Enter the ASP
That, however, is beginning to change. Organisations such as Sutter Health are hooking up with e-recruiting job sites and ASPs that are moving well beyond basic online job board functionality to offer a range of new services that are making e-recruiting more efficient, faster and more valuable.
E-recruiting sites and ASPs such as Recruitsoft; PureCarbon; BrassRing; TalentFusion; and Development Dimensions International Inc are offering online tools that allow enterprises not only to quickly evaluate and rank candidates but also to automatically direct candidates to the most appropriate positions and track hot candidates, even those who may initially decide to work elsewhere.
While such features are making e-recruiting more valuable, experts caution that there are still gaps. Few if any sites, for example, allow enterprises to easily manage candidates for both full-time and contract work online, Meta Group's Schafer said. Therefore, experts say, enterprises should not drop more traditional methods of recruiting entirely in favour of e-recruiting.
Lower costs, too
Despite the slowing economy and initial problems with e-recruiting, experts say, finding the right IT talent fast is still a priority for most e-businesses, and doing it online is increasingly popular. Meta Group estimates that the number of enterprises using the Web for recruiting has doubled in the last year to 40 percent. And, according to International Data, the top 10 worldwide e-recruiting service vendors collectively saw their revenues grow by 232 percent between 1999 and 2000.
Much of that growth, experts say, probably relates to one simple fact: E-recruiting IT talent, though imperfect so far, can be significantly less costly than other forms of recruiting.
"The cost savings will come from eliminating [recruitment] agency fees," Schafer said. "The agencies are the potential losers here," she said, because their fees start at 20 percent to 30 percent of the first-year salary of the new hire, a huge cost to any company, particularly for the hiring of highly paid IT professionals. By contrast, some job boards, ASP services and talent e-market places charge far lessâ€"in some cases, only a few hundred dollars per hire plus monthly hosting fees.
