Recruitment and Selection – R&D Using the Internet – Part III

Citation

McCourt-Mooney, M. (2000), "Recruitment and Selection – R&D Using the Internet – Part III", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 15 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmp.2000.05015gag.001

Recruitment and Selection – R&D Using the Internet – Part III

Edited by Maggie McCourt-Mooney

Recruitment and Selection – R&D Using the Internet – Part III

Keywords Recruitment, Selection, Internet

In the final part of this series of articles I will focus upon the way in which recruitment strategies and practices are being developed with specific reference to the Internet as a tool.

On-line recruiting

Otherwise known as e-cruiting and cybercruiting. The development of recruitment on-line, and via company Web sites in particular, was my starting point. In order to establish the range of current practices, I searched a variety of Web sites representative of global organisations. This was supplemented by a search for relevant and up-to-date references in journal articles or e-zines available and/or accessible through the Internet.

The Internet and recruitment advertising

Judging by the wealth of Web site addresses now found in newspapers, journals and in job advertisements, some substantial part of the recruitment budget is being devoted specifically to on-line recruitment. Whether this is to market the organisation or to be a showcase to attract potential job seekers is not clear. My search of several Web sites revealed a wide variety of approaches to the use of on-line recruiting. An equally interesting observation was the relationship between the culture of an organisation and its on-line recruitment practices.

Innovative approaches

Impressive examples were, in my view, in the minority, Shell at http://www.shell.com provides a simple yet sophisticated tour of its on-line recruiting processes at http://www.shell.com/careers-en/0,5296,,00.html The site describes the recruitment process and how it relates to the company's selection criteria and methods, leaving potential applicants in little doubt as to exactly what Shell is looking for in terms of talent, knowledge and general attitude. Current jobs within the company and those aimed at graduate recruits can be searched on-line. The application process is explicit and easy to navigate, although I wasn't able to download the application form the first time I tried.

Likewise Vodafone Airtouch at http://www.vodafone.co.uk/ provided an interesting Career Centre site where, if there are no suitable current vacancies, an individual can say what his or her ideal job would be and the company will get back in touch if something suitable arises. The site includes role descriptions and essential skills for each vacancy, although these are not as well described as those in the Shell site. It is a very user-friendly process which requests simply an e-mail address, expected salary, current salary and then asks the applicant to paste a CV into the relevant space.

A different approach again is taken by Cisco at http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/jobs.pl – a complex site which has the advantage of providing a range of choices in how to submit one's application (an on-line profile, e-mail, mail or fax). A further welcome change was the innovative "Make a friend at Cisco" feature. This allows a potential applicant to make contact with a Cisco employee who is working in the applicant's area of interest to find out more about what it is like to work there. Another clearly-cultural difference on the site was manifest in the form of small, humorous cartoon character which acted as a cursor on the screen, saying "Oh no my boss is coming". If you like that, you'd probably like working at Cisco.

Traditional recruitment practices

Several sites, however, appeared either to merely state that applicants could apply for jobs on-line and/or should send résumés or complete a form. These sites may attract some applicants, but if they have already visited sites like those reviewed earlier in this article, they may well be discouraged by the very traditional approach. There appears to be little imaginative use of the technology. However, the particular company's culture and/or the nature of its business may go some way to explaining this.

HSBC in the banking sector at http://company.monster.co.uk/hsbcuk/ was notably uninteresting, closely followed by Roche at http://www.roche.com/roche/about/job.htm which simply gave general descriptions of jobs in the Company and stated that applicants should "send application with usual documents via conventional mail". A more traditional approach is hard to imagine.

AT&T from the telecommunications sector at http://www.att.com/hr/ was at first intriguing with its "City of opportunities". However on trying to find out what these opportunities were, the phrase "Occupational represented positions" appeared and from then onwards very little made much sense.

I was left with the impression that if a company was innovative or young and dynamic, or had a very mature and leading edge recruitment process in traditional terms, it would be likely to embrace the use of the Internet warmly and to good effect. It seemed valid to check this out with other sources of reference on the Internet and to establish whether research reports are as yet demonstrating how and why companies are changing their recruitment practices to use the Internet.

Research findings

When I first started researching on-line recruitment in 1998, I found more predictions about what was likely to happen in general terms or an indication of trends that were beginning to emerge. Now in 2000 some research findings are being reported from a variety of sources. In June 2000, HR Focus magazine reported on the Web Recruiting Study 2000, undertaken by the Institute of Management and Administration (see "Why your Web site is more important than ever to new hires", HR Focus, June, 2000). An executive summary of this report also appears at http://www.wetfeet.com. According to the survey, more than 90 per cent of job applicants check out a company's Web site before taking the job and yet more spend an average of four hours on a corporate Web site doing a job search.

Changing demands on the HR function

This increased interest in, and use of, the Internet by job seekers does however’bring its own problems. The August 1999 edition of Workforce (see http://www.workforce.com/ for subscription details) quotes several examples of companies that have responded in differing ways to this development. The examples range from Irvine, Mazda North American Operation, which decided to devote 25 per cent of its recruitment budget to an Internet recruitment service to Princess Cruises, which "does not want to share their employment practices with competitors".

American Express at http://www10.americanexpress.com/sif/cda/page/0,1641,1461,00.asp considers the need to have a variety of recruitment strategies of which on-line recruiting is just one. The interesting point is that this appears to have tripled the number of résumés received and has, at the same time, increased the quality of applicants. What the company has also done is acknowledge that employees need to be encouraged to use the Internet themselves to recruit and appoint new employees and thus rewards are given for those who make an offer via the Internet.

Speed of response and increased numbers of applicants

What this Workforce article highlighted was the need for organisations to manage the shortened recruitment cycle that on-line recruiting brings. Some companies manage the increased speed of response and the increased numbers by improving internal capabilities in terms of software, technology and dedicated resources, such as American Express. Lockheed Martin Technology Services Group has done something slightly different at http://lmpeople.external.lmco.com/careers/Careers.asp. Not only has it appointed an in-house interactive recruitment specialist, it has also developed a Company Web page for personnel involved in recruiting which links them into further pages and sites related to job fairs and other recruitment interests.

Outsourcing the management of the on-line recruitment process is also a common practice, and the advice from all sources seems to be: "Do so if you are not in the area of IT developments and if you do so, look for more than a résumé database". The large number of potential applicants will need to be screened, an issue raised by myself in the previous article in this series. Apparently it is slightly more complicated than just finding the appropriate software or screening against criteria.

On-line recruitment: a different process?

In Part I of this series of articles, I argued that the process of recruitment and selection has not changed essentially and that Internet technology will require organisations mainly to improve these processes or manage other influences. The results of my research for this article reinforce this view but also highlight some important influences to be taken into account: the speed factor, the increased use of outsourcing, the training and development needs of both HR specialists and employees to equip them to work in an on-line recruiting environment and the concept of the "candidate as customer". The attractiveness of a company Web site and its appeal to both active and passive job seekers will be of paramount importance in the future, particularly for the next generation for which technology is the norm.