Online recruitment: Nuts and bolts of online recruitment
Section two of the Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide on online recruitment, covering: understanding e-recruitment; finding the 'passive candidate'; attracting traffic to your site; hiring management technology ; and facts about online jobseekers. Other sections .
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Understand the basic processes in online recruitment Decide on the best online location to post your job details Deliver traffic to your website using search engines Understand the software tools available for back-office administration |
What is meant by the term 'online recruitment'?
What does 'recruiting online' or e-recruitment actually mean? For many, it simply means posting a job on one of the several hundred UK (or several thousand global) job sites and waiting for a candidate to reply. Perhaps it is setting up a 'careers@mycompany.co.uk' section of a corporate website. For others, it is more pro-active, with dedicated internet recruiters actively searching the internet for candidates, either in specific candidate databases or via 'deep web' search tools that find appropriate candidates on their own web pages or other public venues on the internet.
A total internet-based recruiting strategy has three primary elements: attraction, communication and administration.
Attracting candidates
The job boards are at the base of the new recruiting pyramid, providing corporate and consultancy recruiters access to thousands of candidates. At the same time, candidates have access to thousands of job postings. Although initially general in nature, an increasing number of job boards are becoming niche specific, whether that niche is geographic, skills or financially based. Even so, the job boards are only going to reach the 10 per cent or so of the population actively looking for a new role online.
How do you find the so-called 'passive' candidate?
There are a number of different tools for finding CVs, general biographic information or other leads to the potential candidates. These include general search engines such as Google and AltaVista, spiders and robots which carry out 'deep web' searches, directory sites such as Yahoo, and meta tools which search multiple sites. The techniques of using some of these tools will be discussed later on.
Recruitment is really a sales and marketing exercise. You need to use a variety of marketing and image tools to bring the web surfer to your corporate recruitment page, including online marketing such as banners, buttons and web links. Offline activities, including the print and visual media, should be used alongside this. The recruiter must establish and market their employer brand wherever the possible candidates might be.
Communication
Once you have the candidate at your site you must never forget that the internet is an 'immediate' medium, and candidates have minimum expectations of two-way communication with the prospective employer at this point. Interactive communication with the candidates will ensure that they leave you enough information to be screened in or screened out.
Think of this period as building a community or network of candidates for your immediate and future job needs. Interactive talent pool tools communicate with the candidates, ask them questions, screen their answers and offer to provide ongoing information about jobs and other key activities at your company. The more people you reach, teach and communicate with at this juncture will increase the number of people you will be able to hire.
Continually update the site with additional helpful information such as salary calculators and links to relocation assistance companies, local educational and shopping sites and other general company information.
Administration
Internet-based screening and assessment tools are becoming increasingly commonplace. Integrate these tools in your corporate careers website to reduce the volume of inappropriate or unscreened candidates. Ensure your back office candidate administration systems are internet-based and can easily communicate with your website and your HR systems.
Location location location
There are a number of different locations for posting your jobs on the internet, but broadly speaking, there are three main categories: job boards (including CV databases); recruitment consultancies; and corporate web pages.
The primary job posting sites can be sorted into: universal, generalist or multi-sector boards; global; local; niche/specialist sites; print media-related sites; and portal sites.
These are sites that have national (or international) presence, serve a client base across all industries, and offer a wide range of positions across different functions and levels. Their primary business usually consists of offering companies the opportunity to post positions online in a job-listing manner, with additional features such as corporate profiles available. They often offer users the opportunity to search a database of candidate details (see below). Many will list jobs from both companies and recruitment agencies.
They will have a strong consumer-facing website - with many information sections such as salary checkers and interview tips - which candidates can use to search for positions, build and store an electronic profile and prepare for the job search.
The key strength of these boards is that they typically attract a high-volume candidate flow (and have a massive database of candidates), which, in theory, means that the corporate user of these boards will receive a decent number of applications in response to job postings.
A weakness of these boards is that they may be too mass-market to deliver the 'hard-to-find' candidate in a timely fashion, and they may inundate a corporate user with a great volume of unscreened candidates. In addition, because 'everybody' uses them, both candidates and companies may have trouble rising above the noise.
Industry specific or niche sites
Job boards serve a niche market, which may be geographic, skills or industry orientated. The advantage of these types of sites is they attract very targeted traffic. You won't receive the same volume as a multi-sector site, but it will be more relevant.
Publication sites
A growing trend is for offline publications to now include a jobs section on their website for their readers. For many of these vertical-market publications, the online job board has replaced the offline (print) recruitment advertising offering.
Portal sites
Many internet portals (Yahoo, AOL and MSN, for example) provide careers sections. Most provide links to job website partners as well as larger paying clients. These portals offer a variety of careers information sections ranging from CV preparation, to interview techniques and salary checkers.
CV databases
There are a number of job sites which offer clients access to candidates held in their database. These candidates would have already given their permission to be contacted, usually at the time they originally submitted their CV into the database.
When submitting their CV the candidates would normally confirm the kind of skills and experience they already have - and then indicate the types of job, career opportunities, salary and location that they are looking for.
Recruitment agencies and companies can generally access a database by paying a monthly subscription, or by paying a fee for each candidate they wish to contact. The advantage for both is that it broadens the net of potential candidates.
Recruitment consultancies
Recruitment consultancies were the early adopters of recruitment software at the beginning of the 1990s and the first market for the job boards in 1994-95. They have pioneered the use of web-based candidate data-entry models and web-based access to their candidate databases. With the current generation of ASP (Applications Service Provider) web recruitment tools and software, even the smallest recruitment consultancy can have an internet recruitment solution for less than £1,000 per month. Many of the more sophisticated solutions enable complete integration between the recruitment consultancy's web presence and their key clients' websites.
Corporate sites
Internet recruiting is not just about the external sites or the world wide web. The corporate website is the most important communication vehicle to receive and process job applications, whether they come via direct communications, offline or online advertising or from a recruitment consultancy. The corporate website plays a critical role in positioning a company as an employer and providing content for the information-hungry, research-minded jobseeker.
Corporate sites are developing from job listings or 'brochureware' to using functionality to develop relationships with jobseekers. Usability is the key - however much a jobseeker wants to work for a company, if they can't find what they need on your site, easily and quickly, they will give up and go elsewhere. Spend some time and money building a careers-specific site that is integrated with your overall corporate culture and processes and you will have a fantastic recruitment resource.
Attracting traffic via search engines
Posting jobs on a job board, a corporate website, in print-based recruitment media or even via a preferred list of recruitment consultancies is still essentially a passive means of finding candidates.
In the film Field Of Dreams, lead actor Kevin Costner's character believes that if he builds a fantastic baseball diamond in his corn field, the great baseball player, Shoeless Joe Jackson will come down from heaven to play ball. The essence of Costner's belief: "If I build it, he will come." Of course, this is Hollywood and it works. However, in the real world of finding candidates for your company, simply having your own fantastic website does not guarantee success. There are millions of websites on the internet and you need to make it easy for people to find your site.
How do people find you?
Many will see your brand advertising, your recruitment ads or just happen to see your web page. As we will see in Section three: How to go online, there are many more aspects to the candidate attraction strategy for you to implement. For many candidates though, the way to find you is by using one of the many search engines and portals and simply typing in a few key words relating to the kind of job the candidate is looking for.
How, then, does the candidate using 'Jobs, Personal Assistant, Midlands' as search criteria actually end up on your site?
The good news is that the search engines and directories can deliver free, targeted traffic to your website, but only if the engine knows about you. One of the main areas that is often overlooked is registering your website with the search engines and directories. Is your site listed in the search engines? If so, do you know where are you ranked? You need to be in the top 30 results, as it is unlikely that people will have the patience to trawl through hundreds of pages to find your website. And each search engine has different criteria for ranking sites. Therefore, the sooner you take action the quicker you can start to improve the number of candidates who find your jobs and apply.
Proactively finding candidates with search engines
Many companies now have a dedicated internet sourcing expert on the recruitment team. Analogous to the headhunter, this person uses a variety of searching techniques and search engines to find candidates. We will take a more in-depth look at ways to find candidates later. Here, though, are the basics.
Most people assume that all search engines are the same. However, there are some major differences as you will see below.
True search engines
Search engines - such as Google, AltaVista and Lycos - are much like the index of a book. They list a topic or subtopic and then provide a list of pages that contain that topic. A true search engine obtains its results from databases where the data is not already organised into categories. The search engines index (spider) the information in a way that allows them to list the sites, without categorising the data. When someone conducts a search, using one or more keywords, the search engine returns a list of web pages that relate to those keywords.
Meta search engines
A meta search engine is a search engine for search engines. It obtains its results by searching a group of search engines. The major meta search engines - such as Ask Jeeves - have huge databases of websites that people can search by typing one or more keywords into a search box.
Directories
Directories - such as Yahoo or MSN - are often confused with search engines. Directories are much like the table of contents in a book. They list a topic, then all of its subtopics, then each of the subtopics' subtopics, and so on, continuing this process until they can break it down no further.
One key difference between a directory and a search engine is that the directory (Yahoo, for example) retains the rights to choose which sites make it onto the list. If the site is accepted then it is added to a relevant category in the directory.
The back office: what are the hiring management technologies?
OK, you have the idea now of the basics for a total internet recruiting solution. But, what happens to all those new and exciting candidates once they hit your website?
For an internet solution to be effective, you will have to do something with the 'back office' technology, ensuring that the administration and communication with the candidate and your external partners is efficient, provides you with an easily accessible audit trail and management reports, and helps you comply with data protection and other employment-related legislation.
What are the tools we need today in the back office to ensure that we use the internet most effectively for recruitment?
To understand these tools it is worth looking at the evolution of today's so-called 'candidate management systems', also known as 'applicant tracking systems'. How did these modern integrated business systems, capable of supporting the total internet recruitment process, develop from the old paper-based methods?
Pre-historic - paper-based legacy systems
This is the system we all started with, whether as a corporate recruiter or in a recruitment consultancy. Independent paper-based systems were orientated to the individual recruiter and evolved over time. Most systems integrated poorly with other paper-based business systems such as payroll, benefits administration or central HR systems.
Level 1- Basic database approach
The clever recruiter looked around the office to see what kind of technology was in the office and how that might be adapted to recruitment needs. Independent PC-based or local area network systems for particular staffing functions developed, including elementary report writing and possibly some integration with payroll. These were manual data-entry versions of applicant tracking, using basic databases (Access) or spreadsheets (Excel), word processing, diary management and, in a sophisticated environment, e-mail.
Level 2- Networked CV database
In the early 1990s, we saw the beginning of paper-based systems being transferred into networked databases in the US.
Employers began to move from paper-based recruitment and CVs towards electronic versions that could be stored on the organisation's databases. This was done by scanning paper CVs using OCR (optical character recognition) computer systems. At the same time job candidates were encouraged to use application forms available at kiosks in the workplace or over the internet. Enterprising IT professionals responded by founding independent software companies that developed purpose-built recruitment flowchart solutions that accessed CVs through company networks. Some systems gave recruiters online access over the company network to sophisticated tools that could match the skills of candidates with a particular job description. All the major HR information systems included interfaces allowing recruiters to transfer data on new recruits.
Level 3 - Web-enabled recruitment solutions
The kind of staffing transactions and information detailed above began to be automated or web-enabled as organisations strove to bring down the cost of the large systems and to make access to information for recruiters and candidates more 'user friendly'.
The priority was to automate recruitment transactions for the web. At this stage the recruitment department was evolving into a 'resourcing' function which 'owned' and distributed information. External candidates could apply through the company's internet website and internal candidates through the intranet. In response, major vendors of recruitment systems rewrote their products for the internet, and many new suppliers of systems entered the market with web-designed recruitment flowchart solutions. At the same time internet job boards arrived on the scene, adding a new impetus for job-seekers to look for work on the web.
Level 4 - E-recruitment
The next logical step was to integrate recruitment with the organisation's internal and external businesses processes and systems. For example, the recruitment management system could be integrated with applications designed to increase productivity such as customer relationship management software. E-recruitment gave recruiters access to candidate data from a single web browser which could be accessed from anywhere. This meant that additional users of the data could be given access, regardless of their geographical location, enabling different regional offices to standardise their approach to recruitment. The majority of these systems are delivered as an ASP (or application service provider, see glossary) solution, which means that a third party company hosts the system on their own external server.
Level 5 - Workforce planning
Progressive organisations have begun to utilise hiring management tools for internal employee mobility and to help employees match their career aspirations with opportunities within the company. HR and line managers can now connect tools which can analyse skills gaps within the organisation or support career planning with other business applications. The internet-based approach allows HR to integrate recruitment and retention with business strategy and to predict future workforce needs by analysing market demands. Talent management solutions have emerged which enable organisations to build large pools of pre-screened candidates who can be approached the moment an appropriate vacancy arises.
What is the candidate actually doing online?
The winter 2002-2003 National Online Recruitment Survey (NORAS) of 10,000 candidates from 11 mainstream UK recruitment sites highlights some interesting facts and questions some assumptions about who is using the internet.
The average online jobseeker is aged 33.1 years and has 17 years work experience since leaving full-time education. Their average salary is £23,682. They are likely to be degree-educated and last started a new job 4.1 years ago. On average, jobseekers visit 5.6 sites when looking for a job.
Sixty-nine per cent of online jobseekers are in social grade ABC1, 34 per cent have a degree, and 15 per cent have a higher professional qualification. Fourteen per cent of online job seekers have an IT role; 15 per cent work in secretarial or administrative roles; 7 per cent in management; 6 per cent work in engineering and 5 per cent in customer service.
The survey reveals how job seekers find job sites: 39 per cent visited a generic recruitment site because they found it through a search engine or link, compared to 13 per cent who were attracted by the advertising and only 7 per cent who thought the site had the best selection of jobs.
Jobseekers perform activities over and above just looking for jobs online: 4 per cent visit sites to make salary comparisons, while 40 per cent to find out about potential employers. An average of 29 per cent have successfully obtained jobs through the sites participating in NORAS.
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What is e-recruitment?
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What is your experience in using corporate sites to advertise vacancies? |
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99% |
have a corporate site |
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76% |
of those use it for recruitment |
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49% |
use both their corporate site and an external jobsite |
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65% |
say they (systematically) measure the effectiveness of their recruitment processes |
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58% |
say they 'don't know' how many vacancies they have filled via their corporate site |
Source: Actionline Research
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Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide on online recruitment Section one: Why you can't ignore internet recruitment Section two: Nuts and bolts of online recruitment Section three: How to go online Section four: Implementing online recruitment Section five: Evaluating success Section eight: Legal issues when recruiting online Section nine: Research on online recruitment
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