantages, let us see the limitations of e-recruitment:
Computer literacy required
E-recruitment is preferred by organisations looking out for computer literate and qualified candidates. E-recruitment is popular and suitable for computer savvy applicants. Employers search for suitable candidates based on certain keywords in the website, which simplifies the screening.
Vast pool of applicants
This is beneficial at the same time disadvantageous for the organisation because the huge applicant data base cannot be scanned in detail. Sometimes only the top candidates are called for interview based on the face value of their resume. Good candidates may get neglected as the keywords do not match the search criteria. Candidates also have to prove their worth in the global competition.
Casual attitude and approach of applicants
Many a times, non-serious candidates float their resume, just to know their market worth. This defeats the very purpose of the serious employers. At the time of interview, the recruiter gets disappointed leading to wastage of time, energy and resources of the employer.
Disclosure of information
Internet recruitment has posed many security related problems. The candidate’s information as well as the employer’s full information is available on the websites. The proactive HR department automatically comes to know about the activities of their staff. Many a times, the organisational future plans of growth and expansions get exposed to the competitors.
Points for Consideration for Effective E-recruitment
In order to gain maximum benefit from e-recruitment, certain points that an organisation needs to consider are as follows:
- To strengthen the e-recruitment process, an organisation considers various factors, the importance of which is Return on Investment. This enables the management to compare the risks and costs. An estimated return on investment calculation gets facilitated.
- Organisations must have their own mix and match sources based on the corporate objectives. Therefore, recruitment policy must be proactive and flexible enough to accommodate market changes.
- Labour turnover rate and unemployment rate are determined based on the availability of manpower in the labour market. These rates will determine whether the organisation can afford to spend time on certain categories of vacancies.
- Effect of providing compensation details has to be considered. Wages, salaries, benefits, perks etc should be in line with the legal norms. Chance for negotiation should be at the least. Compensation details of the organisations do not only get known to the candidates but will be known to all.
- Discriminating words specific to gender, religion, age etc. must be avoided, e.g. ‘Freshers should not apply’ or ‘Position reserved for unmarried’.
- For better results, the available pool of applicants should be updated and revised from time to time. Static applicants’ database does not serve any purpose.
- Organisations have to be more specific while deciding the websites. For special skills, special websites should be considered. For generic requirements, various job portals could be used.
Technology Issues in Selection
As technology advances in recruitment and selection, it not only allows job seekers more options to find a career, it also allows companies to streamline their hiring processes. Because of technology, organisations get hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes on a daily basis.
There is a need to organise the massive amounts of applications received, so most companies use a variety of technologies to assist them. To have a better understanding of the technology issues in selection, it is imperative to understand what are the technologies used in selection.
Resume Databases and Applicant Tracking Technology
Most organisations now use resume databases to help streamline their selection process. Resume databases can include installable and web-enabled software. Applications are sent directly to the resume database and companies run queries to find applicants qualified for job openings. Queries can include a variety of specified requirements, such as salary expectations, keywords, educational requirements and when the resume was submitted to narrow their search.
Resume databases are useful because they save all resumes and applications for each job opening, allowing companies to track information from candidates who have submitted their information. In most cases, this type of software allows an organisation to set up interviews with template emails, schedule interview dates and times and also send template emails to all candidates who applied but were not selected for the job opening. This saves time and money by not having to manually review and track resumes.
There is one problem, however. Posting a resume online does not take much effort and time so not only the potential and prospectus candidates but also those who are not interested in the job post their resumes. This results in increase in volume of resumes and many a times puts load on the server and the system crashes down as the vendors and companies are not able to manage the data well.
Online Testing and Assessments
Online testing and assessments are used to allow companies to assess a candidate’s skill and personality. Many organisations use these technologies to help with the selection process by applying these assessments even before they set up an interview with a candidate. After assessments are completed, a company can chose a smaller amount of candidates to bring in for an interview.
Online testing can include technical, administrative and academic assessments. Online assessments often involve evaluating a candidate’s personality. Some organisations feel that certain personality traits excel in certain jobs. Some online testing and assessments can be customised to fit specific criteria and customised for different positions within an organisation that require different skills.
Even here, there is a problem. Technological glitches have been very frequent and add a lot to the whole selection process. Many a times it happen that the server is not able to support the load when candidates are taking tests, sometimes the candidate data is not correctly been shown, many a times the system logs off when a candidate is taking test or the interface is not very user- friendly; all of this makes the whole experience tedious and most of the time the candidates complain of slow internet speed, which creates a very uneven field and leads to frustration.
Companies might lose on good candidates due to such technological issues and candidates might get discouraged to apply further in the organisation due to incompetent web applications.
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