Introduction
Less than one decade internet has comprehensively changed the process of recruitment in international corporations and small scale firms. Currently, employers are capable of posting job advertisements in career hubs which can be accessed by millions of people per day. Website also enhances instant, extensive employee recommendation from one company to another.
It also enables firms to maintain departed employees who could be hired afterwards, or they can refer new clients or their friends to the company. Managers who require new employees can visit Google, do a search, and immediately find many resumes on the home pages and Web which comply with their requirements.
Using a single password, the managers can easily log in and find several resume banks instantly, send emails concurrently to many candidates, guide them through online screening icon and program interviews with the best candidates (Foster, 2002). Therefore internet has brought dramatic changes in the human resource department; the paper explores more on those impacts.
Background
In the past decade internet has brought remarkable effects on economic and social lives all over the world. It has transformed ways of communication, interaction with other people and even the way of purchasing products. In addition, there have been intense changes on management of organizational businesses mainly the human resource department.
Recent research showed that seventy percent of companies currently use employee self service (ESS) which is done through the internet. This system is used to keep employees records, where eighty percent carry out online recruiting and forty percent employ portals in the Website to communicate HR strategies (Bidgoli, 2004).
There are several reasons why HR prefers using internet to facilitate their processes. The major reason is because it assists companies to retain and attract employees and also promote their productivity.
In addition, researchers argue that internet assist organizations to minimize cycle time, rationalize HR processes, facilitate communication within the organization, promote employee access to information and enhance the ability of the organization to adjust to changes. Even though the internet is believed to have specialized advantages, some studies have claimed that internet might cause adverse risk to personal privacy.
For instance, platforms in the Website might enable organizations and individuals to access private information concerning employees. Furthermore, storage of private information online might form permanent marks which could stigmatize some people and prohibit them from getting job associated outcomes such as promotion.
In spite of the increased use of internet in the department of human resource, few researches have been involved in investigating the outcomes of internet in HR processes. There are few studies that have directly assessed the level to which Website HR structure has the capability of infringing the privacy of employees (Stone and Stone- Romero, 1998).
Internet Recruitment
This has been described as the method of looking for and obtaining prospective job candidates in adequate numbers and quality in order to accomplish organizational objectives.
The internet is dramatically changing the recruitment process in three major ways: firstly, its assisting in attracting external and internal job applicants, secondly, it provides a fundamental realistic sample of jobs and organizations. Finally, it helps in investigating the efficiency of recruitment process.
Benefits of Internet Recruitment
Attracting Applicants
Traditional recruitment materials like job fairs, newspaper advertisements, campus visits and private search companies are still applied in recruiting job applicants. However, internet has transformed how several organizations announce job opportunities. In 1997 about fifty eight percent of the big companies posted job opportunities on the internet, currently nearly hundred percent of the companies announce job vacancies through their personal websites and others on commercial sites (Gueutal, 2003).
The process of using internet in recruiting is referred as e- recruiting. It began as a way of attracting people for technical vacancies in organizations which were regarded as technology driven. Nevertheless, today it has developed and has now included every type of job opportunity. Presently, internet recruitment strategies are believed to be useful to external applicants, international applicants and the overall company.
For instance, external job applicants can simply search in the firm’s website for employment opportunities and then match up their skill, knowledge, and capability levels to the requirements of the job. Furthermore, internet use can expand the traditional searches globally, and job applicants can simply access job opportunities anytime.
Website related systems have led to proliferation of multinational and national job data banks such as Hotjobs.com, which allow applicants to assess and compare several varieties of positions. In addition, some software used in internet recruiting assist in submitting resumes electronically which is very fast hence it is more efficient compared to traditional methods (Bidgoli, 2004).
Companies are able to respond fast to promising candidates in order to set up interviews. Furthermore, they could also use internet to alert the applicants that their education or skill levels did not match the job requirements.
Therefore, internet recruiting assist in reducing the time cycle spent in the traditional recruitment techniques and rationalize labor intensive managerial processes like posting follow up letters, related with recruitment.
Since most applicants evaluate companies according to the effectiveness of administrative processes and time limits, modernized recruitment system might develop a positive image of the company towards the job applicants (Rynes, 1991).
Job posting and Internet recruiting could also facilitate the process of internal recruiting. Before the era of internet recruiting, it was difficult for employees to know a particular job opportunity within a company. As a result of internet recruiting discovery, most companies are posting their job openings on portals in the Websites thus offering timely information to the current employees who can apply for those vacancies.
Since internal applicants provide more advantage than external applicants, (knowledge of the company, earlier trainings and verified job performance) companies might realize that internet recruiting offers important source of unknown, competent internal job applicants. Moreover, it could allow companies to efficiently utilize skills gained by employees through educational or training programs like business administration, managerial information and various degrees (Bidgoli, 2004).
Some Website systems which are employed by large companies such as PeopleSoft have the ability to search the records of the employees automatically in order to determine those employees who are competent for upcoming jobs.
Furthermore, they can also recognize a similar match between employee skill, knowledge, and capability levels and job related profiles. Eventually, they are utilized to inform qualified candidates concerning internal job openings and find out their interests in that vacancy.
Consequently, using internet recruiting process might increase employment opportunities for the employees, promote their contentment levels and reduce turnover rates. In addition, using internet enables present employees to become opportunistic. This is because of the rapidly developing EES systems whereby the internet or the company intranet provides them with extensive variety of HR information.
For instance, this system permits employees to ensure their details are updated to indicate the current educational and training levels. It also offers employees an opportunity to evaluate training requirements related with jobs, which assist them to plan their profession and boost their promotion chances in the company (Gueutal, 2003).
Virtual Realistic Sample
Internet recruiting has another importance that it could allow companies to provide a practical realistic preview to the current employees. Realistic job preview (RJP) could be utilized to make sure that the naïve anticipations of applicants are drawn closer to the realities of the company.
Several studies on RJPs have indicated that their application promotes employees levels of contentment and decreases turnover rates. Hence, most companies have frequently used organizational videotapes or brochures to offer realistic preview to the applicants and also the organizational environment.
Internet could be employed inexpensively and easily to provide applicants with preview of the job or explain to them the concept of working with the company. For instance, a popular company called Ford Motor presents to candidates a series of distinctive circumstances which they are likely to face on the job. This ensures that the applicants are aware of what they expect to find in the organization.
Moreover, virtual job previews could provide additional detailed information compared to traditional brochures also enables applicants to personalize the process of recruitment through indicating their priorities on the working conditions. Therefore, use of virtual job previews could assist companies to improve efficiency of overall retention and recruitment processes (Bidgoli, 2004).
Assessing Recruiting Effectiveness
Internet recruitment could also assist organizations in evaluating the efficiency of recruitment processes and approaches. For instance, companies could monitor their competitors’ portals in the Websites in order to determine different types of hiring strategies used. Such monitoring and tracking abilities offer insights which were difficult to acquire previously and might assist companies to continue being competitive in the business industry.
Equally, firms could employ internet tracking to create an internal database of applicants for future opportunities to decrease the cost of upcoming recruitments. Furthermore, online systems could assist HR managers assess the cost, efficiency and timeliness of recruitment process.
For instance, internet recruitment systems could provide supervisors or HR managers with information which would promote their capability of optimizing recruitment strategies. Internet recruiting systems could also assist in minimizing the costs of recruitment through improving the percentage of competent applicants who have been appointed.
Generally, internet could develop recruitment process for the organizations and also the current employees through attracting many candidates, improving the amount and quality of information accessible to the applicants, accelerating the speed and appropriateness of recruitment process and increasing the ability of the firm to assess recruitment process (Noe et al, 2010).
Facilitating Selection Decisions
Use of online systems or internet might assist in selection decisions in various ways.
To begin with, online systems could assist in selection decisions by using current software which is used for resume screening. When the resume is received these systems scan the resume by looking for keyword and different search methods to establish whether the candidates meet crucial skills and education requirements related with the job opportunity.
If large numbers of candidates are involved, some companies employ new technology referred as interactive voice response which screens the applicants (Stone et al, 2003).
Therefore, internet related selection might reduce the time required to fill various posts and promote screening process if large numbers of job applications or resumes are involved. Secondly, though many selection systems have always used one to one communication, between the decision maker and the applicant, internet has facilitated access to a lot of information concerning the applicant.
For example, internet has made it very simple to carry out background assessments which identify criminals or monetary related bribes. Equally, it is currently easy to verify licenses, degrees, and carry out reference research based on previous job duties, salary, previous employment dates and past trainings.
Organizations could also perform intelligent tests or measure performance of the job applicants using the same online systems. In addition, some companies have developed self assessment forms which are posted in the websites and applicants could fill to verify if they are competent for that post.
Critics argue that decision support systems (DSS) could be used to enhance selection process through offering interviewers advanced information concerning applicant’s weaknesses and strengths to assist them in structuring interviews. With that data, companies could carry out first screening interviews via online.
This minimizes recruitment costs and saves time for the interviewer. Even though there are several advantages related to internet recruitment, it is important for professionals in HR department to realize problems which internet recruitment could pose to their organization. Therefore the paper further investigates some of internet recruitment disadvantages.
Setbacks of Using Internet Recruitment
Implication to Practitioners
Internet recruitment might lead to an overflow of job applications and could be exceedingly troublesome for the HR sector to carry out the task manually.
In addition, a number of ethnic minorities such as Native Americans, Hispanic Americans and African Americans, and some individuals living in low social economic backgrounds might not access internet which causes digital divide. Thus internet recruitment might have adverse effect on individuals from those groups.
Stone et al (2003) claimed that companies should employ internet recruiting together with traditional techniques in order to ensure everybody has equal employment opportunities within an organization.
Moreover, not all software used in internet recruiting that provides equal capabilities. For instance, those systems which do not recognize online resumes directly, rather they force the applicants to rekey their data or cut, paste in order to forward the resume they might hinder applicants from applying for the posts.
Consequently, the extent to which some personal Websites are unfriendly to the user could be a probable disadvantage to some companies. The use of internet recruiting systems could serve as a hindrance to contentment and retention of significant employees in case the company’s policies are not internally organized.
Professionals in HR department should review policies in order to identify probable conflicts prior to introducing techniques of internet recruiting. For instance, those companies with policies that prohibit disclosing of salary ranges or use broad banding income ranges for different job ranks might realize that internal candidates mostly apply for jobs in down grade which are internet posted.
For that reason, HR professionals ought to think about the idea of listing open job systems where salary ranges are clearly stated to make sure applicants are not discouraged or misuse time on applying down grade jobs (Noe et al, 2010).
Furthermore, HR policies should be designed to promote cooperation between members of various departments so that all workers are appreciated as valued asset which require to be developed in their area of professionalism.
Impacts of Internet on Applicant’s Selection
Although internet facilitates selection of applicants, there are associated negative impacts. For instance, HR professionals should be conscious that applicants might respond more negatively to selections done online compared to traditional systems since internet depersonalizes the whole process.
Consequently, the candidates might perceive that it’s impossible for them to share their capabilities through the internet.
Critics claim that selection via the internet might be deindividuating since a true picture indicating the applicant’s abilities and skills is not provided. Therefore, decision makers might fill the gaps created by incomplete or missing information. That could lead to negative presumptions concerning the abilities of the applicant to carry out the job (Stone and Stone, 1987).
Thus applicants might find internet selection as unfair in comparison to traditional systems. Since internet might not provide the correct portrayal of the applicant’s skills, knowledge and abilities, then internet systems ought to be used together with traditional systems to give correct details of applicant. HR professionals ought to be careful in using internet to carry out personality evaluation and ability testing.
According to researches done there is no method which can guarantee the considered applicant is really the one performing the test or the candidate is being assisted by others or not. Therefore, the scores of integrity test, interview responses and personality inventories might be compromised if conducted through the internet.
Effects of Internet on Performance Management
HR professionals should be aware that internet systems might also cause problems in companies since it depersonalize the rating process. Using performance appraisal systems which are accessible online might provide unrealistic image of the employee’s performance and overlook important attributes like good citizenship behavior.
Applicants might also respond negatively to performance evaluations done online since they create more psychological distance among ratees and raters which can cause mistrust between subordinates and supervisors. Therefore, employees might regard electronic monitoring as less reasonable compared to traditional appraisal techniques.
They might claim that such systems infringe their individual freedom since they are inconsiderate and applicants have no control over the situation. Critics claim that individuals normally view electronic performance examination as infringement of their rights except when there is clear justification which should be communicated to the employee.
However, some companies with geographically distributed workers and teams claim that internet systems assist local managers by staying updated with outcomes and various activities hence efficiently managing the performances (Bidgoli, 2004).
Conclusion
Internet recruitment has caused dynamic changes mostly in human resource department. Currently, applicants can easily post their resumes on the websites indicating their qualifications and the job they prefer. Similarly, employers could google through the website and look for a candidate who fits their requirements.
The employers could also inform those applicants who did not qualify for the job opportunity. These names could be retained in the database and could be refereed in the upcoming recruitments. This minimizes the recruitment cost and also saves time.
The employers could also book appointment for interview with the candidates who have qualified. However, internet recruitment has some setbacks; mainly the true personality of the applicant is not portrayed. Through, the internet it is difficult to discover some of skills and capabilities of applicants. Therefore the solution offered is using both the traditional methods together with internet during recruitment.
References
Bidgoli, H. (2004). The Internet encyclopedia. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.
Foster, M. (2002). Recruiting on the Web: smart strategies for finding the perfect candidate. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gueutal, H. (2003). The brave new world of e-HR, in Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research. Amsterdam: Elsevier
Noe, R., Hollenbeck, J., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. (2010). Human Resources management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Rynes, S. (1991). Recruitment, job choice and post –hire consequences. Palo Alto CA: Consulting Psychology Press.
Stone, D., & Stone- Romero, E. (1998). A multiple stakeholder model of privacy in organizations. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Stone, D., Stone-Romero, E., & Lukaszewski, K. (2003). The Functional and dysfunctional consequences of using technology to achieve human resource system goals. Amsterdam: JAI