Recruitment on the Internet

8/6/2019 Recruitment on the Internet

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KINGS COLLEGE : MBA : 1ST SEMESTER

HRM unit II: Recruitment and Selection: Sub-topic - Recruitment

on the internet

The Information Age has drastically changed the way companies recruit employees. The Internet makes

huge numbers of job seekers available to any firm with access to the Web. At the same time, many

companies increasingly rely on executive search firms to locate good candidates for important posts.

Internet recruiting is the act of scouring the internet to locate both actively-searching job seekers and

also individuals who are content in their current position (these are called "passive candidates"). It is a field

of dramatic growth and constant change that has given birth to a dynamic multi billion dollar industry.

Traditionally, recruiters use large job boards, niche job boards, as well as social and business networking to

locate these individuals. The immediate goal of internet recruiting is to find individuals that a recruiter or

company can present to hiring managers for the purpose ofemployment. Quite often, Internet recruitershave very short-term goals when it comes to recruiting online. The general catalyst that sparks this process

is when a new job requisite comes in (called a REQ). The recruiter scans his or her database to see if

anyone's resumes match the requirements. If not, they proceed to search on the Internet.

The challenge arises when recruiters contact passive candidates willy-nilly. If a person is not currently

seeking for a job, they generally have no interest in learning about new positions. Excessive contacts of this

nature could lead to complaints ofspam. A far more logical way to approach internet recruiting is for

recruiters to view themselves as an authority site and answer the WIIFM question that all individuals have:

"What's in it for me to act upon your email"?

If a recruiter also offers resources such as career help, salary information, how to managejob stress, and

the like, they break out of the stereotypical headhunter mode and enter into the "valued resource" mode to

the individuals they contact.

e-recruitment is the process of personnel recruitment using electronic resources, in particular the internet.

Companies and recruitment agents have moved much of their recruitment process online so as to improve

the speed by whichjob candidates can be matched with live vacancies. Using database technologies, and

online job advertising boards and search engines, employers can now fill posts in a fraction of the time

previously possible.

Internet recruiting is the act of scouring the internet to locate both actively-searching job seekers and

also individuals who are content in their current position (these are called "passive candidates"). It is a field

of dramatic growth and constant change that has given birth to a dynamic multi billion dollar industry.

Traditionally, recruiters use large job boards, niche job boards, as well as social and business networking to

locate these individuals. The immediate goal of internet recruiting is to find individuals that a recruiter or

company can present to hiring managers for the purpose ofemployment. Quite often, Internet recruiters

have very short-term goals when it comes to recruiting online. The general catalyst that sparks this processis when a new job requisite comes in (called a REQ). The recruiter scans his or her database to see if

anyone's resumes match the requirements. If not, they proceed to search on the Internet.

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The challenge arises when recruiters contact passive candidates willy-nilly. If a person is not currently

seeking for a job, they generally have no interest in learning about new positions. Excessive contacts of this

nature could lead to complaints ofspam. A far more logical way to approach internet recruiting is for

recruiters to view themselves as an authority site and answer the WIIFM question that all individuals have:

"What's in it for me to act upon your email"?

If a recruiter also offers resources such as career help, salary information, how to managejob stress, and

the like, they break out of the stereotypical headhunter mode and enter into the "valued resource" mode to

the individuals they contact.

The problem that many small businesses run into is the struggle to recruit high-quality individuals dedicated

to success that can help a company thrive.

With the flourishing of the internet, online recruitment has become wildly popular among companies of all

sizes.

Larger businesses certainly hold an edge in many avenues of recruitment, including on-campus events and

word-of mouth referral. The sheer size of many companies attracts quality individuals who desire a sense of

stability and security.

However, with the advent of human resources sites such as Monster and Careerbuilder, electronic

recruitment levels the playing field in many aspects, giving many smaller institutions the ability to market

their company and available positions to a wide range of eligible candidates.

Online headhunting sites provide to job-seekers a free venue in which they can post their resume in the

hopes of finding a position that suits their needs. Due to the lack of out-of-pocket expense and ease of use,

those seeking employment have become increasingly attracted to online employment resources as a way to

find the right job.

As popularity with top candidates surges, a great number of employers are also turning to the internet as a

way to fill vacancies with people that will fulfill the needs of their organization. In exchange for acting as an

intermediary, companies looking to utilize these sites are required to pay a fee in order to post open job

listings as well as for the ability to communicate with candidates.

The online recruiting fees required by subscribed businesses vary widely with the choice of services offered,

but small business owners will be relieved to know that they can tap into this incredible resource at a

relatively nominal cost.

More and more companies are beginning to recruit exclusively online due to the ever-improving convenience

and efficiency of the different resources available. In addition to the largest nationwide recruitment

databases, many employers are also utilizing the internet to recruit by posting electronic advertisements on

local news sites as well as accepting resumes through their companys website.

If a small business has a website already set up and is effectively marketing itself, establishing an

employment section of the companys site could provide a nearly-cost free alternative to other recruitment

methods such as newspaper classifieds, which are rapidly becoming obsolete.

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If a small business has yet to set up a home on the web, the ease with which quality candidates can be

found on some of the more mainstream online recruitment avenues makes them a very viable option. This

also allows the business to reach a broader and many times higher-caliber of potential employee.

While a startupbusiness owner might not have access to career fairs at many top schools, the online

recruitment channels would provide access to top students, who are more frequently posting their resumes

online in addition to other methods of searching for the best positions.

Finding the right person for the job is always the objective, and by publicizing positions by using online

resources, it is possible for small business owners to attract those individuals who are more drawn to small

business and entrepreneurial opportunities than impersonal corporate settings.

Internet recruitment and websites

Such sites have two main features: job boards and a rsum/curriculum vitae (CV) database. Job boards

allow member companies to post job vacancies. Alternatively, candidates can upload a rsum to beincluded in searches by member companies. Fees are charged for job postings and access to search

resumes. Since the late 1990s, the recruitment website has evolved to encompass end-to-end recruitment.

Websites capture candidate details and then pool them in client accessed candidate management interfaces

(also online). Key players in this sector provide e-recruitment software and services to organizations of all

sizes and within numerous industry sectors, who want to e-enable entirely or partly their recruitment

process in order to improve business performance.

The online software provided by those who specialize in online recruitment helps organizations attract, test,

recruit, employ and retain quality staff with a minimal amount of administration. Online recruitment

websites can be very helpful to find candidates that are very actively looking for work and post their

resumes online, but they will not attract the "passive" candidates who might respond favorably to an

opportunity that is presented to them through other means. Also, some candidates who are actively looking

to change jobs are hesitant to put their resumes on the job boards, for fear that their current companies,

co-workers, customers or others might see their resumes.

Job search engines

The emergence ofmeta-search engines, allow job-seekers to search across multiple websites. Some of

these new search engines index and list the advertisements of traditional job boards. These sites tend to

aim for providing a "one-stop shop" for job-seekers. However, there are many other job search engines

which index pages solely from employers' websites, choosing to bypass traditional job boards entirely.

These vertical search engines allow job-seekers to find new positions that may not be advertised on

traditional job boards, and online recruitment websites.

Does Internet recruiting work?

First, according to the Society for Human Resources Professionals (SHRM) more than 90% of HR people are

now using the Internet to recruit. Our webinar had about 130 participants, mainly HR people. When polled,virtually every last one said that they and their organizations use the Internet to recruit.

http://www.gaebler.com/Internet-Recruiting.htmhttp://www.gaebler.com/Internet-Recruiting.htmhttp://www.gaebler.com/Internet-Recruiting.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-searchhttp://www.gaebler.com/Internet-Recruiting.htmhttp://www.gaebler.com/Internet-Recruiting.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-search


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CareerXRoads claims that Internet postings now result in 10 times as many hires as newspaper ads. This

makes sense when one looks at the Newspaper Association of America statistics since 1975. From 1975

through 2000, recruitment classified advertising in newspapers grew from $348 million to over $8.7 billion.

Since 2000, it has declined to under $4 billion. Meanwhile, Internet job posting revenue has grown 242% in

the past five years according to Forrester Research.

All that said, are more people finding work through Internet channels than they were in 2002? It would

seem so. Of the 130 people polled in our webinar (admittedly unscientific) a whopping 75% claimed that

they had landed at least one job in their career using the Internet. Almost the same number had a close

friend or family member who found their current job using the Internet.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that as of 2003, 87% of Americans have Internet access

from home. Also according to Pew, about 42 million Americans used the Internet to search for work in 2000

and 61 million did so in 2002. However, "Searching for work" does not make its 2005 top 12 daily Internet

activities nor is it on its list of the top nine things survey respondents say the Internet has helped them with

(relationships with friends and family members top the list).

According to Pew, blacks and Hispanics are considerably more likely to look for work on the Web than whites

(61% versus 38% in both cases), which may be good news for your diversity recruiting efforts. Moreover,

Pew found that more than 100 million Internet users belong to one or more online communities. Trade or

professional groups top that list. Since access to members of professional groups is like gold to many

proactive recruiters, the Internet is almost certainly facilitating recruitment in ways beyond just job boards

and corporate career sites.

In fact, when the Internet "job market" is viewed holistically, the numbers we heard in our webinar begin to

make sense. Over the past three or four years, recruiters have become far more sophisticated in their use of

the Web to source candidates. Tools like AIRS and Eliyon let recruiters perform miracles in terms of finding

potential candidates wherever they may be on the Internet, including inside companies, on corporate boards

and in professional communities of interest.

Weblogs, social networks like Linked in, and even Google and other search tools now are used for recruiting.

Last month, several ex-PeopleSoft employees advertised their availability on eBay. Add to this the

enormous amount of Web-based career activity inside organizations and the experiences cited by our

webinar participants begin to sound more representative.

Most of the Fortune 500 now operate internal employment sites. Job opportunities are posted for employees

often for a week or more before they are posted externally. Today, many top performing organizations aim

to fill half or more of their open positions internally rather than with external candidates, and the majority of

the matching may be done using intranets and internal websites. And when external candidates are

considered, Web-based employee referral systems are becoming the norm, where employees can refer their

friends and colleagues to company job postings and, in most cases, receive a reward if that person is

eventually hired.

So it's possible to reconcile the numbers once we look past job boards and career sites as the only avenues

for finding work or finding candidates on the Web. The Internet has clearly become an indispensable tool for

job seekers and recruiters -- and it has certainly become mainstream. Still, it would be hard to argue that



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the best scenario for recruiter and job seeker alike is not the old fashioned "who you know" approach.

Networking is still king, especially beyond the entry-level. For the Internet to steal the crown, it will have to

prove capable of facilitating real relationships, so that the online networks we build -- made up largely of

people we've never met -- can translate into recommendations and referrals for jobs. This is already

happening on a small scale. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the norm within five years.

The Truth about Internet Recruiting

It seems like every day another Internet-recruiting Web site is hanging out its cyber shingle. The sites make

it all look so easy: just send us your job descriptions, they seem to say, and we'll have you waist-deep in

rsums before you can say "hiring panacea."

But the reality may be different. Tony Coretto, co-CEO of PNT Marketing Services, a $1.2-million marketing-

database-development company in Valhalla, N.Y., says that he's found his Internet-recruiting efforts to be

"totally ineffective" so far. "Unless you're looking for programmers in some cutting-edge technology, you're

kind of out of luck," he says. "We're in the technical space but not the sexy part." Coretto is looking for folkswho work in good old-fashioned COBOL. "Our clients have giant data sets that can be accessed most

efficiently in COBOL," he explains.

"We figured since the Monster Board was one of the largest services out there, we might have some luck

there," Coretto says. But what few responses he received either were way off the mark skill-wise or were

from halfway around the world. For now he plans to stick with his tried-and-true hiring method: catching

folks who have been retraining to change professions before they hit the job market.

Yet a number of today's fast-growing companies are using the Internet to recruit. Darlene Chapin,

corporate-recruiting manager at Cheetah Technologies, a $50-million computer-network-management

company in Bradenton, Fla., considers the Internet to be the most effective staffing tool her company uses.

"But like anything else, it's no be-all and end-all," she says. "It takes practice, training, and commitment to

make it pay off." Most of all, she says, managers need to think of Web hiring as a supplement rather than a

replacement. "You need a complete recruiting process wrapped around it," she says.

At Cheetah, that process can include newspaper and technical-publication ads, job fairs, college outreach,

employee-referral programs, and the occasional headhunter. Of course, with 325 employees, Cheetah has

the luxury of having a technical-recruiting department with two members, both of whom have attended

special Internet-recruiting workshops.

In addition to listing job openings on Monster.com, Headhunter.net, and Execunet.com, "plus many of the

free job-posting sites," Chapin also participates in "virtual career fairs," in which the sponsoring company

sets up a site on-line where potential applicants can submit rsums before a fair is held at a physical

location. The rsums are then made available on-line and in disk form to participating companies, which

can set up appointments beforehand if they plan to attend the fair in person, or they can simply follow up

on-line, as Chapin recently did for the Boston fair. "Even if I'm not there, I still get to contact these people,"

she says.

Cheetah hasn't used a search agency in more than two years but has in that time managed to increase its

technical staff by some 75 people, a feat that Chapin attributes in part to an increased focus on Internet

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recruiting. "It's a lot more efficient," she says. "We've multiplied our response rate by four." And now if an

applicant is not just what she's looking for, "we get so many more qualified candidates, I actually get to say

no."

Making the best use

of Internet Recruiting

The Internet has truly changed

the way we conduct business

today. We now have the ability

to do virtually everything from

our computers and recruiting is

one of them. More and more,

health care employers are

turning to the Internet to fill

their positions with qualified

candidates.

So why use the Internet for

recruiting? The answer is simple. There is no faster, simpler, more convenient or more cost effective way to

reach hundreds of thousands of qualified candidates, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week. Responses occur

instantly and the results are measurable. Many health care recruitment sites can provide you with statistics

such as how many people looked at your job posting, how many people submitted their resumes, as well as

where your job ranked with other health care employers recruiting for the same position. When was the last

time traditional media could tell you all that?

Jobseekers have always wanted detailed job descriptions. They want to know what the job will entail what

the qualifications are and more important, what you can offer them as an organization. When using a health

care recruitment site you are able to provide job seekers with detailed information on the qualifications you

are looking for in a candidate. You can even create a customized response form to help further qualify your

applicants. And as if that weren't enough, you can even put your recruitment brochure online, highlighting

the benefits that you offer as well as what makes you stand out from the rest!

So, what are the ins and outs of Internet recruiting and how can you make it work for your organization?

There are many great health care recruitment sites out there, but finding the one that best meets your

needs, as well as the job seeker's, can be a daunting task.

Here are some questions to ask when you are considering which site to use:

How long have they been in business?

Many of the well-known recruitment sites started around 1994. But if the company has been around for less

time, or is a brand new recruitment site, it doesn't hurt to ask for success stories they received from current


Who's using Internet recruiting?

Inc. 500 companies that say they findInternet recruiting useful, by businesssector:

Computer-related 60.2%

Business services 17.6%

Consumer goods 4.7%

Telecommunications 4.1%

Health care 3.5%

Industrial products 2.9%

Construction 2.3%

Finance 2.3%

Media 1.8%

Transportation .6%


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clients. Being able to prove that other companies are happy with their services and the type of responses

they have received on their job postings will only confirm your need to advertise on their sites.

How much traffic does the site receive? How much of that traffic is related to seeking

employment, or candidates, in your areas of interest?

Focused traffic is the key to success for any Internet recruitment site. A good health care employment site

will generate traffic several ways, such as partnering with sites that serve that audience, as well as

advertising in areas where professionals in the industry are. Focus is the key here, not mass market.

It's important to remember that numbers alone do not tell the whole story. Statistics must always be

interpreted with in the context of the information itself. Internet recruitment sites can give you huge

numbers, but you want to know how many people are using the site to look for a job? Many sites today are

so overloaded with content and other activities (like booking travel or looking for moving companies) that

most of the traffic coming to the site isn't even job related.

If you see them on TV or in other mass media, they're probably not the place for your recruitment budget!

What type of value does the site provide to the job seeker as well as the recruiter?

A good health care recruitment site will contain job related resources for the job seeker. These resources

will include resume writing tips, career planning resources, licensure information, and continuing education

resources.

Some sites such as MedZilla.com.com also provide resources for the recruiter like recruitment and retention

tips, salary information, employment surveys as well as many other resources to make the recruiter's job a

little easier.

What type of additional exposure does the site offer your postings?

Partnerships are key to increasing traffic to your job postings. For example MedZilla offers cross posting to

their Career Network of affiliate sites. What this means to the employer is that every time you post a job on

MedZilla the job posting is automatically posted to all of their Career Network affiliate sites. These sites

include MedExplorer.com, Scientist Central, and Frontiers in Bioscience, just to name a few.

This is a value-added service and there is no additional cost to the employer posting to show up on their

Career Network affiliate sites. The benefit is that you get more people looking at your job posting within an

additional targeted audience.

Popular places for Internet recruiting

Internet recruiting can be successfully practiced on:



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Major search engines: Using boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc.), related search syntax

(parentheses for clauses, quotation marks around multiple-keyword phrases, etc.) and appropriate

special commands (intitle:, inurl:, site:, filetype:, etc.), one can generate very targeted search

strings to find just the kinds of candidate resumes and/or prospect biographies desired. These are

typically most effective on major engines such as Google, Yahoo, Live, Exalead, etc., that each have

billions of pages indexed as well as support for many special commands.

Niche search engines and job boards: In some cases, it can be more effective to use a more narrow

search tool. Blog-specific search engines such as Gigablast can deliver targeted results within that

subset of the Internet.

Discussion lists: Similarly, using (formerly Deja) to search Usenet postings can find unique results

within newsgroup discussion lists. Yahoo Groups, Topica, etc., are other online communities that

each host millions of discussion lists which can be searched. Many portals and individual association

sites (see below) offer their own forums where posts (and their posters) can be searched.

Other virtual communities: LinkedIn, Spoke and [Xing.com] (formerly OpenBC) are currently the

largest of the professionally-skewed social networks with differing levels of depth on candidates,

though some search capabilities are reserved for paid tier members only. Other larger virtual

communities, such as [Facebook] and [MySpace], contain a higher percentage of non-professional

content. As a result, these may be less efficient for recruiting purposes even when advanced search

techniques are employed.

Association sites: Many local and regional association sites will have targeted niche job boards as a value-

added benefit for their members, as well as member directories, local chapter contacts and other data

useful for contact name generation/biographical details of passive candidates.

Local business forums: Towns and cities will often have local business forums in which new jobs can

be posted.

Industry niche sites: Industry niche sites will not only generally have member resumes available but

also include vendor lists, discussion forums, and the opportunity to write articles as a career

advisor.

Back to School Nights: The Parents-Teachers Association will often let local businesses advertise

during back to school nights. It makes a good fund-raiser, and recruiters have instant access to

local professionals.

**********

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Recruitment on the Internet