Roy Davis, Head of Communications at SHL, looks at how to make online recruitment work.
Without doubt there has been a transformation in the recruitment industry in recent years, brought about by the role the Internet has begun to play in a traditionally labour intensive, desktop-dominated market. To date this has had a particularly strong impact on the graduate recruitment industry, where online applications and CV processing is now an accepted part of the recruitment procedure.
Such has been the apparent success that the pace of change with the whole of the recruitment industry now looks set to follow the example of the graduate market; with online tools promising to revolutionise the way HR professionals assess and recruit candidates, and the way candidates themselves select and apply for jobs.
The growing number of organisations using the Internet to advertise vacancies, together with the massive number of jobseekers turning to the Internet to find new positions demonstrates that online recruitment is here to stay. If you’re looking for an online recruiter, or a consultancy to help, the probability is you’ll be spoilt for choice.
The Internet is sometimes used as a stand-alone option and can also be used to enhance a recruitment campaign by complementing more traditional media. Indeed, many argue it has the edge over other media, with potential advantages of reach, speed, cost and quality.
But, effective recruitment doesn’t stop at having an Internet careers site.
The belief that the Internet alone can transform recruitment is misguided. The Internet is only a communication vehicle and as such has the power to deliver improvements. Effective recruitment involves a lot more than just harvesting CVs. The HR community in particular needs to remember this, and not get carried away by the belief that the Internet will transform their recruitment without also considering the whole process, the tools deployed, as well as the technologies involved.
Recruitment is a complex set of activities. Selection of the right people into the right jobs means that the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the recruitment process mustn’t be forgotten. Components such as job design, person specification, candidate sourcing, candidate communication, candidate sifting, assessment and interview and ultimately selection have to be dealt with – as well as harnessing the Internet.
Real cost savings can be made after the application process, if objective Internet-based screening and assessment tools are used to select only the most suitable candidates to go forward for interview and/or selection event. But here again, care must be taken to use the right tools. If, for example, psychometric instruments are introduced then as much care has to be taken for use on the Internet, as would be the case in the traditional pen and paper setting.
It might look great to introduce a psychometric test into your recruitment process, but it’s still essential to first consider and define the skills and characteristics that need to be assessed. The Internet won’t help if you’re not sure what to measure.
Likewise, the Internet won’t help if you use an inappropriate and inadequately validated test. Your process might appear more contemporary, but is it really robust?
More and more organisations post the latest vacancies on their website, but few of them then take the next step. With effective screening and assessment earlier in the recruitment process, the interview rounds and assessment centres are far more likely to be successful hiring events, thereby streamlining the recruitment process and saving both HR and line manager time – better, faster, cheaper recruitment.
To be effective, online recruitment must use the capabilities of the Internet to facilitate an existing process of human interaction, rather than replacing it. As with any other method of recruitment, the processes, tools and technologies must all be rigorous. If they are not, then recruiters risk losing the clearly defined methodologies that were the key to effective selection in the first place.
