Online Recruiting
Evolves
—By
Kimberly Bedore. Article originally
appeared on the Electronic
Recruiting Exchange.
Remember the days when Internet recruiting meant
posting an opening on an online career center
in lieu of a print ad?
In those days, recruitment technology meant
resume storage and retrieval, and maybe correspondence
management. The few existing vendors were limited
to mainframe and client server platforms. But
as the recruiting profession has evolved, so
has recruiting technology. And as recruitment
technology and the Internet have intersected,
the options available have become limitless.
Now that the dust has settled and the next generation
of recruitment technology is firmly in place,
we have learned two important lessons:
- While technology can positively impact a
recruiter's productivity and save time, recruiter's
must develop a broader business sense and link
activities to organizational goals.
- It's imperative to understand that technology,
while advancing rapidly, cannot take the place
of human interaction when it comes to a candidate
making a career decision.
Forrester Research expects online recruiting
will fall into three categories by the year 2005:
1) online recruitment advertising, 2) human resources
applications, and 3) online assessment and training.
In other words, there are numerous ways technology — and
specifically the Internet — can positively
impact a recruiter's success. But with so many
options available, recruiters must begin to consider
ways to integrate technology into the recruitment
practices to increase their efficiencies and
improve strategies.
Online Recruitment Advertising
Online recruitment advertising reaches way beyond
posting to a job board. If job boards are currently
within your strategy, don't ignore the power
of niche sites, a rapidly growing market segment.
The key is to determine the best way to reach
your target audience. Fortunately, with the availability
of posting tools, the tedium of posting to multiple
sites is significantly reduced.
Also included under the online advertising umbrella
is permission marketing: that is, pushing your
jobs directly to a prospective candidate versus
waiting to pull them to the online posting. Chances
are you've made a significant investment of time
and money to acquire the data in your recruitment
database. Use it. The technology exists to simplify
this process, and our team for one has seen astounding
results.
Finally, employee referral programs can be executed
online, easing the administrative burden and
increasing communication with both employees
and their referrals. Studies show that employee
referrals tend to cost less and retention rates
are higher. The technology exists and can even
be used to help employees reach beyond their
immediate networks to increase referrals.
Human Resources Applications
Forrester lists human resources applications
as the second major category of online recruiting.
In addition to the traditional HRIM tools, this
group includes the automation of numerous processes,
including talent relationship management, EEO/affirmative
action tracking and planning, candidate staffing,
workflow management, and comprehensive reporting.
Often times these components can even be incorporated
into your recruitment management system.
Talent relationship management is something
that came up repeatedly at the ER Expo in San
Diego last month. The tools are there to help
with not only succession planning and competency
management, but also employee development and
training administration. According to Gary Becker,
winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 65%-70%
of all capital in a highly evolved economy is
human capital. If this is the case, and human
capital impacts shareholder value, than the management
of the existing workforce should take a prominent
role — and the investment in technology
to aide in this endeavor is justifiable.
Online Assessment and Training
Online assessment and training plays different
roles in different organizations. This can be
in the form of personality assessment or skills
testing, for example. Upfront screening can also
be built into the online application process
by asking some of basic questions like, "Are
you interested in relocating?" Training
delivery and administration can also fall into
this category. All of these can be automated
through technology and managed via the web with
the right tools in place.
Navigating this maze of recruitment technology
tools has grown into its own specialty. The key
to making the best choices is in first understanding
the overall business objectives, then identifying
ways recruiting can impact those objectives,
and finally considering how technology can make
the job easier. In today's economy, it's almost
become cliche to call recruiters "talent
managers," but I think we can all agree
that recruiting plays a major role in attracting
and retaining key talent, and will continue to
so as technology evolves.
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