Case Study on "Recruiting on the Internet"

Case Study 5 pages (1590 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Recruiting on the Internet

Recruting on the Internet

Online recruiting is slowly becoming the prevalent thing among many companies around the world. This is because these companies are finding huge benefits to online recruiting than traditional recruitment methods. In a survey that was conducted by iLogos Research dubbed Global 500 Web site Recruiting: 2003 Survey, it was found that about 94% of the firms surveyed are using their own corporate career websites as their hiring tools. In a similar study that was conducted in 2002 by the same company dubbed Where the Jobs are: Fortune 500 job postings on careers web sites and major job boards, it was found that 81% of the Fortune 500 companies are posting their job openings on their own career web sites as opposed to the 51% who use Monster, 43% who use HotJobs and 22% who use CareerBuilder. This study found the jobs that were posed on corporate career websites to total to about 75,000 jobs as compared to about 25,500 for Monster, 13,200 for CareerBuilder and 7,800 for HotJobs. Therefore, we can see that online recruitment is becoming the more popular method of hiring.

Though recruiters not have to sift through more resumes as a result of the use on online recruitment, there are huge cost and time savings which companies experience as a result of using online recruiting. In a research that was conducted by iLogos Research on 45 Fortune 500 companies, it was found that the hiring cycle was shortened by about 9% through simply posting jobs online. For companies which only used online hiring, there was an extra 12% savings in terms of shortening the hiring cycle. The company saved a further 9% if they screened the resumes electronically which makes an overall savings of 30%. Although these savings were the result of the study, some companies actually have higher returns. For example, Dow Chemical saved 62$ of the hiring cycle and also saved 26% in terms of the cost to hire and it reduced the number of recruiting staff required by about 40%.

Another benefit of using online recruitment, is that a company is able to have its image online by being actively involved in social networking such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace which also improve the company's image. Apart from this, the hiring cycle is also greatly reduced by using these social networks. For example, Adaptive Path used their blog and LinkedIn to recruit its new CEO and this process only took them about 3 months from the start to the finish.

The case study also goes ahead to elaborate on the cost savings through online recruiting. The cost of hiring online is on average $152 for each hire but for the use of traditional methods, it is $1,383. This is according to a report posted by Thomas Weisel Partners.

Video resumes are also an important part of online recruiting. They help the recruiter to feel the communication skills of the candidate and thus enable the recruiter to see the type of role person/people they are looking for. It gives some kind of interaction between the recruiter and the candidate and helps tell the recruiter if the candidate is a person they can work with and how the candidate carries themselves during an interaction. YouTube is one of the commonly used sites for posting vide resumes but many job boards are also planning to include this service.

Overall, online recruiting is increasing in popularity for its many benefits. First is that it delivers better candidates for the job. Secondly, it lowers the hiring costs significantly and lastly, it gives a competitive advantage to the hiring companies as a result of having their presence online. This has seen online recruiting become the second method in the acquisition of new hires for companies such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.

My position on the case

Online recruitment leverages the power of the internet in being a source of many things. The internet can also help to match individuals to job vacancies. It basically involves advertising job vacancies on job sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs or the corporate website of the hiring firm. The effectiveness of online recruitment has been seen to be higher than that of traditional recruitment methods and this is one of the reasons for its increasing popularity. Another reason for its increasing popularity is that it generates more potential candidates thus helps to ensure the best person for the job is chosen Braddy, Meade, & Kroustalis, 2006()

However, the true power and strength of online recruitment lies in organizations harnessing the internet to do more than just attract candidates but also to deal with the applications. This involves screening of the applications, background checks, etc. In this sense, the recruitment process is streamlined so that the HR department has more time to do other roles such as human resource planning, evaluation, etc. instead of spending loads and loads of time in the recruitment process. Some hiring systems have also been designed to help the company to automate the pre-selection of shortlisted candidates through the use of interview questions which are then profiled and scored by the computer which then shortlists the highest scorers. Psychometric tests can also be done via the online recruitment system. The system can also be designed to automate the scanning of CVs to retrieve important information such as experience and qualifications Braddy et al., 2006()

There are many benefits of leveraging the use of online recruitment. One is that it helps to give a wide reach of candidates. Online recruitment is not geographically limited as other traditional methods such as newspapers, television, radio, etc. This is one of the reasons why companies that use online recruiting receive more applications. However, the advantage here is that with more applications, the firm stands a better chance of hiring the perfect candidate for the job. This benefit, however, only comes about if the company has an efficient sorting, sifting and grading system for the applications. Doing this manually is time-consuming and the company will not be able to feel the benefit of using online recruitment Mareschal & Rudin, 2011()

The second advantage is that of increasing the speed of hiring. As in the case study and as seen in other surveys and studies conducted around the world, online recruiting has been found to greatly reduce the time it takes to hire a new candidate. For example for HFC Bank, it takes just 3 hours between when the vacancy appears online and the candidate appears in the interview room. Looking at this from the standpoint of a company that needs to recruit staff quickly in order to cover for staff who are sick or on leave or to handle extra work temporarily, when the recruitment process takes about 24-48 hours, this is a huge bonus for the company since they are more efficient in ensuring they have enough coverage Arthur, 1998()

Other advantages of online recruitment are lowering the hiring cost, automating the hiring process and lastly, bringing interaction with the candidates. All these advantages are as seen in the case study.

Online recruitment has many advantages and it helps a company recruit people to meet its human resource needs. As a result of the many advantages that online recruitment has over the other traditional methods, online recruitment is a better option. Even though it has some disadvantages such as increasing the number of applications received greatly, this can actually be turned into an advantage since these many applications means that the company has a better chance of getting the most suited person for the job Parry & Tyson, 2008()

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