Human Resource Management Journal, Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 257-274

AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE AND SUCCESS OF ONLINE RECRUITMENT METHODS IN THE UK

Index

1.Background studies

2.Summary

3.Comment

Background
Recruitments are parts of human resource management. Recruitments described as a process of attracting, screening, and selecting a qualified person for a job. In other word, it is the process of identifying and hiring the best-qualified candidate (from within or outside of an organization) for a job vacancy, in a most timely and cost-effective manner.

Recruitment and selection process contain five main steps; decide what position to fill, build a pool of candidate, make candidate complete application form, or send their cv, use selection tools, and lastly decide which candidates to offer.

In case of organization want to expand their operations, employer or manager must plan and forecast. Manager must forecast the future personnel needs. Not only that he also needs to forecast have how many employers they need to achieved organization goal. Some tools that used to forecasting is trend analysis, ratio analysis and many more.

There are two source for outsourcing candidates, that is internal source and external source. internal source is candidate pool that within an organization only. External source are outside of organization. Some tools of outsourcing external candidates is online recruitment, using advertising, job agencies, and many more

Basically this report covers as journal titled; An analysis of the use and success of online recruitment methods in UK. They cover external outsourcing by using commercial and corporate websites

Journal Synopsis
The online recruitment now was popular among organizations in the uk, but it is not dominant as media predict. This is because they experience mixed success of the method. This paper reports on the use of a large scale, longitudinal survey of recruitment activity to investigate the usage and perceived success of both corporate and commercial websites by employers.

The question that this study explores is: What trends are there in the use and perceived success of corporate websites and commercial jobs boards and what are the reasons behind these trends? Are particular types of organizations more successful at using online recruitment methods than others? Are there steps that employers can take to improve their success at using online recruitment methods?

There are two methods to conduct this research and analysis. That is survey and interviews. Survey was conducted over six years period. It covers all aspect of recruitment including organizational experience and recruitment difficulties. Respondents also were asked a number of question regarding why they did not use online recruitment, what their prediction, and what implication or impact they expected trough successful of online recruitment.

For interviews, there are fifteen semi-structed interviews conducted with representatives from organization that use online recruitment methods. There are varies in interviewee including wider sectors, organization size, and geographical location.

What trends are there in the use and perceived success of corporate websites and commercial jobs boards and what are the reasons behind these trends?

Based on the survey and interviews result, their anylisis state that trend for use online recruitment for both commercial and corporate are increase or remained the same during 6 years of analysis. Respondents were also asked reasons for they use online recruitment. The most common reason is cost effectiveness, followed by the ease of use for organization, speed to hire, and company policy. Others state their reason is finding candidates and keeping ahead of competitors

The most common reason for choosing commercial website such as jobstreet is to get a large candidate pool, cost effectiveness, speed to hire, and success-finding candidates. Some respondents learn to adopt online method because to keep with other organization.

The perceived success of online recruitment had fluctuated over the six years of this study. However, for the average the result show slightly increase of both commercial and corporate website use. The anylisis presume that cause of the increase is because the recruiters were being strategic in their choice of recruitment channel for finding candidates.

However, the comparison of online recruitment method and other traditional method, show that the online recruitment is not seen as more successful than other methods. By these means the successful of online method not as good as media state.

The interviews also discussed difficulties in using online recruitment. Most of them presume that main difficulties or problem is received very large number of applications. A high proportion of these applicants were not suitable for advertised position. One interviewee commented that he receives hundreds of people applicants within a week, but when open, theres no connection between their skills and experience from actual employment needs.

Responded also commented that a high number of applications were received from non-uk citizens who did not have a permit to work within the county. This are hard to deal. This both difficulties make some organizations want to stop using these methods. Most of them stop using it because of , large number of unsuitable applicants, received low response, and some said not having a qualities applicant.

Are particular types of organizations more successful at using online recruitment methods than others?

Many-interviewed organization has perception that online methods are suitable only for knowledge workers and not for blue-collar jobs. However, providers of online recruitment service refuted the view. They felt online recruitment method can used across all level of industries.

Based on the analysis, large organization are more likely to use both commercial and corporate webs for recruitment. In addition, medium size company is more to use commercial web for recruitment. The perceived success for corporate webs is significant with the size of company. However, perceived success for commercial web are not significant with size of company.

For another word, predictor of organization size was shown to have a significant effect on the criterion of perceived success of corporate websites, in that larger organizations were more likely to find this method successful. The perceived success of corporate websites could not be predicted using sector, industry and recruitment difficulties.

Are there steps that employers can take to improve their success at using online recruitment methods? Number of key are analyzed trough interviewees. The 1st one is driving traffic to a corporate website. There is evidence provided by successful interviewee that without branding or wellknown company, there is hard to attract job seekers to their corporate websites. In logically no one looking a job in not well-known company. Therefore, they use advertisement and drive traffic using commercial job boards in order to promote their company as well attracting candidates.

Another key that revealed is use of back office functionality. This means that they use an advance internet technology. It designed to post advertisement to several job boards, acknowledge application. After that it will forward applications to line managers automatically. Last ly line manager will perform some initial screens. Using this back office system led to efficiency in the recruitment process and saving operation costs.

Candidate pool also can affect the success of online recruitment. as benefit of online recruitment, all data about applicants will be stored. This data then use in later date when vacancy arise. Many companies found this method are successful other than advertising only.

Last step that can be use to improve success of online recruitment is branding and the provision of information to candidates. Some organizations have already provided text or guide on their corporate website. This is to advice job seekers whether they should apply or not. This not only prevent too many applicants, but also branding their company names trough reading it. Moreover, some company provide self-test to advice job seeker to apply or not.

Comments

This journal is about analysis on online recruitment. What I understand is online recruitment are now more popular than other method this day. However, there is no significant contribution of success recruitment provide by analysis. This proves that other methods of recruitment were still needed, as many populations are not reached by this method. As example in Malaysia, theres many professionals cannot be reached by this method. This is because although internet are more and more popular this day, some people are just not interest in internet especially people that age forty and above. Internet is used by younger people and fresh graduates compared to adult and professionals.

Moreover there is many disadvantages occurred in using online recruitment. One of that is too many people apply for little job. This increase cost and inefficient recruitment. This method have many more disadvantages but I will not express it here.

However, these trends are continuing, arise in Malaysia. This may because this method easy and simple to advertise. For developed country, it is good to continue using this method and try error of this method. Hope someday there is improvement and someone will expressing the success of online recruitment in Malaysia.