Eddie's final essay

Topic: Should e-recruiting method replace traditional recruitment method?

The past 20 years have seen a considerable increase the internet use in the world, so at the present time it is the internet which has a big influence on people’s lives. It can be found that traditional methods have gradually been replaced by the internet. For instance, people use the internet chat programmes such as MSN Messenger to communicate with their parents or friends who live in different regions. Due to technological progress, companies also adopt the latest way to recruit employees. In this decade e-recruitment has grown rapidly in the marketplace, using the internet channels communicate the potential job seekers alongside traditional method. The definition e-recruitment is “the act of scouring the internet to locate both actively-searching job seekers and also individuals who are content in their current position.”(Tom Redman and Adrian Wilkinson, p64) A minority of people insist that companies should use traditional method to recruit personnel which is better than e-recruitment. However, from the long-range conception of e-recruitment is going to replace tradition recruitment method. This essay will describe the development of this recruitment method in recent years. It will then examine the advantage of e-recruitment. After this, it will examine the drawback of e-recruitment. Finally, there will be an analysis of the new recruitment method.

It would appear that this recruitment has dramatically transformed in recent years and has provided new recruitment method for companies. Due to the rapid development of technology, the emergence of e-business has a big influence on the business environment which revolutionised the way companies conduct business. However, e-recruiting methods have been widely used since in the middle of 1990s. A majority of people probably divide six categories into e-recruiting sources which are general-purpose job board, niche job board, e-recruiting application service providers, hybrid recruiting service providers, e-recruiting consortium, and corporate career web site. Moreover, the architecture for the holistic e-recruiting system has been also assisted the development of e-recruiting since in the middle of 1990s. Among recent recruitment methods, e-recruiting is considered as one of the most efficient in modern society, companies and job seekers begin to announce job information on the website which could provide job vacancies to job seekers. It is generally agreed that e-recruiting could be the trend of recruitment method.

It can be found that e-recruiting has brought some benefits for companies and job seekers. First of all, it is widely recognised that companies could cost saving the advertisement fee in newspapers because every year companies budget this fee in recruitment. Using traditional e-recruiting composes no more than a thirty word newspaper job advert, but it is not clear that companies would like to express job vacancies which could not find ideal job seekers. It is doubtful whether publishing advert is worth it or not, whereas by using e-recruiting, companies could save the advertisement fee and describe job vacancies detailed such as job descriptions and person specifications. The second advantage of e-recruiting is improved time to hire. Many e-job boards permit employers to research companies’ database for qualified applicants by using the specific search standard. That is why employers can read resumes and respond to applicants through the email. This is faster than reading paper resumes and trying to make telephone contact. The third advantage of e-recruiting is renewed job vacancies are quickly. When the employer has hired a new employee, job vacancies can be removed fast. It can probably reduce that job hunters still have job vacancies attitude. Then, e-recruiting can be successfully practiced on major search engines, niche search engines and job boards, discussion lists, and other virtual communities. It is clear that companies can attract many job hunters who submit resumes to companies.

On the contrary, it can be seen that the drawback of e-recruiting would be the limited ability to distinguish technology and network problems in web searches. There are three technological problems in web searches. First of all, it is difficult to find a company’s webpage. As the internet platform for human resource management is provided, most companies offer job vacancies to job hunters. Unfortunately, a minority of companies do not have a webpage, so it is difficult to understand a companies’ background. Secondly, it is only few links between general job board such as Monster.com and a company’s webpage. If job seekers use an e-recruiting website to find a job, job board seldom link to a company’s webpage. It would be time-costing to search the job from an e-recruiting website whether it is worth it or not. Thirdly, it appears to be difficult to reformat and diverse webpage’s specification. Companies have established different formats style, suddenly companies are asked to build the same form which has a big challenge work. As far as network problems are concerned, job seekers encounter anxiety about the privacy of information submitted. It is generally concerned about the privacy of information which could be stolen by internet hackers. Yet, if the privacy of information is stolen, it can meet some problems and cannot calculate the loss.

E-recruiting has a big influence on company’s recruitment way, even most companies have given up using traditional recruitment method to recruit new employees. I personally believe that e-recruiting could be the trend of recruitment method. However, some people still think traditional recruitment method is better than e-recruiting because they are suspicious of e-recruiting security, especially personal information whether let out or not. Perhaps, companies need cooperate to hire a specialist who operates this website. It can prevent internet hackers from stealing personal information. By this measure, it can solve people suspicious. Moreover, making the same application format is convenient to job hunters, because every company have different application forms which let people criticise e-recruiting function. Maybe, every company, which utilises e-recruiting method to hire employees, should cooperate with a professional e-recruiting website to hunt job seekers. It is apparent that a profession e-recruiting website has a standard application format, so it can reduce job seekers’ convenient. The most important thing is it strengthens to link between general job board and a company’s webpage. A majority of people at the present time use the internet to find a job. If job seekers can link a company’s webpage from general job board, they can realise a company’s operation idea and job descriptions.

To sum up, the method of recruitment has dramatically changed since in the middle of 1990s. It is clear that cost saving, efficiency, and convenience are the most outstanding characters in e-recruiting. Due to the architecture for the holistic e-recruiting system assistant, e-recruiting has gradually developed since the mid-1990s. Even though e-recruiting still have some drawbacks, it will solve these problems as soon as possible which improve faster than we can imagine. It can reduce Thus, the overall advantage still encourages companies to utilise e-recruiting method which recruits employees.

Reference:
Tom Redman and Adrian Wilkinson (2004) Prentice Hall 3rd Contemporary Human Resource Management: Text and Cases P64

In Lee (July, 2007) An architecture for a next-generation holistic e-recruiting system, P 81-85 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1272518&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=80040467&CFTOKEN=61002549&ret=1#Fulltext

Daniel C. Feldman and Brian S. Klaas ,HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Summer 2002, Internet Job hunting: A field study of applicant experience with on-line recruiting,P1-18.
http://pdc.csusb.edu/Schreihans/4_Internet_Job_Hunting.pdf

Steven D. Maurer, Yuping Liu,Business Horizons (2007) 50, Developing effective e-recruiting websites: Insights for managers from marketers, 305–314
http://www.yupingliu.com/files/papers/maurer_liu_recruiting.pdf