E-RECRUITMENT

 

The recruitment process has changes drastically due to the use of internet. As per Dhamija (2012), it was in mid 1990s the internet recruitment tools first emerged.  Many large & small organisations use internet recruiting in the current context & are becoming a favored medium of both employers and job-seekers. ‘The Internet has caused the largest change to the recruitment landscape in the past decade acting as a conduit between employers and job seekers’ (Barber, 2006). Hosain, Hena, Arefin &Hossin (2020), describes E-recruitment also known as online recruitment, as a practice of using technology and in particular using web / internet based approach in recruiting new candidates.

Figure 1: Landscape of e-recruitment

(Source: Barber.l, 2006, p.5)

Figure 1 explains how sophisticated the technology is & how  it connects the  corporate websites, suppliers and job seekers &  enabled them to become more, interactive & to connect globally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Figure 2: E-recruitment process

Source: (Dhamija. P, 2012, p.4)

When analyzing the figure 2, online job portals, employment agencies, online ads, corporate websites, social media, can be considered as some of the main digital recruitment channel used today by which the applicants will be attracted towards a vacancy. Applicants will submit their CVs through the recruitment portal itself & employers will contact the candidates via emails.

Companies will access all the application through the e recruitment portal itself & will screen them online; notifying the selected candidates will also be done via internet through emails. The aptitude test which was done physically is also done online through the recruitment portals reducing the consumption of resources & cost of the recruitment process.

Topjobs.lk, Rakiya.lk, Express.job.lk are some recruitment sites in Sri Lanka.        

 

Companies are benefited through E-recruitment in many ways;

01. Less time consuming - ease the communication process as it will be through email, job alerts & telephone, which speeds up the recruitment process. E recruitment resources being available 24*7 hours reduces the time of recruitment. Job vacancies are posted immediately and completing online application forms and attaching CVs to emails has eased recruitment process & saves the valuable time of recruiters & applicants.

 

01. Diversity of the applicants - e recruitment will have a wider scope. It enlarges the candidate pool as  applicants from different levels, nationalities  & even international applicants are  able to apply provides the employers a better chance to identify the best fit for their vacancies.

 

02.  Being able to store the applicant information for future recruitment purposes is another advantage of e recruitment, states Barber (2006).

 

03. Reduce Cost & administrative burden - E recruitment help the employers to carry out the recruitment and selection process with ease. It sorts the applications and creates an ability pool that helps in the HR process.

 

04. ‘The Internet has emerged as a powerful tool for promoting and reinforcing the corporate image, brand and reputation’(Barber ,2006).

 

CHALLENGES OF E-RECRUITMENT

Rahtee & Bjuntel (2017) in their article identifies couple of challenges of e recruitment,

01. Less Reliable – Not being able to personally interact with the applicant, employers are unable to assess the qualities of the candidate makes the e recruitment system less reliable.

02. The complete profile of the candidate being available the job portals. This may create a privacy issue I the data goes to a wrong person’s hands or get miss used

03. Availability of an Intent connection is a must for e –recruitment. In Sri Lanken context, may rural areas still don’t or have difficulties in accessing internet

04. Sometimes due to high technicalities of the web forms, the job seekers find it difficult to apply online as they are not computer savvy.

05. Barber (2006) indicated that receiving a large number of unsuitable applications will result in time waste in cv screening.

06. Plessis & Frederick (2012) states that some candidate may cheat on the recruitment companies by indicting falls claims & not having motioning their own qualities & capabilities in their CVs which would result in a wrong recruitment to the company. In order to avoid this companies include psychometric testing and other kinds of aptitude tests before physically interviewing people.

 

References

 

# Barber,L 2006, E-recruitment developments, ‘Institute for employment studies’,UK.

# Dhamija, P 2012, “E-recruitment: a roadmap towards e- human resource management, Research world-Journal of Arts, Science & Commerce, Vol. 3, Issue–3(2),July. 2012 [33].

# Hosain, S ,Hena, A , Arefin, MM & Hossin, A  2020, ‘E-recruitment: a social media perspective’, Asian journal of economics, business and accounting, 16(4): 51-62, 2020; Article no.AJEBA.60143.

# Plessis, AJ du & Frederick, H 2012, ‘Effectiveness of e-recruiting: empirical evidence from the rosebank business cluster in Auckland, New Zealand’, Science journal of business management.

# Rathee, R & Bhuntel, R 2017, ‘Benefits, challenges and Impact of e-recruitment, VSRD International journal of business and management research’, VSRD International Journals, , Vol. 7, Issue 7, July 2017.

# Vivek, R 2018,E-recruitment awareness and e-recruitment users in Sri Lanka, International journal of engineering research and management (IJERM), Volume-05, Issue-05.