Critical Review of Online Recruiting and its Effectiveness
Uriel Augustin
Center of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) Programs
HELP College of Arts and Technology
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email:
Rashad Yazdanifard
Center of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) Programs
HELP College of Arts and Technology
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email:
Abstract
This critical review of online recruiting covers the different aspect of recruiting on the Internet. It provides us with an insight into how the human resource department in companies uses the internet to recruit new employees in the 21st century. Here, we can see how the evolution of online recruiting is happening, starting from basic online recruiting agencies to company career sites and even in social media.
Key Words: Online recruiting, Recruiting agencies, social media recruiting
I. Introduction
With the introduction of the Internet, many people and businesses are connected to each other every day and are able to communicate more efficiently(Dictionaries, 2000). With ever changing businesses need to make the maximum profits possible, businesses are seeking the most cost effective way to recruit new employees as well as for employees to seek employers (Ratling 2012; Vera etal, 2009). This is mainly due to the fact thatrecruiting the most optimum employees has become one of the top prioritized agendas for businesses because of how competitive the employment market had evolved to be today, and with so many tools available to businesses toachieve their objectives the internet is one they turn to (Zall, 2000; Vera etal, 2009).
II. Online Recruiting Agencies
As a result,online recruiting or e-recruiting has immerged as a means to fulfill this need,there are a number of online agencies that allow companies to effectively recruit online; this involves the process of posting jobs, accepting resumes, and corresponding with job applicants (Borstorf & Bennet 2007). A few of the more popular online recruitingagencies that are used by companies to search for their newest members areMonster.com, Yahoo Hot jobs and Career builder. The simplicity of this site allow companies to search for employees based on certain skills needed, for example engineers or marketing managers and their geographical location they reside in, an example of this would be Shah Alam Malaysia or Tokyo Japan all at a touch of a button (Sage Abra, 2005). Companies are also able to advertise job vacancies and have people formally source them to inquire about job openings, thus creating a two way street for companies and job seekers to find what they are looking for (Galanaki, 2002). Online recruitment also allows companies to target global markets, niche markets as well as local markets givinggreater flexibility for recruiters to fill job openings and thusmaking their search more competitive because of the wide range of candidates available to them (Smith, 2005).
III. Online Recruiting in Business Today
It is reported that 93% Global 500 companies use some sort of online recruitment, where 96% is in Asia as well asAmerica and 94% in Europe showing that a large number of recruiting is now happening online as oppose to the traditional methods, thus increasing the reach of companies to source and meet recruiting objectives much faster and with much more variety to select from shortening the recruitment process (Barber, 2006; Kim etal, 2009).Statistics also show that among those that use these online agencies 26% are executives or managers, 26%are technical workers, 19% are professionals and only a mere 5-7% are fulltime students and blue collar workers respectively (Greenspan, 2003). Evidence of about 43% of job seekers, who seek jobs online claim to have at least 10 years of work experience and half of those are looking to score jobs in the range of mid to senior level management (Gill, 2001). Online agencies such as Monster.com has in its data base an average of eleven million resumes available for employers at their every whim, which would explain why a staggering 90% of those businesses using such agencies are willing to renewing their subscriptions annually. This ultimatelysaves companies a great deal on head hunters fees and other traditional methods of recruiting, somewhere in between the region of $ 50,000 to $60,000 annually (Gill, 2001). This is no wonder recent findings indicate that online recruiting generates 56% of interviews for majority of companies today and out of those that are interviewed 49% are hired into the company, showing high success rate using online methods of recruitment(SkillRoad Inc, 2012).
IV. Company Career Sites
As a result of this, more companies are not only using online recruiting agencies but also setting up their own company career site for online applications that wish to apply directly to the company, this sites act as agencies that allow applicants to give their resume from the corporate site itself directly to the company without going through an online agency (Lee, 2005). One of the more popular software used is called “Active recruiter”. This program is commonly used to recruit from corporate websites, companies like Nike has adopted such system and as a result, it has improved their overall recruiting process. Candidates will post their resume on Nike’s website and the system will shortlist them by category of skill set and experience then store it in their data base, making it easy for managers to find what they are looking for. On top of that, all applicants that have been put in the data base get notifications every six months to update their details. By doing this, Nike has saved 54% of their recruitment cost and can be less dependent on other online agencies to meet their needs. (Nike's, 2005). Other companies that are getting in on the opportunity to do recruiting through career sites are McDonalds’, Subway, Cheese cake factory, Buffalo wild wings, Carlsberg, Toyota andSheraton hotels,to name a few.The reason that many of these companies are getting in on this company career site is because it creates 16% of the interviews and 13% of those are hired into the company, thus making it easier for companies to employ employees that are already interested in working for their company; and making it easier for companies to track the resumes and quality of people they are looking to recruit (SkillRoad Inc, 2012).
V. Social Media or Networking and Recruiting
This trend of internet recruiting does not only stop here, it has trickled into the arena of social media and networks as well, seeing the likes of Facebook, Linkedln and Twitter all being used as a source of online recruiting, indirectly acting as a medium between new employees and employers. Statistics show that 65% of online adults use social networks and account for ¼ the time spent online and of those individuals, majority are of “Generation Y” who have spent most of their lives with the internet; therefore to recruiters this maybe a perfect niche to connect to the right employees (Jobvite, 2011; Leidner, etal 2010). Evidence currently show that 19% of recruiters use Linkedln and Twitter and only 10% use Linkedln and Facebook, however Twitter accounts tend to grow much faster than Linkedln and Facebook mainly because of how the social media network is set up to be. Recruiters on Linkedln are able to get 3 times the amount of views per job posting than Twitter and 6 times the views than those posted on Facebook, receiving about 3 times more application than Twitter and 9 times more than Facebook. Interestingly enough the response per contact is 3 times more for Twitter than it is for Linkedln and 8 more than Facebook (Bull Horn Research , 2012). This trend has become increasingly popular that 80% of companies are starting to use these social media sites for recruiting and amongst these social sites Linkedln is preferred as 95% of companies attempt recruit here. However this way of recruiting does come with some caution as recruiting and hiring are relatively new found ideas, adding the fact that those who are potential employees are sensitive to ‘employer branding’ online, for that reason managers and their marketers must be able to market their corporate culture, values and vision in good light through the social networking sites they wish to recruit from (Wirght 2011; Davison etal 2011).
VI. Drawbacks
Needless to say online recruitment is vastly growing into one of the fastest growing trends in our world today, however, with all good things and rapid growth there are some drawbacks that occurs, one of which is that companies will tend to have an overabundant supply of resumes which may result in managers overlooking some potentially qualified candidates (Holm, 2010). With such an over load on resumes, it would be very much time consuming for businesses to go through all of this information and sort them adequately (Kapse, Patil etal 2012), thus it would only be logical that the response and quality of the response to candidates seeking employments would drop as there would be a lack of a personal touch in the responses, therefore treating candidates all the same and not taking the time to make that personal connection (Lee, 2005). Following suit would be the inconsistency of quality of potential employees because of receiving so many applicants the level of quality that each can bring to the table will be inconsistent especially if their background is far different from each other (Bratam, 2000).Adding to the disadvantages would be privacy and security issues on personal information where hackers and other viruses maybe of threat to personal information, and the assumption that everyone on planet earth has internet access would be another major drawback to internet recruiting (Marr 2007; Parry etal, 2008).Lastly corporations could potentially lose employees to competitors as well as other companies in other industries due to the ease of recruiting via the internet, encouraging outside poaching at the expense of internal progress within the company (Singh & Narang, 2008)
VII. Discussion
This review discusses the current trends and the future growing trends of online based recruiting that are currently being done by companies’ human resource departments and those that are seeking employment in this new business era. It is obviously without a doubt that companies are taking advantage on the fact that the internet is a great tool to relay and collect information, at the same time is permits people to connect with each other and share ideas as well as information. We also have seen how effective online recruiting is as it increases the reach of companies to recruit, as well as make connections with potential employees.
Needless to say, the new generations have emerged as people who are tech savvy and more accustom to using the internet, not only for pleasure but for information as well; and since they rely heavily on the internet for information, it is vital that companies take advantage of this fact and use this as a means to reach out and connect with these people through the internet(Dutton & Blank, 2011). It would be very costly if companies in this era were to turn a blind eye in this area as they would be losing out on majority of the population who are seeking employment. Other benefits in doing online recruiting would be the fact that human resource personal would save the company much more time and money in recruiting. This is largely due to the fact that it would take less time and effort to process, sort and hire someone through the internet and at the same time would significantly lower the cost and dependency of advertising through traditional methods, recruiting agencies and the use of head hunters, creating a ‘win win’ for the recruiters as well that the job seeker (Publicjobsie) ensuring that both parties can accomplish their goals efficiently and with minimal effort.
Aside from being more cost and time efficient doing recruiting online would also decrease the dependency on doing traditional paper work, this fast could also be use to the advantage of not only the Human resource department as it would make storing, filing and categorizing easier but it can potentially be use by the company to its advantage. The company could potentially launch a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility” campaign stating it wishes to reduce its carbon foot print by using less paper in its organization, this would not only create a good standing within the company but also to itsconsumers and the potential employees that are being recruited, as research shows that this fact attracts those seeking employment (ADETUNJI & OGBONNA, 2013). It is suggested that this tactic would give the company an edge in online recruiting ad well as brand their image of the company as one who truly cares about the environment as well as the local environment in which it is currently doing business in.
Apart from the trend of online recruiting agencies, it is suggested to take note on the facts that social media is at the moment in its infantry stage as a tool to recruit, as majority of the population today uses one or more forms of social media or network. It would be wise for more companies and human resource departments to explore this area as it would be one of the best ways to get in touch with the right candidates that the recruiters have been seeking as most of the population are on these sites. In addition, social media sites would also be a good place that not only serves as a recruiting too but also to build good company brand image as well, as the future evolves it is suggest that companies who can take advantage and be one of the pioneers in this area social recruiting would be the best competitive advantage amongst its competition.
However, e-recruiting on the internet does have its drawbacks as we have already discussed. These negative facts suggest that there is still a long way to improve on online recruiting methods and that business still need to innovate in means of recruiting and not putting all their eggs in one basket, nonetheless the internet is still one of the best tools that we not only as a business but a generation to have.
VIII. Conclusion
In conclusion, it is safe to suggest that the internet is a tool that is being effective use to the advantage of companies recruiting online in these current times, although there are some drawbacks it is still a powerful and useful tool to help get business done more efficiently. With the demands of the world today, the internet is the medium that has risen to the occasion to offer its services at the best prices we can bargain for at the same time adding value to our time and efforts to seek and recruit new and better employees. Topping it off with the versatility of the internet to not only find possible candidates but turn into a tool that can be use to promote social responsibility, and at the same time to market one’s corporation, certainly creating a “win win” for all parties involve. This shows that the internet and its tools are a force to be reckoned with.
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