E-recruitment has surpassed more traditional hiring methods, especially for the IT industry. ZDNet Australia shows you how to use the Web to its full advantage.
It is Tuesday 10am and your boss has just approved a new company initiative, the budget is tight and the timeframe even tighter. You need staff, more than you already have, and you need them now.
Before you pick up the phone and start dialling a recruitment agency, and effectively blow your budget out of the water, let’s look at your most common options. You could use an agency, advertise in a major metropolitan newspaper, or you could advertise online.
The first two are pretty straightforward, but what of the latter? According to a survey conducted by Olivier Internet Job Index, the research arm of Olivier Recruitment Group, the number of advertisements online has been more than double than that in newspapers since January 2000.
Olivier first started analysing the recruitment industry in 1999. Back then online recruitment (dubbed e-cruitment) was only just starting and mainly consisted of job boards, such as Seek, where recruitment agencies were the predominant advertisers, accounting for 90 percent of the online advertisements.
That was three years ago. As is typical in technology, a lot has changed since then. Online recruitment has grown and the possibilities are more far reaching than simply placing an ad on a job board such as Seek, MyCareer, or JobNet.
There are now many avenues a company can take. Recruitment is well known to be a difficult part of business, and as usual the technology that is supposed to make it easier has actually made it more complex, introducing a whole new ball game to the industry.
Efficiency & Immediacy
So why go online? One of the main advantages is a fast turnaround time. The Web is always being touted for its immediacy, and the case is no different here. It’s Tuesday morning and the aim is to hire new staff ASAP all with the aid of the Internet. If you chose the more traditional route of advertising in a newspaper, with the most read employment section being on a Saturday, the bulk of the applications won’t start coming in until the following week. Then you will spend a few more days sifting through the applications and arranging interviews, most likely for the week after. Already you are in your second week and you haven’t hired a new person.
But what if you advertised online? Within a few hours you can have an advertisement placed on a job board and you can start receiving applications immediately. Along with the ad, you will also have access to the job board’s database of résumés that you can start sorting through immediately. By using the Web you can potentially shave a week off the recruiting process.
One company capitalising on this benefit is Hutchison Telecommunications. The company has a large intake of new recruits; last year it hired between 300 and 400 people, and at the time of writing the company had 10-15 job vacancies. Alice Clapp, HR Manager at Hutchison, says she uses the Internet to recruit because it is instantaneous.
“If on Monday we want to advertise for a job, if we go through paper advertising it wouldn’t go out until Saturday, responses won’t come in until Tuesday or Wednesday. With online it is immediate, for me it is efficiency and immediacy,” says Clapp.
But immediacy is one thing, and effectiveness is another. There is no point advertising online if the candidates aren’t out there. Paul Bassat, CEO of Seek, says there are thousands of candidates online and he has the figures to prove it. According to data from Red Sheriff, Seek receives around 800,000 unique visitors every month.
Bassat says there are about 36,000 ads on the Web site at any one time, with IT being its largest advertising sector accounting for around 6000 of those ads. And Seek currently has around 400,000 résumés on its database. With figures like this, you would think your chances of finding a recruit online should be pretty high, and Bassat claims it is. He estimates between 80 and 90 percent of job placements in the IT industry come from online advertising. One size doesn’t fit all
That said, it seems to be well regarded that advertising online isn’t the most effective option for all positions; you really need to be strategic about when and how you use it.
Clapp, who is a self confessed “big fan” of online recruiting, says she wouldn’t recommend it for very senior positions, saying candidates at that level don’t look on the Internet.
“Most of the success we have had is with our IT positions . . . the best results are with tech professionals where Internet use is more common,” she says.
Bassat says IT job seekers have always looked for jobs a little bit differently because they have different needs and expectations regarding communication and training.
“IT job seekers are pretty savvy and pretty cynical, they will see through sales and hyperbole,” says Bassat.
A company with a firm online recruitment strategy is Cable and Wireless Optus. In fact, Olivier recently voted the company with the best approach to online recruiting from the BRW Top 500 list. Optus HR Director, Julie Coleman, backs up Bassat’s estimation by saying 85 percent of its job vacancies are filled using its online tools, including its own Web site and job boards.
“Our strategy has centred around our corporate Web site and is complemented with job boards,” says Coleman. This has resulted in a significant reduction in its advertising spend and use of recruitment agencies.
Getting bang for your buck
And that brings us to the other major advantage of advertising online . . . the cost saving.
To place an ad on a job board can cost as little as $100, and this will give you access to search the site’s résumé database and leave the ad online for one month.
But of course, there is more to online recruiting than simply posting an ad on a job board. One point made clear to us when researching this article is that online advertising shouldn’t be the only approach, instead it is best when used in conjunction with other methods.
At Optus the first step in recruiting is online, which includes placing the ad on its Web site as well as on a job board. If the ad doesn’t attract applicants, or the right kind of applicants, then the company will also place an ad in a print publication. If that still proves unsuccessful, then a recruitment agency will be consulted.
Hutchison has a similar strategy. Recruiting in the hundreds every year has seen the Internet become a large part of its recruiting methodology but it is not seen as the be all and end all.
“You need to use it in conjunction with other techniques, it isn’t to be used as standalone,” says Hutchison’s Clapp. “We tend to advertise initially on our Intranet, then on our Internet and usually on Seek as well—we do those concurrently. We wait to see how that goes, if we are not successful there then we may go to an agency or put an ad through the paper.”
Ramping up your Web site
So what is involved in ramping up the careers section of your company’s Web site? It isn’t as easy as you may first think. Daisy Hoffmans, an analyst with Olivier, says if the company’s strategy isn’t thought out, it can do more harm than good. Your company’s reputation is on the line, and a site with poor functionality can damage corporate branding. She advises finding a strategy that you can commit to best.
The size of your company and its recruiting needs will determine the best strategy. You may decide that managing the Web site is too time consuming and perhaps then your best option will be to include a careers section on your Web site but have it link off to a job board.
Alternatively, you can have a job board manage your Web site for you. Seek offers a service called Seek Onsite, where the candidate remains on your Web site but the careers section is powered by Seek. Bassat says any organisation that is getting traffic to its Web site can take advantage, whether it be a large or small company.
“We can set that up in a couple of days, it is really easy,” says Bassat. “We have 100-120 clients that we actually do that for. We charge US$500-$600 a month for that, and $1000 to set up which is really cheap compared to the cost of maintaining your own employment section.”
But it may be worth the time and expense to expand your Web site and manage it in-house. Optus made the decision in late 1999; it was recruiting in large numbers and using print advertising and, according to Coleman, this was resulting in high costs and long delays.
“Being in IT&T we thought that we very much needed to explore online. We also wanted to manage our candidates a lot more efficiently,” explains Coleman.
Before Optus started developing its careers section, it first researched the industry, looking at trends in online recruiting both in Australia and overseas. Conducted internally, the research examined what other companies were doing and what job boards were offering. Once Optus was clear in what they wanted to offer, the next step was to go through a tender process for the applicant tracking system.
“In terms of timeline, we initially [built the site] in a stage process, we developed the career section via a job board with same look and feel while we developed. We linked into their Web site while we were developing our own,” says Coleman.
The developing of the site was completed in house with the use of consultants and took approximately six months, going live in November 2000. Now almost two years down the track, has the Web site improved efficiency?
Coleman says Optus has seen a reduction in recruitment administration, as well as in its advertising costs.
“The online process helps with ease of process and people apply directly to us,” says Coleman.
Hutchison’s Clapp said it didn’t take long to recover the cost of building its Web site.
“I think we spent $10-$20,000 [on our site], the cost of a couple of [print] ads,” says Clapp. “Has online recruiting saved us money? Hugely. It costs us nothing essentially to put an ad up, and Seek is also very cheap.”
