Introduction
The use of e-recruitment as an alternative human resource is taking the world by storm. There is almost a universal consensus that this method is ideal for any serious business today. This literature review is just but an overview of its development process to date identifies its merits and demerits and thus paves the way for more insightful analysis.
E- Recruiting empirical works and development
According to Margaret (n.d.) internet recruitment, first, saves applicants time for actual submission and posting thereby boosting the respondent speed of application; enhancing acknowledgement, processing and screening of applications electronically. It also expands the pool of qualified job seekers that can be accessed and allows applicants enough time to learn the organizational culture. Finally, it increases the marketability of a firm thereby helping in the hiring process decentralization. However, this method suffers from its exclusion of facial interaction, lack of confidentially and its low quality and voluminous resumes which lowers the response rate. She, therefore, concluded that the guiding principle should be to get qualified and committed persons who will ensure timely service delivery. She recommended that for an effective recruitment process, companies should use the corporate website to increase job seekers interest in the firm, emphasize the importance of specialized job sites; and use print media only to arouse job seekers attention.
Anna (2010) on determining the impact of introducing e-recruitment on the process and underlying tasks observed that this process lowers the advertisement cost, data availability and accessibility; it reaches a wider group at reduced communication costs thereby increasing organizational attraction for the right candidates. However, it is usually regarded as porous and with limited confidentiality, lack personalized interaction and attention and increases overloading with low-quality resume thereby compromising the quality of candidates. She concluded that e-recruitment negatively changes a firm’s operational sequence, divisibility and increases duplication of subtasks and tasks. She recommended that recruiters should be aware of the quality demands of online communication and share this between applicants, and recruitment professionals.
Girard & Bernard (2009) noted that major challenges of the recruitment process currently should be: the need for increased flexibility and responsiveness, communication modes complexity and surrendering of baby boomers. These challenges increase pressures of achieving human resource vision of being flexible, strategic, customer-oriented and efficient. They concluded that the use of Web 1.0 was more generalized and insufficient compared to Web 2.0 in developing employer branding, reputation and creation of relationships with potential employees. They recommended a more insightful analysis of these two tools based on reputation, security issues and privacy and recruitment process. They also suggested more scrutiny into the contribution of Web 2.0 on the professional recruitment process and finally final testing of the model in other continents like Europe to help understand the differences in process of recruitment.
Rosita & Nadianatra (2006) acknowledged that the growth of digital hiring and recruiting has received immense growth in Malaysia. They noted that use the of any recruitment style depended mainly on the cost of reaching potential candidates, organizational culture and time involved. Nevertheless, they concluded that e-recruitment increases a firm image saves on recruitment time and is thus cost-effective. They noted that major limitations were the risk of resumes overload, its suitability for junior staff hiring only, discrimination as it requires better knowledge of computers and finally its limitation to only internet users.
Linder (2006) accepted that technology has increased global interaction between corporate websites, job seekers and suppliers. She acknowledged that online recruitment increases attraction, selection and focus management attention on the right candidates for the job; it also enhances efficient candidate management. However, the system usually suffers from human resource personnel incompetence, demoralizes fresh graduates; enhances the loss of personal touch and finally its characterization of being voluminous and with unqualified applications. She recommended that to make e-recruitment work better, proper stakeholder consultation, a simpler application process, and feedback gathering from applicants be encouraged.
Wendy & Charles (2008) noted that e-recruiting has offered an easy alternative to a human resource professional. The process should be sub-grouped into general-purpose and niche job boards, hybrid recruiting service providers, application service providers, recruiting consortiums, and corporate career Web sites. These classifications allowed employers to achieve greater efficiency through easier selection from a diverse pool of job applicants. Interestingly, they acknowledged that social networking sites like Facebook are being targeted by recruiters to find free candidates, verify candidates’ credentials and find more in-depth information, not in the resume. They concluded that the increased usage of e-recruitment is reflected in the decrease in the use of traditional methods of recruitment.
References
- Girard, A & Bernard, F 2009, E-recruitment. New practices, new issues, exploratory study.
- Linder, B 2006, E-recruitment development.
- Margaret, R n.d., Recruitment strategies: Managing/effecting the recruitment process.
- Rosita, M & Nadianatra, M 2006, ‘E- recruitment practice: pros vs. cons’, Public Sector ICT Management Review, vol. 1 no. 1, pp. 35-40.
- Wendy, W & Charles, M 2008, ‘E-recruitment’, Journal of Organizational Leadership & Business.