Synopsis e Recruitment

SYNOPSIS

TOPIC: E-Recruiting Revolutionizing the Hiring Process

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:

i. Measure the effectiveness of various online recruitment tools in getting the suitable candidate for

the job

ii. Determine the benefits and the challenges that the company face while using internet for

recruitment process.

iii. Determine changes or the precautions that the company need to take for effective use of

technology in the recruitment process

INSTRUMENT – A questionnaire.

TARGET POPULATION – Four sectors, namely

I.T

Banking/Financial

Hospitality

Consulting Sector

SAMPLE SIZE – 20(5 companies per sector)

SAMPLING METHOD : For the research, Convenience Sampling on the basis of availability of

contacts was used both in selecting both sectors and companies per sector.

DATA SOURCES –

Primary Data:

Questionnaire

Interview

Secondary Data:

Internet Websites

Journals

Magazines

INTRODUCTION

AMITY INTERNATIONAL; BUSINESS SCHOOL

ONLINE RECRUITMENT – AN OVERVIEW

There was a time when situations vacant columns in newspapers were pored over by job hunters. Those

were the days when getting a job was not only more than just an uphill battle, it was something of a

miracle. Surely times have changed. Technology has truly revolutionized the way businesses work. Not

only do job hunters have a wider range of options before them, the way they go about searching for that

ideal job is markedly different from their predecessors. The Internet has created a massive platform on

which vacant posts can be advertised by companies across the world. Prospective candidates can now

sift through thousands of job offers and pick at their leisure.

Online-recruitment or e- recruitment is the process of personnel recruitment using electronic

resources, in particular the internet. It is the use of technology or the web based tools to assist the

recruitment process. The tool can be either a job website like naukri.com, the organisation’s corporate

web site or its own intranet.

The growth of use of online recruitment tools is getting wider. The use of networking sites, blogs, etc. as a

recruitment tool are giving platform to HR professionals to hire the right person by interacting with people

from diverse geographies.

ONLINE RECRUITMENT TOOLS

Blogs - A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual

with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online

diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media

related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part

of many blogs.

There are many different types of blogs, such as Personal Blogs, Corporate Blogs, Question Blogging,

blogs defined by media type, by device or by genre type.These blogs differ not only in the type of content,

but also in the way that content is delivered or written.

A blog is more than just a tool to vent an individual’s feelings. It has also become an excellent medium to

communicate, share ideas and most of all, spot prospective employees. Corporate recruiters are surfing

blogs to unearth candidates, expand their talent pool and gaining insights that they can’t get from

resumes and interviews. A blog can be an effective tool to let the recruiter’s gauge into someone’s

attitude quite easily. Corporate recruiter agree that blogs give a unique perspective of a candidate’s


personality that otherwise would have been difficult to assess. Individual blogs aometimes also highlights

his/her career aspirations and thereby allowing the recruiter to gain clear visibility on the candidate’s job

interest. This practice is still in its nascent stage and “Hiring by Blog” is a practice that looks set to be the

newest hiring trend.

Social Networking Sites - A social networking site focuses on building online communities of people

who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of

others.

Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking

websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be

an enduring part of everyday life. Few of the popular sites are ‘MySpace’ and ‘Facebook’( in North

America); ‘Nexopia’ (mostly in Canada); ‘Bebo’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Hi5’, ‘MySpace’, ‘Tagged’, ‘Xing’ and

‘Skyrock’ (in parts of Europe); ‘Orkut’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Hi5’ (in South America and Central America); and

‘Friendster’, ‘Orkut’, ‘Xiaonei’ and ‘Cyworld’ in (Asia and the Pacific Islands).

Social networks connect people at low cost. LinkedIn is a sns (social networking site) particularly used by

jobseekers. It is a tool used to link users to people they may have worked with in the past through various

jobs or institutions. Users also have the opportunity to link to certain companies they aspire to work with.

The use of networking sites as a recruitment tool has been effective because of the number of middle and

senior level professionals one finds on these networks which otherwise are usually hard to come by on

large employment portals. These sites, especially the business-oriented social networking sites, provide

instant credibility to a professional’s profile, with the referrals and recommendations of the person, thus

aiding recruiters in captivating their mindshare. It also help the recruiters learn more about the behavioral

aspects and preferences of the candidates. For recruiters, social networking sites come to rescue when

one is looking out for candidates possessing niche skils or for roles based in alien geographies. Thus,

today many job seekers and recruiters in India are making use of sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook,

Orkut, Hi5, Yaari, Fropper, Ryze, Xing, etc., to identify the right and potential candidates, including

international talent, at minimal cost. These tools also help in tapping passive candidates, who are not

actively looking for job opportunity. Thus these tools are becoming an important part in the recruitment

process.

Job Portals - Job search is one of the popular categories in classifieds. It is difficult for one to search in

Print classifieds, hence job portals have becoming very popular in India.

A job portal/ job search engine is a website that facilitates job hunting. These sites are more commonly

known as job boards and range from large scale generalist boards to niche job boards for categories such

as engineering, legal, insurance, social work, teaching and seasonal jobs. Users can typically deposit


their résumés and submit them to potential employers, while employers can post job ads and search for

potential employees. Online recruitement portals can also offer candidate management tools, useful in

gathering a large amount of information on potential candidates. They may offer questionnaires or tests

for applicants that can be used for competency profiling and skill auditing processes. This can enable the

building of a talent bank that you can use to fill further vacancies in the future.

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

allow member companies to post job vacancies. Alternatively, candidates can upload a résumé to be

included in searches by member companies. 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).

A more recent trend in job search engines is the emergence of vertical search or metasearch engines,

which allows job-seekers to search across multiple websites. The success of jobs search engines in

bridging the gap between job seekers and employers have spawned thousands of other job sites. There

are reportedly more than 40,000 employment websites in existence today.

Company Website - Larger employers tend to undertake their own in-house recruitment, using their

human resources department. In addition to coordinating with the agencies mentioned above, in-house

recruiters may advertise job vacancies on their own websites, coordinate internal employee referrals,

work with external associations, trade groups and/or focus on campus graduate recruitment.

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

improve the speed by which job 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. Many big and small organizations are using Internet as a source

of recruitment. They advertise job vacancies through worldwide web. The job seekers send their

applications or curriculum vitae (CV) through an e-mail using the Internet. Alternatively job seekers place

their CV’s in worldwide web, which can be drawn by prospective employees depending upon their

requirements


ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES OF E-RECRUITMENT

There are many benefits – both to the employers and the job seekers but the e-recruitment is not free

from a few shortcomings. Some of the advantages and the disadvantages of e- recruitment are as

follows:

Advantages of E-Recruitment are:

Lower costs to the organization. Also, posting jobs online is cheaper than advertising in the

newspapers.

No intermediaries

Reduction in the time for recruitment (over 65 percent of the hiring time).

Facilitates the recruitment of right type of people with the required skills.

Improved efficiency of recruitment process.

Gives a 24*7 access to an online collection of resumes.

Online recruitment helps the organisations to weed out the unqualified candidates in an

automated way

Recruitment websites also provide valuable data and information regarding the compensation

offered by the competitors etc. which helps the HR managers to take various HR decisions like

promotions, salary trends in industry etc.

Disadvantages of Online Recruitment

Screening and checking the skill mapping and authenticity of million of resumes is a problem and

time consuming exercise for organizations.

There is low Internet penetration and no access and lack of awareness of internet in many

locations across India.

Organisations cannot be dependant solely and totally on the online recruitment methods.

In India, the employers and the employees still prefer a face-to-face interaction rather than sending e-

mails. Therefore, to conclude, it can be said that e-recruitment is the “Evolving face of recruitment


PROBLEM STATEMENT

The growth of use of online recruitment tools is getting wider. The use of networking sites, blogs, etc. as a

recruitment tool are giving platform to HR professionals from diverse geographies to interact with each

other, and hire the right talent. These sites, especially the business-oriented social networking sites,

provide instant credibility to a professional’s profile, with the referrals and recommendations of the person,

thus aiding recruiters in captivating their mindshare. Thus, today many job seekers and recruiters in India

are making use of sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Orkut, Big Adda, Hi5, Brijj, Yaari, Fropper, Ryze,

Xing, etc., to identify the right and potential candidates, including international talent, at minimal cost.

Blogs can be an effective tool to let the recruiters gauge into someone’s attitude quite easily. These tools

also help in tapping passive candidates, who are not actively looking for job opportunity. Thus these tools

are becoming an important part in the recruitment process.

Thus the research was conducted to find out how effective these recruitment tools are and what are the

challenges that the company faces, while recruiting people through internet.

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE ORGANISATION WHILE USING ONLINE RECRUITMENT TOOLS IN

RECRUITMENT PROCESS.

Need to be cautious of dubious information. Risk of fraud or mirepresentation is higher.

Sometimes it becomes difficult for the organisations to filter resumes.

Authentication of employee skills can be cumbersome. All the qualities cannot be judged.

Number of non serious applicants.

It is difficult to conduct situation tests, which are essential in some of the organizations.

Suitable candidates might not have access to internet, as internet penetration in India is very

low.

One to one or direct interaction is not possible.

Reliability of a person in not better then Employee Referrals.

Most of the candidates there on internet are available to other competitors as well.


SUGGESTIONS

Integrate e-recruitment into your overall recruitment strategy

A detailed job description should be given while posting jobs to attract candidates with the right

skill sets.

To measure the effectiveness of online recruitment, set up the metrics for recruitment spending.

Do measure your Return on Investment. There's plenty of software that will show the

organizations where its vacancy site is failing and where it could be improved. Organization’s can

even discover if emails to their talent pool are being opened or not.

Ensure that all the approaches related to recruitment are linked to and centered on your own

recruitment site.

Give a precise and unambiguous questionnaire to reduce time in searching for a suitable

candidate.

Advertise in sites that match your requirements in terms of location, target group, geography and

demographics

Don’t be afraid of experimenting with new recruitment tools

To save time while recruiting online, it will be beneficial if the organization plans in advance, know

what they want to achieve be prepared to experiment, work out what works and what doesn't and

ignore the fluff.


CONCLUSIONS

It can be concluded from the research that online recruitment tools has gained a lot of popularity in recent

times and is now used by almost all the companies for their recruitment process. It is now largely been

accepted as one of the method of recruiting people.

The most popular online recruitment tool is the company’s website, which is followed by recruiting people

through job portals like Naukri.com, Monster.com, etc.

Blogs are the least popular online recruitment tool, as a large percentage of organizations do not make

use of it for recruiting purpose. The financial sector is not at all using this as a recruitment tool. Using

blogs for recruitment process is still in nascent stage in India.

The various advantages that the organizations see for using the online recruitment tools are its less time

and effort to implement, cost effectiveness, increase in the pool of applicants, quicker turnaround time.

Few of the shortcomings of using online recruitment tools that the organizations feel is its inability to

recruit people at all levels, especially at top level, not able to help in decreasing the chances of

discrimination. Because of all these problems and limitations, online recruitment cannot be seen as the

only source of recruitment in majority of the organizations.

Overall it was seen that online recruitment helps in finding the right candidate for the right job most of the

times and it is perceived as a good source of recruitment. Also it can be concluded that these tools are an

effective means of recruiting people, but these tools have to be used in congruence with the other

recruitment tools, as these tools if used as the only source of recruitment, will not be able to give the

organizations with the expected results or outcomes.


Documents

Synopsis e Recruitment