BUSINESS PROPOSAL: E-RECRUITMENT AND EFFICIENCY FOR THE JOB SEEKER AND RECRUITER
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report examines the ways through which GE Company can be able to develop a better and efficient recruitment process for their applicants who are seeking for a job position or internship with the company through embracing technology in order to speed up the process of recruitment. Slow recruitment process in the GE Company has had a lot of disadvantages, especially on the applicants who have to wait for longer periods before getting their feedback.
There are other organizations that have an online service form intern structures for interns that apply to their particular programs. These structures and services give applicants a clear picture regarding their application status and the state of their application during the entirety of the application process—essentially, these online forms are a way that the potential intern can remain abreast of the various informational services necessary for understanding the status of their application. When interns (and, indeed, other potential employees) are not informed about the status of their application, they can become nervous and begin to look elsewhere for potential job opportunities. Both parties can miss out on a potentially excellent relationship if the intern accepts work elsewhere due to lack of communication.
Over the course of this discussion, the researcher will investigate current practices, including paper and online applications, and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these application processes. The researcher will then look closely at a number of more advanced solutions and present them as options with an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. The research will focus on online systems for e-recruiting, including processes that mobilize social media strategy and social media platforms. E-recruiting encompasses a number of different areas of interest for companies. Human resources and the hiring supervisors can utilize these strategies extensively to find and maintain new talent within an organization.
Maintaining communication with potential employees is fundamentally important for a company, even in a hiring environment that favors the employer. An employer wants to be able to have their choice of the best minds available, and poor organization and communication nearly ensures that good employees will be lost to the employer. E-recruiting provides security to potential employees, and provides better organizational options to employers and recruitment officers. The size of the organization, according to the literature, does not seem to matter: no matter the size of the organization, it can benefit from properly implemented e-recruiting strategies. It allows targeted recruitment and structured recruitment processes that would otherwise be difficult for human resources and recruitment professionals.
INTRODUCTION
There is no doubt that the Internet has changed the job market, and not necessarily for the better—the current job market favors the employer, who often has the choice to ignore hundreds of resumes in search of the one perfect candidate (Chapman et al., 2005). Business manangers and human resource professionals are now able to search through many different candidates for the “perfect” candidate, down to the letter—and people who are searching for employment are able to present their resume to the world via sites like Monster and LinkedIn. Human resource professionals now have to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of using e-recruitment processes to choose employees, particularly because of the massive amount of information available over the Internet today (Chapman et al., 2005).
There are a number of advantages to e-recruitment. For the employer, e-recruitment is a relatively cheap alternative to the traditional forms of recruitment, especially insofar as advertisment and time investment is concerned. By utilizing e-recruitment strategies, human resources personnel are able to reach a large number of people in a relatively short amount of time, with very little time or effort (Lee, 2011). For employers, the ease of e-recruitment makes it much more efficient than traditional strategies for recruitment. Chapman et al. (2005) notes that attracting high-quality candidates is the fundamental goal of most organizations. Being in a position to attract a number of high performing applicants is difficult—it requires an excellent marketing strategy, much in the same way that attracting customers requires an excellent marketing strategy (Chapman et al., 2005). For an organization to function effectively there is a need to have employees who are performing to their optimum capacity (Chapman et al., 2005).
Lee (2011) suggests that a number of businesses have adopted e-recruiting process to be their main way of recruiting their employees. The Lee (2011) article presents a review of a number of issues involving the e-recruiting process, its benefits as well as the best model for application of the process; it has developed the theory that the optimal investment in recruitment techniques includes e-recruitment as an option for human resources personnel (Lee, 2011). Newman and Lyon (2009) present a clear elaboration of the recruitment process and the methods, which can be used to avoid some of the impacts, which are associated with ineffective recruitment process. This article provides useful information on how to ensure that productivity, especially of the employees has been maintained. The information provided in the Newman and Lyon (2009) article presents an ideal recruitment process, which is aimed at bringing positive enhancement to the organization. Alternatively, Smith and Rupp (2004) consider the managerial impacts of e-recruiting strategies in the current environment. Smith and Rupp (2004) write, “Effective leadership of human capital is a major managerial issue. Hiring and keeping employees is key to sustainable competitive advantage. E-recruiting as a general process is job-specific and offers computer-assisted screening interviews and statistical prediction to aid in reducing recruiting costs, time-to-hire, and employee turnover” (Smith & Rupp, 2004). Smith and Rupp (2004) indicate that there is a financial as well as a human resources benefit to the development of proper e-recruiting strategies, and that these advantages help maintain competitive advantage in the market for the company that implements these policies properly and effectively.
ii. E-recruitment: Disadvantages and Difficulties
There are some difficulties associated with e-recruitment that are not necessarily disadvantages for the employer. Chapman et al. (2005) write, “To briefly summarize our major findings, it was clear that the most difficult recruiting outcome to predict on the basis of traditional recruiting predictors was job choice in that the direct effects of most of the predictors were either nonsignificant or had very small effect sizes. Additionally, our results suggest that the least predictive broad category of predictors was perceived alternatives. Effect sizes found for the remaining relationships between the traditional predictors and the recruiting outcomes were often moderate effects and there was less differentiation among the predictors than might be expected” (Chapman et al., 2005). The sheer volume of responses suggests that there is no filter for the human resources department. The human resources personnel responsible for filtering responses will often find that the sheer volume of responses provided overwhelms them, and that this volume of responses can present a problem for the company in terms of responding to potential job seekers (Newman & Lyon, 2009). Lack of response from employers is one of the most-cited reasons for frustration on the part of job seekers, and can lead to job seeker fatigue (Smith & Rupp, 2004).
There are a number of disadvantages of utilize e-recruitment that are specific to different organizations as well. Some individuals in the recruitment process have been in the business for a very long time, and are extremely good at recruitment and hiring, but have little ability to utilize computerized systems. This is continuously a problem with the evolving technological systems that are available; they are very powerful, but they must be used by people-- people who have to understand the processes and technologies presented in the system to use them to their fullest potential. For individuals who are not technologically sophisticated, this can be a serious setback for the mobilization and integration of e-recruitment strategies.
Another issue for individuals in the recruiting field is that e-recruiting is almost entirely impersonal until the interview process begins. People can appear perfect on paper, and still be a poor fit for a company or an institution; developing a rapport with a potential client is something that recruitment professionals can often only do in person. Recruitment professionals might spend a lot of time or energy trying to recruit an individual via e-recruiting processes and then finally find that the individual’s personality does not fit with the overall strategy of the business.
PREVIOUS APPROACHES AND CURRENT STRATEGIES
Previous Approaches
In the past, recruitment strategies have not relied heavily on the Internet. Recruitment strategies in the past were developed in a number of different ways, including word-of-mouth recruitment and print advertising. Today, print advertising is still used, but it is largely being replaced by online recruitment and e-recruitment strategies; this is because print as a form of media has largely been replaced by online media. When considering past recruitment strategies, it is easy to become nostalgic: however, word-of-mouth recruitment is still utilized in many industries today, and the power of networking should not be overlooked in any sense.
In the early days of the Internet and the earlier iterations of e-recruiting, the online structures and systems for e-recruiting were much simpler and much more basic than they are today. For instance, the earliest forms of online job postings were merely virtual advertisements; there were no interactive qualities to these advertisements, and they still required a job seeker to email or mail their resume and cover letter directly to the human resources professional responsible for the job posting. These early forms of e-recruiting were prototypes for the current strategies that are used by companies to connect with job seekers; today’s current strategies, on the other hand, can be considered prototypes for the potential structures that could be managed and utilized by companies in the future for e-recruiting. Thinking of recruiting as an ever-evolving process is incredibly helpful when considering the potential future for e-recruiting.
Current Strategies
Currently, there are a number of commonly accepted strategies for e-recruiting. Utilizing processes like Monster and LinkedIn are common for companies, and they allow the employer and recruiter unprecedented control over the recruitment process, as has been seen in recent years. However, it also means that everyone with access to a computer is able to send a resume and an application to a potential employer; employers do not really have the ability to filter applicants in the same way that they did when the application process was more difficult and more in-depth. Perhaps most importantly, the current strategies give recruiters the ability to seek out the perfect candidate, whether by searching through resumes submitted to the organization or by seeking out a resume that exists in the database.
Resume and Employee Databases
There are certain e-recruitment strategies that allow a job seeker to input their resume and biographical information into a database, and then use that database to look through employment opportunities. Monster and JobSeeker are two of the most popular job seeking databases; these databases are incredibly powerful for the job seeker, because they allow for targeted search terms and procedures. Through these kinds of databases, the individual job seeker can look for his or her perfect job. These particular databases are powerful tools, and they offer a number of integrative processes that companies and job seekers can use to simplify the job seeking and recruitment process respectively. For instance, Monster allows companies to utilize auto-fill technologies in their application process through the employee development of a resume through the site. This cuts time for the job seeker and the employer; it also provides both parties with a recognizable interface that is relatively easy for both parties to interact with.
Despite the strengths of these particular databases, they do leave a lot to be desired insofar as strategies for job seekers and recruiters are concerned. This has led to the development of other platforms, such as social media platforms and solutions. These solutions integrate the strengths of the databases with the power of social media connectivity and the concept of networking.
Social Media Solutions
The largest of the social media solutions is LinkedIn, which serves a large number of individuals, as well as a huge number of businesses (Lee, 2011). LinkedIn is incredibly powerful due to the ability to link to other individuals around the globe, and to discover the second- and third-hand connections that one has to a potential job opportunity. LinkedIn takes the networking part of the job search online—this is incredibly powerful, because it does not require the individual to go to cocktail hours or other locations where that person can potentially meet friends-of-friends and search for a job. It easily allows the individual to see that he or she knows someone who knows someone else who has a connection to a potential job opportunity.
This is a benefit for both the job seeker as well as the recruiter, because Lee (2011) demonstrates that a personal connection can be fundamentally important for job seekers in any environment. People are, quite frankly, more likely to trust new employees that have been introduced to them through someone that they know and trust—and social media sites and platforms like LinkedIn allow for easier establishment of these connections than the traditional method of mobilizing networks.
Sites like LinkedIn—easily the largest version of the job-seeking social media network, but certainly not the only platform—are powerful because they offer the tools that sites like Monster and JobSeeker offer, but they offer a more human approach to job seeking. They also allow the user to see when their resume or message has been viewed by a potential recruiter or employer, which can been very powerful in terms of giving a job seeker hope that he or she will be able to find a job in the near future. The flagging job market has been very difficult for many job seekers, and many have dropped out of the search altogether; the addition of this feature is powerful for job seekers who have experienced poor luck in their ongoing search.
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS AND CHANGES TO EXISTING PRACTICES
The current process allows for employees and employers to connect on a different level than they ever have before, and this is certainly strength for both job seekers and recruiters in certain ways. However, there are changes that can be made to the current practices that allow for a better and more complete control for employers, as well as a more fulfilling process for potential employees; one of the issues that is commonly cited by potential employees is frustration regarding a lack of response during the job-seeking process. A potential employee has no way of knowing whether his or her resume has been received or seen by a recruiter unless the recruiter chooses to send an email or another kind of message to the potential employee. As previously stated, LinkedIn has tried to address this particular issue in some ways, like the automated system that allows the user to see when someone has viewed his or her resume.
What is being proposed here is a different system—it is a system that is unique to the employer in some ways, and allows the employee to see very clearly the status of their application—whether the application has been viewed, how many times it has been viewed, and whether their application has moved forward in the hiring process. When a potential employee or job seeker is looking for a job, he or she may spend a long period of time waiting for a response from an employer, which may never come at all. This process would streamline the process for the potential employee—he or she would be able to see the status of his or her application, and would easily be able to see what is happening in regards to his or her resume.
There are certain companies that have instituted these kinds of programs in their hiring processes to great effect. It is important to understand that the process that is being discussed here will be beneficial to both job seeker and potential employer; as discussed previously, recruiters have a much larger volume of resumes and potential employees to sift through in the current job market because of the use of e-recruiting processes. The development of a system that allows for greater control and analysis for human resource professionals or recruitment professionals will allow them to better organize potential candidates for employment. E-recruitment is not something that is going to disappear from the hiring process any time soon, so the e-recruitment processes that exist must be leveraged and understood for their advantages as well as their disadvantages. Minimizing the disadvantages of these hiring processes—the lack of transparency for the job seeker, for instance—should be the focus of e-recruitment processes going forward.
Hiring processes are complex and varied, and choosing the right candidate from the high volume of candidates available is an incredible task for human resource and recruitment professionals, especially in large organizations. Mobilizing existing and commonly used technologies like social media and employment databases is the first step, but building a more user-friendly system for job seekers will benefit everyone in the recruitment process. Developing an extensive online system that integrates the existing systems and an e-recruitment process that allows greater transparency may have a relatively high initiation cost, but the research suggests that this process would benefit both recruiters and job seekers in the end. If properly implemented, an e-recruitment system of this sort would allow for easier sorting of candidates for recruiters—it would allow recruiters to easily sort potential candidates by their assets, and easily exclude individuals that did not meet the requirements necessary for employment by the organization.
CONCLUSIONS
The research focuses on getting into the root cause of all these delays and looking into how the recent technological advances can be of help towards the company’s recruitment process. One of the companies that have been known to have a smooth recruitment process is the Bain Company. A look at the system of the company, it is evident that the company has embraced advanced technological support, which helps in properly managing its recruitment process. It is my hope that after this research I will be in a position to discover a number of things, including technological know-how that GE as a company need to integrate in their system in order to avoid losing applicants to their competitors due to slow recruitment processes.
E-recruitment processes are powerful tools, and should be mobilized by businesses in a way that benefits both the business and the job seeker. Improving transparency in the process can only improve the process for the job seeker by ensuring that the job seeker does not engage in behavior that is pointless or unnecessary. This is incredibly important for the success of the job seeker and to help job seekers avoid frustration with the overall process of job seeking and applying to positions with various organizations.
E-recruitment is not a process that is going to be removed from the overall process of hiring. The Internet is ubiquitous, and it makes the process of applying for positions very easy—however, with this ease of access, many more people have access to the same application process. For hiring managers, wading through these individuals can be a terribly long and difficult ordeal, and it can be frustrating for both employers and employees. Instead of focusing on the difficulties of the newer systems, employers should mobilize these systems and develop a process that works for their specific organization and fits their specific goals. Developing these goals should be the responsibility of hiring managers and human resources personnel; in the same way that human resources personnel are often responsible for creating job advertisements.
REFERENCES
Chapman, D. S., Uggerslev, K. L., Carroll, S. A., Piasentin, K. A., & Jones, D. A. (2005). Applicant attraction to organizations and job choice: a meta-analytic review of the correlates of recruiting outcomes. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 928–944.
Lee, I. (2011). Modeling the benefit of e-recruiting process integration. Decision Support Systems, 51, 230–239.
Newman, D. A., & Lyon, J. S. (2009). Recruitment efforts to reduce adverse impact: targeted recruiting for personality, cognitive ability, and diversity. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 298–317.
Smith , A. D., & Rupp , William T. . (2004). Managerial challenges of e-recruiting: extending the life cycle of new economy employees. Online Information Review.
