E-Recruitment as an Emerging Trend in Employee Recruitment Methods

 

What is E-recruitment 👇?

 

With the wide spread of internet, both job seekers and recruiters are easily able to meet on e- platforms like company website, social media platforms, job portals etc. Therefore, the electronic recruitment process of finding, assessing, and recruiting employees is known as e-recruitment. Because of the large number of benefits that this recruitment method generates, most of the people push to choose this method as one of successful employee recruitment method. Today, first time job seekers seek for websites to get the details of the current job postings rather than traditional drives such as newspapers and magazines. Further, employers be able to use e-recruitment to post job openings and search resumes electronically. Not only that, but also candidates can use it to submit applications and curriculum vitae electronically, search job postings, and receive job alerts as well (Kumar, 2019). 

How does the Internet speed up the recruitment process?

 

¨     Faster posting of career opportunities

According to Ramaabaanul & Saranya (2014), the company does not need to wait to print the job vacancy and post. Through internet, the job advertisement appears immediately and the organization is able to keep the job post in the online application as long as they want.

 

¨     Cost-Effective

Generally, when a company selects to conduct a traditional employee recruitment campaign, the cost will be high comparing to e-recruitment in terms of advertising, travel expenses, third party recruiter fees etc. As a result, the total process takes an excessive amount of time. However, this could be avoided by switching to e-recruitment (Natarajan & Vijai, 2015).

¨     Faster applicant responses

The applicants who are attracted to a certain job announcement, need to apply or reply to it through the same medium electronically. Hence, it happens within minutes and most of the times one-way communication mediums for recruiting like post mails, faxes have been replaced by e-recruitment drives. Moreover, the cloud-based feature permits the employer to keep a CV database stored in one place making it easier to refer in future (Ramaabaanul & Saranya, 2014).

 

¨     Faster processing of resumes

The applications and resumes send by online are screened at the same time and submit to the relevant managers to proceed. Additionally, filtering function of e-recruitment helps the recruiter to track down the ideal candidates with competencies who match the job position (Kaur, 2015). 

Today internet is the key source that supports to keep more interactive relationships between the recruiter and the candidate and able to connect globally in 24 hours on 365 days. When consider about the recent past, there is a trend of internet based recruiting and according to studies that 93% of global 500 companies engage in e- recruitment. 96% of these global companies are in Asia, 94% around Europe and 96% in America (Ramaabaanul & Saranya, 2014).

E-recruitment is widely used in posting/advertising about the existing work positions and the facts of the recruiting organizations. The job seekers can apply to vacant positions online and email CVs to the related companies or recruitment agencies. Corporate website, social media, sites of recruitment organizations and commercial job posts are the extremely used online recruiting methods (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). They are similar to the classified ads in the newspaper. This practice allows a larger number of candidates around the world to apply to the job vacancy. When it comes to the company’s website, it provides useful information about the organization, as well as the mechanism to apply for the current jobs. On the other hand, candidates  profile are also available to  public in various e sources such as blogs, social media etc. (Dhamija, 2012).

As I work for a leading technology based company in Sri Lanka, I know that the company gets the maximum usefulness of e-recruitment. They advertise their career opportunities mainly on a commercial carrier website called www.topjobs.lk and their Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles as e recruitment approaches. 

By referring the below image, you can see how the Unilever company practically uses their official website for e-recruiting 😃👇.

For several years, the concept of social media networks stands out in the recruitment process. Prospect candidates should prepare for the new era of social recruitment. Therefore, they should have a profile on LinkedIn which updates and invests time to have an extensive list of contacts, also the participation in online discussion in communities or blogs show the right path in greater reflectiveness and thus can enrich job offers (Kaur, 2015).

The main benefit of online recruitment is the ability of reaching a large number of people or job seekers at once without considering the place and time they available. Cheap advertising cost and the ability of showing more information rather than the traditional recruiting methods are the other primary advantages of internet based recruiting. As the disadvantages of online recruitment, discrimination between internet user and internet non-user, not appropriate and suitable for top management, misunderstandings, fraudulent applicants can be identified (Wilkinson, et al., n.d.).

E-recruitment market is one of the vital aspects in the process of recruiting the talent. Internet has completely transformed the role of the traditional recruiter while improving the efficiency of the recruitment process. E-recruitment approaches can be improved by enhancing the corporate career site traffic, by using a back-office system, creating a talent pool and an employer branding with a lot of specific information available to future job candidates (Dhamija, 2012).

References

Armstrong, M. & Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Kogan Page Limited, Issue 13. [online] Accessed on 24^th November 2023

Boscai, B. G., n.d. The evolution of e-recruitment: the introduction of Online Recruiter. pp. 161-170. [online] Accessed on 24^th November 2023

Dhamija, P., 2012. E-recruitment: A roadmap towards e- human resource management. Journal of Arts, Science & Commerce, 3(2). [online] Accessed on 26^th November 2023

Kumar, T. S., 2019. E-recruitment: The modern trend of recruitment practices. Journal of emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, 6(5), pp. 251-256. [online] Accessed on 23^rd  November 2023

Natarajan, C., & Vijai, C. (2015). Employee Engagement Programmes of the Select Information Technology Companies in Chennai: An Empirical Study. International Journal of Commerce, 2 (2), 220-226. [online] Accessed on 24^th November 2023

Prabjot Kaur (2015). E-Recruitment: A Conceptual Study, International Journal of Applied Research,

1(8), 78-82. [online] Accessed on 24^th November 2023

Ramaabaanul, R., & Saranya, M. (2014).  Importance and Problems of E- Recruitment. International Journal of Research, 1(9). [online] Accessed on 24^th November 2023

Wilkinson, A., Bacon, N. & et al, n.d. The SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Management. 02 ed. s.l.:SAGE Publications. [online] Accessed on 26^th November 2023