Recruitment firms were among the first companies to use the Internet for business. The ability to advertise jobs and process CVs online had obvious attractions  low costs, convenience and a potentially large audience. Recruiters are now turning their attention to mobile services using WAP technology. As a result they are developing business models that other firms may follow, adapt and learn from, and are providing another way for firms and IT departments to recruit staff.
Online recruitment sites have grown in number and sophistication since the first sites, such as Monster.com, appeared in the early 1990s. Online recruitment agencies now range from basic sites, with details of jobs in a variety of industries, to those targeting particular sectors and offering value-added services such as career advice.
Some sites have had problems. Design failings have made it difficult for users to find the jobs they are looking for. More seriously, there have been cases of companies posting fake jobs to attract CVs from well-qualified candidates, and job-seekers being bombarded with inappropriate job details.
In the past year, several Web-based recruitment agencies have extended their services with WAP sites, which give mobile users access to databases of jobs.
Extra channel
This may seem like an odd move, given the disappointing take-up of WAP services in the UK, but most recruitment agencies see it simply as an extra channel to market, and for most it has been a simple and inexpensive process. Tim Sheedy, mobile research manager at analyst firm IDC, said, 'Setting up a WAP site isn't that hard. You're not going to WAP-enable everything on your site.'
The limitations of the mobile phone screen and keypad mean WAP recruitment sites cannot offer the facilities of a Web site. Online recruitment firm StepStone, for example, has a database of 140,000 jobs in different sectors. 'We allow users to come onto our site and define a very specific requirement for a job  a job in a particular town at a particular salary in a particular sector  to limit the amount of content they see,' said Kevin Kerrigan, UK managing director at StepStone. 'When they dial in on the WAP site they can say, 'Show me the jobs that are limited to my profile'. That is about trying to limit the volume of data you [send to] a WAP phone,' Kerrigan explained.
The WAP service provided by Top Jobs on the Net, which focuses on professional and managerial vacancies, gives people the facility to search by company, and to see enough information about the job to decide if they are interested or not. Using WAP, they can email a link to a job to their standard email account, and then use the link to study the full description of the job.
StepStone, in common with agencies such as Antal International and Close Communications, has found use of the WAP service to be low so far. Even Top Jobs on the Net, which says it has thousands of job views a week on its UK WAP site, said this is a small number compared with the number of visits to its Web site. Nonetheless, all are optimistic about the potential for WAP.
These firms believe WAP offers the ability to reach job-seekers without access to a PC, or who do not want to be seen browsing through job sites at work. They also target passive job seekers who do not want to spend much time doing the seeking. Ashley Barlow, IT director at Top Jobs on the Net, said, 'If you have a few minutes you can say, 'Let's take a look at what jobs are available in this company, or what engineering jobs are available in London, or the North East, and if one pops up I'll take a look.''
WAP may be especially useful to people on short-term contracts, who may start one contract and then immediately look for the next. Close Communications, for example, targets its WAP service at senior telecoms engineers and project managers, most of whom are working on contracts abroad and are often without their own desks.
For employers, WAP clearly offers another route to finding staff, and it could be a particularly good way to quickly reach some types of professionals, such as IT contractors. Steve Rose, director of consulting services at Close Communications, argued that such flexibility is useful for recruiting in areas of skills shortages. 'The learning curve we're going through is getting us thinking along the lines of, 'What else can we do to get that application in front of the customer quicker?' This is especially true when we're dealing with many markets in many time zones.'
Rose believes contractors will increasingly move from country to country on contracts, and that WAP services will make this easier to do. Top Jobs on the Net also believes WAP can offer advantages for employers in a hurry: it is introducing a service allowing HR managers to remove or restore job details, via WAP, whenever they want to.
