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Feature
E-recruitment is here to stay
Despite low Internet penetration, online recruitment in India
is likely to pick up momentum due to speed and cost benefits, says Vinutha
V
 A Bangalore-based
software major was in urgent need of professionals with a unique set of skills
to develop a financial planning package. Initially, headhunters were approached,
and recruitment ads were placed in newspapers. The response was discouraging
and the company was able to meet only a handful of people in India, who matched
the requisite skill mix. It decided to opt for an alternative—posting the
job on its website and online databases. The result was instantaneous, the company
was inundated with applications from across the country and other geographies
(people were willing to relocate to India).
Online recruitment facilitates just-in-time hiring. When an organisation needs
a candidate it can access the database of job portals, screen resumes and send
a mass mail. It can also shortlist people based on skills, location, salary
and availability and move on to the interview stage.
A matter of flexibility
The traditional boundaries that separated print media, job boards, recruitment
advertising agencies, recruitment consultancies and technology companies are
breaking down. Resume databases have been increasing manifold and the availability
of a database (number of candidates) is much higher than what manual recruitment
modes can offer. Dhruvakanth B Shenoy, Vice President-Marketing, Asia, Monster.com
India says, “The growth in the e-recruitment industry has been fuelled
with the adoption of technology by prospective employers and Internet penetration.
Organisations have cut costs by almost 80 percent over traditional recruitment
modes by moving over to the online recruitment process.” Manual recruitment
process has its own limitation in terms of time, cost, technology, wider platform
and ease of applications. Raghuveer Sakuru, Managing Director of Kenexa Technologies
says, “The costs involved in manual recruiting process include advertising
costs, the cost of hiring a placement agency, administrative expenses and the
cost of time. Recruiting online would ideally be more focussed, fast paced,
effective and give higher RoI (Return on Investment) on the administrative expense.”
By breaking geographical boundaries, online recruitment gives maximum reach.
On the contrary, to get similar benefits through the manual recruitment process
one has to devote more resources.
Online recruitment offers candidates the advantage of knowing
the job profile, responsibilities expected and the nature of the organisation,
which are well defined at the outset. Regular communication with potential employees
in the manual recruitment process is almost nil, whereas communication with
job seekers and within the team is seamless in online recruitment. “It
takes a while for the manual recruitment process to become operational and yield
results whereas in e-recruitment, one can look at the first response to a job
advertisement in just 20 minutes,” claims Shenoy.
- To measure the effectiveness of online recruitment, set up the metrics
for recruitment spending.
- A detailed job description should be given while posting jobs to
attract candidates with the right skill sets.
- Give a precise and unambiguous questionnaire to reduce time in searching
for a suitable candidate.
- Ensure that all the approaches related to recruitment are linked
to and centred on your own recruitment site.
- Integrate e-recruitment into your overall recruitment strategy.
- Applicant tracking system should be of a high quality and should
be integrated with the back-office.
- Develop a comprehensive website to receive and process job applications
whether through direct or online advertising.
Source: Industry experts
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Talent search
With a shortage of IT professionals with specific skills, scouting for talent
becomes a major challenge. With the help of various technical tools available
in the online recruitment process, it is easier for both job seekers and employers
to look for a particular technology, language and projects they prefer. Anuj
Kumar, Vice President-HR of Induslogic says, “In the IT services industry
too, it is a popular tool with candidates seeking change. Sometime back, we
were planning to hire people for 4D Macintosh platform (stores the definitions
of all the objects such as layouts, scripts, procedures and custom menus created
in the design environment). We however had no clue whether this skill was available
in the market. By doing a simple search over the Internet, we came across qualified
candidates for the same and we hired them.” Companies have become their
own agencies, inviting ‘passive’ job seekers into a database for future
consideration when roles become available. Companies with high turnover divisions
such as call centres have been the first to recognise the cost benefits of having
a pool of available, pre-screened talent at their disposal.
For entry and mid-levels
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In the IT services industry, they [tools aiding online recruitment] are
popular with candidates seeking change
Anuj Kumar Vice President-HR Induslogic
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The growth in e-recruitment industry has been fuelled thanks to the adoption
of technology by prospective employers and the Internet penetration
Dhruvakanth B Shenoy Vice President-Marketing, Asia Monster.com India
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Recruiting online would ideally be more focussed, fast paced, effective
and give a higher RoI (Return on Investment)
Raghuveer Sakuru Managing Director Kenexa Technologies
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Although e-recruitment caters to jobs at all levels, it is largely useful in
exploring people at entry and mid-tier levels. As the base of candidates looking
for these positions is very huge, the online recruitment process comes in handy
for administering standard evaluation tests for screening and evaluation. For
hiring senior professionals, online recruitment process does help in seeking
the required skill sets and qualification, but the screening and evaluation
is not done online. Corroborating this Shenoy says, “Monster and Jobsahead.com
cater to all career levels. In our database, about 31 percent belong to the
entry level, 54 percent to mid-level and only 4 percent to senior level, including
positions such as president, vice president, general manager and director.”
A wider reach
There has been a paradigm shift in the hiring process through
online recruitment. In particular, accessing profiles from any corner of the
globe, real-time communication and online automated assessment. Online corporate
recruitment features include video profiles, virtual office tours, online presentations
and interactive tests. These value-adds enable a firm to make a benchmarked
peer comparison on a one-on-one basis and understand a prospective candidate’s
suitability for a job. It has also increased the visibility for candidates on
the options available in the market and reduced the recruitment cost drastically
while improving the turnaround time. Online recruiting alsogives equal opportunity
to all job seekers irrespective of their background.
- It is much faster than traditional modes of recruitment.
- One can post a job online in just 20 minutes and receive resumes
within minutes of the job going live.
- Access an online pool of resumes on a 24X7 basis.
- It allows the hiring manager to screen out unqualified candidates
in an automated way, which saves over 65 percent of the hiring time.
- One can track the progress that the candidate is making in various
stages of the hiring process.
Source: Monster.com
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Disadvantages of e-recruitment
E-recruitment is not without its share of problem areas.
Through the e-recruitment process, employers are inundated with millions of
resumes; screening and checking the authenticity of resumes are two major problem
areas.
John Winchester, Vice President Engineering, Impetus Technologies says, “In
the traditional methods of recruitment, consultants did the authenticity check
initially and saved time and effort. Sometimes applicants who post their resumes
online are not active job seekers. In such a scenario, companies fail to keep
a track of them and their contact details.”
Despite the IT boom in the country, there is low Internet penetration in many
locations. Organisations are still hesitant to completely switch over to an
online recruitment process because of the limited penetration of the Internet.
Giving an analogy, Debasish Das, Vice President-HR and Training, Keane Worldzen
says, “Imagine a person sitting in Gangtok video-conferencing with an MNC
in Mumbai for a job. Sadly, for now, it’s just in the land of imagination.”
He further adds that more emphasis should be given for greater
penetration of the Internet and the advantages of communications-related infrastructure
should be as obvious as that of other physical infrastructure such as roads.
A significant drawback of the evolution of technology is the loss of human interaction,
which is applicable to the online recruitment process. In India, the cultural
shift is a challenge in the e-recruitment space, as organisations prefer to
deal with people rather than e-mails.
Online recruitment is here to stay. A Nasscom study indicates
that jobs and matrimonials will be among the top reasons why new users will
come on to the Internet, besides e-mail. A majority of IT companies still depend
on traditional recruitment processes. However, the traditional recruitment process
may fail in key parameters of time and cost advantage to the recruiter.
vinutha@expresscomputeronline.com
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