Emerging Trends In Recruitment Commerce Essay

Internet evolution is affecting our working and personal life in various aspects and no one can say the contrary. One of the areas that the internet has recently and strongly been involved in is Recruitment & Selection, as a medium between job seekers and companies since global competition persists and industries becoming more skill intensive, the recruitment of talent workers becomes essential (Yoon, 2009 adapted from Tong and Sivanand, 2005), and attracting the right applicants at the right time is getting tougher than ever. The use of conventional recruitment methods no longer suffices and timely to attract sufficient pool of qualified applicants. Many organizations have turned to adopting sophisticated recruitment strategies or combining various recruitment methods to attract them such as the E-Recruitment.

Since recruitment has become the most challenging human resources (HR) function across all industries today, the need of the hour is to shift from traditional reactive recruiting toward more proactive recruiting, by clearly understanding the various factors of the recruitment market (Parmesh, date).

In early-1990s, with the advancement of internet technology, many have witnessed the transformation of the conventional recruitment methods to online recruitment. Some corporate companies even use their web sites to recruit people while others capitalized this change to become e-recruitment service providers. This latter “third-party” e-recruitment business thrived to become the second most popular online business besides booking airline tickets, in United States and Europe. This business trends was later caught up in South-east Asia and Asia Pacific (Yoon adapted from Labanyi, 2002; Galanaki, 2002; Fisher, 2001; Gomolski, 2000; Joyce, 2002; Dixon, 2000). (Adapted from Weiss and Barbeite (2001) focused on reactions to Internet-based job sites. They discovered that the Internet was evidently favoured as a source of finding jobs.

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An examination of the literature on the various aspect of e-recruitment will allow us some insight and better understanding. When doing literature research many studies focused mainly on the applicant side or only on corporate side; in this study we will investigate both aspect in order to have a broad understanding of e-recruitment development.

Emerging trends in Recruitment

Recruitment is now about customer relationship management. Applicant’s needs has changed and preferred an individual relationship with the employer. We talk about “war for talent”, and now the most advanced guerrilla fighters using the latest weapons. It is a “zero sum” game between your company and everyone else competing for similar talent. Up to 25% of existing e-Recruitment traders will be purchased or go out of business in the next 3 years (Gartner Q4 Report 2004 accessed on http://www.specht.com.au)

Many companies are moving away of conventional recruitment methods. The new methods followed by companies are outsourcing, poaching/raiding and e-recruitment.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a process of transferring a business function to an external service provider. In recruitment out sourcing, a company completely transfers the selection process or part of it to a third party. The outsourcing enterprises assist the organisation by the preliminary screening of the applicants according to the requests of the organization and creating an appropriate pool of talent for the ultimate selection by the organization. Outsourcing firms extend their human resource group by employing people for them. These human resource pools will be made accessible to various companies as per their requirements.

Poaching/Raiding

Raiding or poaching is a method of recruitment in which competing firms attract employees from rival firms. In simple terms poaching may be described as buying talent rather than developing. Hefty pay packages, other terms and conditions may attract employees to join new Organizations. Poaching is a big challenge for human resource managers. Poaching weakens the Organizations competitive strength because of employees’ migration.

E-Recruitment

E-Recruitment is the latest trend in recruitment. It is also known as online recruitment. Internet is the back bone for E-Recruitment. Companies advertise job vacancies on different websites. Exclusive job websites like naukr.com, monster.com, etc help both job seekers and companies to contact each other. A 24×7 access to the database of the resumes to the employers is provided by these job sites which facilitate organizations to hire people more rapidly. Every Company website usually provides ‘career’ hyper link. This link helps job seekers to upload resume in the website. Using the uploaded resumes Companies can build their own resume database, which can be used for existing and future requirements. Online recruitment helps the organizations to automate the process of recruitment, which allow saving on time and costs.

Traditional way v/s E-way

In recent years, the traditional approach to recruitment has been revolutionized by the concept of online recruitment. Although Internet recruiting will not replace traditional recruiting in the near future, it is quickly becoming an essential aid for today’s recruiters. Online recruitment varies from conventional recruitment in many ways this has been stressed by some authors.

In this area, some researchers have compared between internet recruitment tools and traditional recruitment tools. A survey which was carried out by Galanaki (2002) , found out that internet agencies provide the company with fewer but substantially better applicants than traditional recruitment agencies. On the same side, a research conducted by Verhoeven and Williams (2008) reports on a study into internet recruitment and selection in the United Kingdom and the survey showed dwindling recruitment spends focused on web-based recruitment at the expense of traditional methods. The author also reported that online methods proved far more popular, as majority firms use their own company’s website was used as a recruitment tool for most jobs.

Kapse et al (2012), a study conducted by Connerley, Carlson, & Mecham (2003) on the evidence of differences in applicant pool quality addressed the research need by examining the attraction outcome of firms competing head-to-head for recruits for similar positions. Results of an analysis suggest that applicant quality can vary substantially within and across job families Chapman and Webster (2003) in their survey research on the use of technologies in recruiting, screening, and selection processes for job candidates conducted in USA found that most organizations implemented technology based recruitment and selection tools to improve efficiency, enable new assessment tools, reduce costs, standardize systems and expand the applicant pool.

From the applicant opinion, (Maysara (2010) adapted from Rooy and Fairchild (2003) and Rozelle and Landis (2002)) contrasted between job searching by internet tools and traditional tools in terms of the number of jobs that were found and candidate perception of success in the job searching process. The jobs that were found by traditional recruitment tools were less in the number than the ones found by internet tools only. The results of this study encouraged the authors to argue that jobseekers that use this technological advance in their job search are in a good competitive position compared to their peers who do not use it.

Diverging from the four previous studies’ results, Maysara (2010) adapted from Zusman and Landis (2002) found that job applicants reported high preference for the jobs posted in the traditional recruitment sources e.g. paper than the ones posted on the website. The result was not expected for the authors. In addition, and consistent with applicant attraction studies, they found that applicants prefer the high quality recruitment websites than the low quality websites.

While comparing the traditional recruitment and the internet recruitment people sometimes finds that they are both almost alike in what they have to offer, however, as we can notice in Table 1, the process is different between the two.

E-Recruitment

Defining E-Recruitment

E-recruitment is a means of using information technology (IT) to perform, speed up or improves this process. EHRM system and its subsystems, such as e-recruitment, produce a higher level of service delivery and a better strategic contribution. E-recruitment emerges as a handy and advantageous method over traditional methods of recruitment (Poorangi et al adapted from Tong and Sivanand, 2005), as it brings all benefits of an e-business into the human resource field and improves the efficiencies of the recruitment process.

There are diverse meanings of electronic recruitment coined by well-known researchers. Commonly E-Recruitment is defined as:

According to Wolfswinkel ‘e-Recruiting is the online attraction and identification of potential employees using corporate or commercial recruiting websites, electronic advertisements on other websites, or an arbitrar combination of these channels including optional methods such as remote interviews and assessments, smart online search agents or interactive communication tools between recruiter and applicant.’

“E-Recruitment also known as online recruitment, Internet recruiting or cyber-recruiting refers to the practice of advertising job vacancies online, also is the process of integration of the recruitment and internet technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness in hiring the new employers from all over the world ” (Galanki, 2002)

E-recruitment Hiring Process

The Hiring Process means carrying out a full series of functions in addition to simple recruitment. It means making a choice and deciding if the company feels that any of the candidates meet the requirements of the specific job and, if so, hiring that person. The next step is closing the deal and having the new employee join the company and fit in within the existing company culture. This means that once the company’s hiring policies have been clearly defined, there is a process, which we call the “Hiring Process” that may be broken down into the theses stages as you can see in the following figure. Figure 1.3 illustrates the staffing processes involved in recruitment of staff and e-recruitment can be brought about in any or all of these main processes.

Figure 1.2 E-Recruitment Hiring Process

Source: Damhija 2012

Global E-recruitment market

E-recruitment has been an issue of interest over the past ten years. Internet is considered as the latest tool in hiring. It is a real revolution spreading over the world of job hunting & hiring. The term online recruitment, e-recruitment, cyber recruiting, or internet recruiting, imply the formal sourcing of job information online. The first references to e-recruitment appear in articles of the mid-1980s E-recruitment can be divided into two types of uses: corporate web site for recruitment and commercial jobs boards (such as monster.com) for posting job advertisements .Corporate websites are a company’s own website with a link for job posting/career options where candidates can log into for current openings. If the company advertises its vacant positions on other website that specialize in recruitment such as – naukri.com, timesjob.com, monster.com, etc., the companies would be adopting commercial job boards for recruitment.

Development of E-Recruitment

E-recruitment will expand but not replace the face to face selection stage smaller companies will be able to afford these technologies interactive, voice-based systems online portfolios including samples of your work testing tool.

Methods of E-Recruitment

Lievens & Harris (2003) define E-recruitment as ‘any method of persuading candidates to apply for a position that relies greatly on the Internet’. We can say that Internet recruitment is not a method itself and therefore can be misunderstood sometimes since there are several of different approaches to Internet recruitment. Dhamija (2012) says that, in order to find active or passive candidates, e-recruitment has come up with valuable method for finding these potential candidates and moreover that there is high demand for e-recruitment tools and skilled workers as specified by The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in a report entitled Workplace Trends during 2007-2008. For the purpose of this study, the focus will be given on two common methods of online recruitment which are being used nowadays.

Corporate Website

As said by Pin et al (2001), although jobseekers or those who are looking to switch jobs may think that the most logical path is to simply log their resume on a job site, knowing it will be distributed to a large number of companies in various industries, this is not the only option.

Tyagi. A (2012) describe the use of a corporate website of the organization for posting a job as a link for career options where the potential candidates can log in for the existing opportunities therefore on company’s own website, HR department has a choice of posting the vacancies freely and indicate the career path expected after joining the organisation. But she also pointed out that the corporate website attracts only the interested candidates towards it and for attracting other candidates, other channels should be used.

According to Lievens & Harris (2003) (adapted from Maher & Silverman, 2002), company web sites correspond to one of the primary Internet-based method to employing. Several of these web sites as well offer useful information about the organization, in addition of a system for applying for these jobs. In 2001 a research by iLogos demonstrates that of the Worldwide 500 companies, 88% had a company Internet recruitment site, revealing an important surge from 1998, when only 29% of these companies had such a web site. Approximately all North American Global 500 companies (93%) have a business Internet recruitment site. Most applicants would consider a medium to large size company without a recruitment web site to be somewhat odd; certainly, one report indicated that of 62,000 hires at nine large companies, 16% were initiated at the company Internet recruitment site.

Commercial job portals or Job boards

Many companies have experienced excellent results through Internet recruiting on their own Web site. However, other firms also utilize employment Web sites by simply typing in key job criteria, skills, and experience and indicating their geographic location. They next click Search for Candidates and in seconds have a ranked list of résumés from candidates that match the firm’s requirements. Fees vary from one employment Web site to another, and the number of sites has expanded dramatically in recent years. (http://www.prenhall.com/managementzone/mondyhrm8/mondyhrm8.pdf accessed on 27 August 2012, Chapter 6 Internet recruiting).

According to Pin et al (2001) online job boards are recruitment networks that provide a meeting point for jobseekers and enterprises; hence a job platform acts as a middlemen, enabling job offers to be filled by most suitable candidates by segmenting information and providing real-time updated job offers to candidates. These e-recruitment platforms are normally free for jobseekers and chargeable to companies seeking to recruit, sometimes an annual fee and sometimes a charge per listing. These boards are good for attracting active and passive job seekers, particularly for less recognised companies – but they can also be used as a supplement to the corporate site.

Commercial job boards most common form of online recruiting. Job boards work like classified ads in the newspaper. These are global and allow a larger reach into the candidate pool. The job board’s greatest strength is the total numbers of candidates registering resumes; the estimation is that they contain five million unique resumes (Gutmacher, 2000). Additionally, they allow recruiters to administer 24 hours a day, check candidates from around the world, and are commonly quite low-cost (Boehle, 2000). A key advantage of the job board approach for a company is that lots of individuals send resumes and that most job boards provide a search system so that recruiters can hunt for applicants with the appropriate skills and experience. A second benefit is that an organization can give extensive information, as well as a link to the company’s web site for supplementary information on both i.e. the career path as well as the organizations. The committed recruitment websites can take a structure of job listing websites, which can be look like printed classified advertisements, work wanted sites, which accentuate the prospective employees’ side and finally online recruiters who make use of other websites as a resource for finding clients and customers (Rudich, 2000; Taylor,2001). Lievens & Harris (2003)

Social Networking

Figure 19 below shows the ages of social networkers for Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and LinkedIn. It is interesting to note that from about ages of 24 to over 60, LinkedIn has the highest percentage of users. However its peak is between the ages of 25 and 34, after which it drops off (WebMediaBrands Inc. 2010).

Figure : Percentage of social Networking users across all ages (Web Media Brands Inc 2010)

Although social networking sites have seen tremendous growth in the past few years, according to Michigan State University’s Recruiting Trends 2010-2011, the use of social media for recruiting is still limited to only 28% of the 4,600 employers surveyed, predominantly among larger employers.

Benefits and Costs of E-recruitment

In most relevant literature there are some commonly identified benefits and downsides for the companies using online recruitment. The commonly cited advantages and drawbacks of online recruitment in the literature are as follows:

Benefits of E-recruitment

Reduced Costs

According to Marr (2007) with the print advertising, the size of the advert and the publication itself impacts on the fee of the posting the advertisement whereas with internet advertising even with a small cost associated to it is relatively cheap compared to the potentially unlimited audience of this medium whereas Galanaki (2002) argue that the cost saving depends on the e-mailing approach adopted;

Faster Processes

As said by Galanaki (2002) adapted from Workforce 2000a, online recruitment shortened the recruiting cycle maximising HR time for strategic issues. Barber (2006) also emphasis on the fact that e-recruitment speed up the recruitment process, with instant posting of job online, processing the applications within minutes rather than weeks and response can be quick and direct.

Wider range of applicants

Barber (2006) stressed on the fact that this mean can be access 24 hours a day, 7 days per week; reaching a global applicant group in contrast to ad on national newspaper.

Reputation and Brand

With increased competitiveness in the market and the fear of remaining behind makes many human resource managers to hire through the net. Particularly associated with corporate website, internet recruitment is considered to attribute an image of innovation and flexibility and it also operate as a promoting tool. (Barber 2006; Galanaki 2002)

Attract passive job seekers

Internet recruitment can be used as an instrument to attract the most ‘highly prized catch’ who are not necessarily looking for a job.

Addressing specific labour market niches

Internet is also perceived to be a technique to deal with particular labour market niches during the posting vacancies on websites for particular interest clusters, on electronic forums or discussions groups and this can boost the targeting potential of the medium ( Galanaki, 2002). But Marr (2007) argue that the drawback of this approach is that there is a possible issue for firms with regards to unfairness and equal opportunity employment.

Costs of E-Recruitment

Online recruitment offers tangible business benefits therefore as with all recruitment sources, there are not only exclusive benefits associated to the means but there are also a certain number of existing challenges faced by organisations, particularly in such a mechanised process,. An outline of the common disadvantages associated to e-recruitment will now be presented according to (Marr, 2007; Barber, 2006).

High quantity of application

When a high amount of applications is received, firms can be confronted to a number of real challenges. The negative outcomes of it can be the rising costs in administering recruitment and selection systems. An increase in the number of applications means that more time should be spent in screening the Cv’s since filtering out unsuitable candidate is very resource intensive.

Logistical problems

With online recruitment the best-qualified candidates can live halfway around the world and in such a case, conducting screening interviews by telephone or email have to be considered which limits the expense of a personal meeting. If the process progress forward, it causes the problem of whether it has great significance of bringing the person in for an interview. The valuable time and possibly money will be wasted if it turns out the candidate wasn’t serious about relocating.

Technology issues

When recruitment process requires filling out an application, to miss out qualified candidates who would rather send a resume can be possible. Some candidates may not feel confident enough with the security of applying online. There’s always the likelihood that the application system may function slowly or lose information during the submission process.

Poor website

In several circumstances, candidates who notice job posting will be relying on the website to get further information about the company and method of operation. If website is badly designed or outdated, the candidate may not even bother to reply. There’s also the risk that the site have inappropriate information concerning the candidate’s field.

Too impersonal

It can be perceived as quite impersonal since much of the online recruiting process might implicate emails and probably telephone interviews. When lacking multiple in-person interviews, it can be complicated to determine if candidates will align with the company culture. Candidates may also have a hard time estimating whether the company is the right place for them.

Perception of Jobseeker

The Internet and the Web have revolutionized the way people communicate. This revolution has not only had a radical change on ways of doing business, but also created new business models that did not exist in the past. The range of Internet applications grew fast due to emerging technologies and competitive business pressures. Since 1995, the Internet has witnessed a rapid development of innovative applications. Among these applications are online recruitment, which was adopted by many users worldwide due to the high potentials it brings to both job seekers and employers Azab (2005). Job seekers use third-party recruitment websites or electronic recruitment services to gather job information and post their resumes using Internet technology (Bartram, 2000; Scheyer & McCarter, 1998). Third-party recruitment websites offering Internet-based recruitment services (hereafter “job-search websites”) provide media for connecting employers and job seekers.

According to a study from the write pass journal (2011) which was carried out to discover the advantages of using online recruitment, and techniques in which it could be enhanced, at a leading UK technology firm; it seek to assess factors which influence jobseekers choice when submitting their application to a specific business by means of their corporate website. Moreover it argues that there are various factors affecting this choice such as: the accessibility of an open job opportunity, the corporate website lay out, web presence of the firm through adverts, blogs or web postings, relevant information available about organization and position on the company’s website, the corporate branding of the organization, Previous knowledge of company and its operation, the availability of information on online job boards, participation in events such as career fairs, word of mouth from friends and employees, the easiness for application, online tests, feedback and recruitment process.

In the Table below we can see what are the benefits and problems related to online recruitment from the perspective of Job seekers.

Table 1: Common benefits and drawbacks of Internet recruitment for jobseekers

Advantages Disadvantages

Mauritius Case Study

Mauritius has one of the highest standards of living in Africa. Strong emphasis is being placed on information and communication technology (ICT) as an important engine of economic growth in Mauritius. The National Broadband Policy 2012 – 2020 sets out a strategic vision for a broadband Intelligent Mauritius, branded as “Towards i-Mauritius”. Over one-fifth of Mauritians have are making use of broadband; the adoption is likely to maintain its growth, across diverse demographic clusters and age clusters.

Internet access and usage

Figures from the Statistics Mauritius further point out that in both 2010 and 2008 the use of computer and internet was highest among the young age groups and lowest among the higher age groups. Thus, in 2010, 85.2% of persons aged 12 to 19 were using a computer and 58.3% the internet, and 61.6% of persons aged 20 to 29 were using a computer and 50.7% the internet. Among those aged 50 to 59 years, 23.6% and 17.6% were using a computer and the internet respectively.

According to AHRP magazine 2010 HR pros said that traditional networking and social networking are the most effective ways for professionals to find jobs, as indicated by a survey recently conducted by challenger, gray & Christmas.

Methods of recruitment in Mauritius

In recent years, recruiting services have developed intensively in Mauritius. More and more mediators for employers and candidates are being formed. And currently, all recruitment agencies in Mauritius have online services which allow both employers and candidates to register themselves there. The addresses to be make use of for recruitment services are “DCDM Recruitment” rebranded as ‘Talentaris’ which has its own online job portal named “G3RS.com”, ‘Adecco’ which has merged with ‘Service Bureau and Maujob’ recently and ‘Appavoo Professional Recruitment’, for the online service supported by an adviser as explained above, or “myjob.mu”, “jobsite.mu” which operates only online. They have the benefit of being efficient and specialized.

However in Mauritius, the most commonly used means of communicating information are the newspapers. Thus most employers exploit the press to advertise vacancies. And the response rate for checking the press to find job is quite high because the Mauritian population is very attached to the national press. Yet “L’Express” can also be accessed online at the website of the company. Furthermore there are some radio stations that frequently run announcement for employment. Private radio stations such as Radio One and Radio Plus often announce any job offer in the midst of any emission. Private radio stations have high ratings and with this method, the results are very successful and fast.

Emerging techniques of upcoming job offer

Publications of job either in audio or on posters can be done through advertising agencies. The multinational “Accenture” is often called to encourage applications. When designed by advertising agencies, they have the benefit of the position value and attract the attention of the reader. Their effectiveness is proven through the actual response rate achieved by employers.

Ads may also be webcast on the most visited websites, for example, the homepage of Orange Mauritius, Facebook, etc. Rates vary depending on site and some may even be free, like Facebook. There is a mailing service very fashionable offered by RKcom, but highly not recommended as their service is considered as SPAM and their mail outs usually targeted inappropriate recipients and the mailing service is not free.

Other successful techniques

To find a qualified staff, it is possible to go through the administration of tertiary institutions or training centers. The most famous being University of Mauritius, Charles Telfair Institute, the Centre for Graduate Studies, or Mauritius IVTB Employees Federation.

The Ministry of Labour, through the database of “Labour Office” which register the unemployed people it help the later to find a suitable position. Employers often communicate their vacant jobs through the database facility offered by “Labour Office”. At the request of the employer, “Labour Office” can send the list of candidates seeking employment, by level of education. And in addition, word of mouth is a fairly common in Mauritius. The island is not so big and everyone knows each other. Communications are easily and quickly concluded (Senek 2012).

Study One

Within the study one, emphasis will be given on two components of the organisational perspective that is, firms that use their corporate website to attract applicants and an online job board which operates in Mauritius. This will give an insight of what are the advantages and disadvantages of shifting to online recruitment. What are the changes alongside with this move in their practices and strategies?

Study Two

Study two will examine the e-recruitment from the perspective of jobseekers in Mauritius. To investigate the various aspects that drive those to use online recruitment and analysing the benefits and problems related to their use of internet in their job search. Additionally this study will seek to test the following hypothesis:

There is a relationship between privacy problems and intention to use online recruitment

Research Type

For the study one since only a little information is available on e-recruitment practices in Mauritian firms, thus qualitative data on e-recruitment development is more useful and important than quantitative data. Qualitative research will help to be explorative and classify, categorize or define the phenomena of E-recruitment in Mauritius in an organisational perspective. Consequently the most suitable methods that will be used will be interviews.

For the study Two given that we have sufficient information and knowledge which is available on the use of e-recruitment for job search from the perspective of jobseekers and that we will seek to prove hypothesis and support, questionnaires will be suitable for collecting quantitative data that can be used in confirmatory studies using statistical analysis.

Data type

Primary Data

For the purpose of this research, data has been collected from first-hand-experience which is known as primary data and this will include interview and survey questionnaire. Those primary data has not been published yet and is more reliable, authentic and objective. Since my primary data has not been changed or altered by human beings, therefore its validity is greater than secondary data. Using primary data in research from participants representatives of key players in e-recruitment, can improves the validity of research. First hand information obtained from a sample that is representative of the target population will yield data that will be valid for the entire targe