E-recruitment is the use of information technology to enhance or speed up the process of recruitment. This process includes seeking for employment, advertising vacant positions, and the major back office processes which link line managers and human resources personnel to local database.
If e-recruitment is used effectively, it can help the company find appropriate candidate for the job vacancies, increase the range of applicants, enhance the experience of employees and make the process of recruitment fasters and more standardized than it was before (Reid 110). The number of people that can be employed using e-recruitment is as much as the number of newspaper advertisements.
Most companies in the world have moved their recruitment process to online since now, a large population of people has access to the internet, whereby they can use the search engines to follow advertisement link to the web site to make applications in various areas in different companies in the entire world. Candidates prefer to do applications online because thus, they get an immediate feedback whether they have got the job or not.
However, e-recruitment can screen candidates who are not qualified, and it does not increase the diversity of employees. This, therefore, means that e-recruitment has both advantages and disadvantages. This paper describes some of strengths and weaknesses of e-recruitment as a method used by human resource management to carry out recruitment process.
Advantages of E-Recruitment
One of the advantages of e-recruitment is its ability to reach the global world whereby many people can access and use the process. Companies that use electronic recruitment usually have larger number of applicants making the last believe that they must be highly competent to occupy the vacant position in the organization. Electronic recruitment is also cost effective.
There are no payments to buy a space to place the advertisement like in the newspaper. It actually costs less to post job vacancy via the internet that, moreover, reaches broader audience as compared with the newspapers to which a limited percentage of people have access. In e-recruitment, there are no costs for postage, transport, and phone calls in job openings.
Electronic recruitment provides employees with talent pool which they can use in future. When applications are submitted by the applicants, this is usually done automatically. It makes it easy for the company to track and list potential candidates who can be considered suitable to take position in the organization in the future. E-recruitment is also timely.
This process cannot be compared to traditional approach that takes weeks or even months for the company to assess hundreds of applicants who have written their CVs. Electronic recruitment is much flexible and makes it easier for recruiters to match applicants’ skills with the company’s requirements (Stone 198).
The process of screening involves a lot of aspects, from asking applicants questions to checking their skills through the use of keywords. The time saved while using electronic recruitment can be used by the company to invest in other things which will increase its productivity.
There is an easier access to the documents when electronic recruitment is used. Printed CVs usually require more space for storage in the office, but that is not the case in e-recruitment whereby the electronic CVs do not occupy any space in the office and are available online 24/7 (Johnson 129).
This makes it easy to choose the right candidate for the position since it is easier to access information anywhere and anytime it is needed as compared to the paperwork. There are no intermediaries involved when it comes to e-recruitment as compared to other forms of recruitment which require intermediaries. Online recruitment always gives the applicants a better chance to succeed.
Print advertisements face many limitations; they can be found only on a certain page, and it rests upon the person interested to search for this particular page and specific date when the ad was done to be able to view the requirements. This, however, differs e-recruitment from the one done through the newspapers.
On the websites, the job vacancy advertisements are always available 24hours a day and on weekly basis, thus the applicant can view it at any time and as much as they desire. Most of the time, you may contact a support team online which is there to help anyone in need answer a particular question concerning the job and application. Posting job vacancy online is much easier.
It is not a necessity that you must have in-depth knowledge on IT to be able to make job advertisement on a website (Johnson 140). However, incase one faces challenges to make job advertisement, there is always sales team who normally helps such kind of people. A person can also use social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to post an advert on job vacancy for free.
Disadvantages of E-Recruitment
It is usually believed that e-recruitment provides a larger pool of applicants because many people have access to the internet. However, there are some people, especially those in the remote areas, who have no access to the internet, and the only way they can access the news is through the newspaper.
These groups of people are normally overlooked even though they possess excellent skills, knowledge and experience to acquire a job position in different organizations.
There is always over-saturation of websites due to large number of people using the same site. This usually makes it difficult for people seeking for jobs to get an opportunity to make applications.
Those who might be considered as potential employees with excellent skills might also be left out due to over-saturation of websites since they are not able to deliver their application letters at the right time to be considered by the company. This is not only a loss to a company but to an applicant too.
E-recruitment always provides unguaranteed results. It is not guaranteed that the company will be able to get the right candidates for a job meeting all the company’s requirements. The organization may not also be able to reach the target group since certain people cannot access sites to search for jobs in different parts of the world.
Small companies are also disadvantaged when it comes to the use of e-recruitment because they normally do not get many responses to their online adverts as compared with the larger companies which attract wide population.
The screening process is time consuming. Those companies which do not effectively set their screening process always have hard time to sift the CVs while trying to select the best candidates for the job.
This is usually time consuming and tiresome process. Human resource management usually feels that there is more work to be done when the managers use e-recruitment due to a larger number of applications from unqualified persons which they have to sort out. There are more e-mails to respond to and more resumes to review.
Those companies using e-recruitment should develop their questionnaires in such a way that only candidates with qualified skills can make it through to the last stage. This will make it easy to identify the correct candidate to occupy the vacant position in the company. However, these standardized formats are not a guarantee that the company will select the right person for the job.
The use of standardized formats will not allow a fair evaluation of candidates. This means that the company will not be able to get the right person to take the office because of restrictions imposed by the standardized formats. Companies using the internet for recruiting employees should have specialized tracking software to handle the large number of applications made (Robbins 122).
This will aid the company to save time and increase productivity. However, employers prefer to use a face-to face interaction due to which they meet their candidates and managers in person before selection is made. This means that organizations should not solely depend and rely on e-recruitment process.
In conclusion, e-recruitment is the use of information technology to enhance or speed up the process of recruitment. However, e-recruitment offers more advantages as compared to traditional methods of recruitment of employees. Electronic recruitment provides employees with talent pool, and has the ability to reach the world globally, easier access the documents and post job vacancies online.
At the same time, there are also disadvantages that come with online recruitment. People in the remote areas who may be suitable for the work offered cannot access computers and internets, thus they are left out, and such an approach is time consuming and provides unguaranteed results.
Works Cited
Johnson, Steve. Advantages & Disadvantages of E Recruiting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
Reid, Steven. E-Recruitment. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishers, 2010.Print.
Robbins, Carter. Management. Prentice: Prentice Hall Publishers, 2009.Print.
Stone, Raymond. Human Resource Management. Bedford: Bedford/St. Martin’s Publishers, 2006. Print.