Online recruitment: Why you can't ignore internet recruitment

Section one of the Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide on online recruitment, covering: trends in internet recruitment; and the benefits of taking recruitment online. Other sections .


Use this section to:

  • Learn how the internet is transforming recruitment

  • Assess how you should develop your organisation's internet use

  • Understand why jobseekers are using the internet to search for jobs

    What has been happening with the internet and recruitment?

    During the past two years, the internet has emerged as a real force in UK recruitment, particularly with regards to the number of users (between 17 and 24 million in the UK), job postings, UK job boards (581 in the OnRec.com database) and the UK-focused recruitment orientated sites (2,739 in the OnRec.com database). The speed of adoption here has been rapid.

    US-based recruiters initially led the way, using a variety of online recruiting methods, from the standard job postings through CV (resumé) mining and even online interviewing.

    Pressures growing to recruit more effectively

    Global events have been affecting employment everywhere. There is an ongoing shortage of qualified people, despite the meltdown in the telecom and IT sectors. The European workforce is ageing while population growth is slowing. And for the first time, the over-50s outnumber the under-16s in the UK.

    Most companies and industry sectors have suffered during the past 12 months, reducing headcounts across the board (including the HR and resourcing departments). There is a growing focus on managing recruitment (and all of HR) on a business basis. Key measurements (metrics) on cost-per-hire and time-to-hire (or time-to-fill) are putting more pressure on HR to perform as a business partner, reducing costs (agencies, advertising, internal staff) while increasing the quality of hires.

    Adding to the recruitment (and retention) challenge is the tendency for candidates and employees to expect more, while at the same time being less loyal to their employer.

    Then there is the burden of ever-encroaching European and UK employment-related legislation. Human resources departments must now cope with an increasingly complicated employment landscape. The legislative list includes: Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Working Time Directive, Employment Agencies Act, Agency Workers Directive and a range of diversity legislation.

    Whatever the approach to finding candidates, there is no doubt that the internet is here to stay as an integral part of an overall recruitment strategy. And, equally as important, the tools that have been developed utilising internet-based technologies can deliver significant process, cost and time savings throughout the recruitment chain of events. Traditional recruitment advertising media companies will develop new internet-based services as the use of the internet as a primary means of attracting candidates increases.

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    Why do we have this shift to online recruitment?

    The UK is unique in the world in its dependence on print media and recruitment consultancies (8,000 plus, turning over £18.4bn in 2001) to deliver candidates. Specialist recruitment advertising agencies manage campaigns in vertical market publications, the national broadsheets and the local press.

    The UK recruitment advertising market was worth £1.15bn in 2001, with £250m being spent in the nationals, £300m in the business press and £600m in the local press. The £80m spent on direct internet recruitment advertising in the UK represents only 6% of the total recruitment advertising spend.

    But this is set to change.

    Recruiters will have to respond to the economic and cultural shifts and the pressures discussed above, as well as the increasing sophistication of the tools and technology of the internet. The corporate HR manager has to become more self-sufficient and review the traditional reliance on the recruitment consultancy and print media while reducing the costs of external services.

    At the same time, traditional recruitment service providers are changing their services to integrate with the internet. For example, while £80m was spent on direct internet recruitment advertising in the UK in 2001, internet service Yahoo claimed that £165.7m was spent during the same period on UK websites for brand promotion. This highlights the trend for recruitment advertising away from traditional job listings to more advertising of company brands.

    Job boards have become an accepted 'third way' of recruiting for the corporate customer. From their humble beginnings as electronic classified advertising sites in 1994, the job boards have become true 'candidate and job opportunity pools'. Increasingly sophisticated technology is in use for both the candidate and the recruiter. Job advert creation, cross-posting and automatic job renewals, candidate administration and tracking, screening and sifting tools are all commonly available. The largest boards have been spending massive amounts to build up candidate pools, not only in the UK but with broader European and global reach. Candidates are kept informed with daily alerts on specific jobs by e-mail or SMS messaging to mobile phones, and they can even be 'auto-matched' to their ideal job, without having to continuously re-enter details.

    Corporate sites now include all the technology pioneered by the job boards and by the recruitment systems vendors. It is possible to have a fully functional corporate careers site up and running in less than 48 hours, with jobs posted, candidates responding and interviews scheduled in a controlled and technically sophisticated environment.

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    Will e-recruitment actually work for me?

    Your ability to use the internet successfully is governed by many factors:

    Your industry - what is the availability of candidates online?

    Your technical resources - including IT systems and the people to run them

    Commitment - moving to a new way of recruiting is a difficult process which needs the commitment of all involved. Executive management, line management, IT, sales, marketing, finance and HR must all be on board

    Recruitment resources - is your recruitment team flexible and adaptable to change?

    Knowledge - expertise in using the online techniques and technology must be available, either internally or from a reputable external organisation

    Training - the recruitment team will need adequate training in new processes and systems

    What about the candidate?

    Perhaps this is a good time to remember why job seekers go online.

    First, it is easier, faster and more convenient to post a CV or search a job site online than to read a selection of print media. The selection of job opportunities is usually greater, with a broader geographic range. If a candidate wanted a dog-walking job in Los Angeles for the summer, it is far easier to find information online than by buying the LA Times. Candidates can be more specific in a job search, utilising sophisticated search terms and technology to narrow the search, rather than being constrained by the structures dictated by print media layout. And, of course, it is a much more efficient process, with more information able to be accessed relative to the time invested and the information is centralised easily into one location - the candidate's laptop.


    UK e-recruitment on the increase

    50% employers use e-recruitment techniques

    compared to 17% three years ago

    Middle management vacancies up to 69%

    compared to 28% two years ago

    Junior management vacancies up to 72%

    compared to 29% two years ago

    43% utilise corporate recruitment site

    compared to 13% in Winter 1999

    25% use third party sites

    down from 40%

    Source: Recruitment Confidence Index Sept 2002

     

    What the largest companies are doing

    100%

    of large US-based organisations (10,000+ employees) use the internet to post job adverts

    96%

    report using an on-line company profile as a part of their employer of choice marketing plan

    74%

    of these large organisations use some form of advanced on-line CV mining or intelligent search tools

    Source: Forrester Research and the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC)

    Global 500 use of corporate websites

    91%

    of the top 500 global companies use corporate websites for recruiting

     

    An increase of 62 percent in 4 years

    29%

    of Global 500 companies recruited online in 1998

    Source: iLogos Research in May 2002

     


    Why your company should use the internet for recruitment

  • People using the internet are the people you want to employ

  • It helps you find and process qualified candidates faster

  • 24 x 7 recruitment: The internet campaign never rests!

  • There are no geographical limits

  • Reduces the administrative burden on the HR department

  • Reduces the time to interview the best candidates

  • Reduces the time to hire

  • Reduces the cost per hire

  • Provides a better candidate experience

  • Positive internal impact (staff working environment)

  • Positive external impact (brand/image for clients and candidates)

     

    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 six: Looking ahead

    Section seven: Case studies

    Section eight: Legal issues when recruiting online

    Section nine: Research on online recruitment

    Section ten: Resources

    Section eleven: Jargon buster