AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON WEB-BASED HIRING

61 AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON WEB-BASED HIRING M.LAKSHMI VARA PRASAD* *Assistant Professor in Human Resources Management, Dadi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Anakapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India. ABSTRACT Recruiting the desired candidates through internet is a new tool, at the retention of the HR departments, which has known a unique success in very minimal time. This paper presents the findings of an illustrative research, involving selected Indian IT corporations. The research attempts to identify the effect that the perceived pre-requisites of recruitment practices have on the decision of companies for web-based recruitment. The attributes tested are cost efficiency; staffing cycle time; response rate; response quality; image of the company; targeting of particular niches; targeting of the passive job-seeker; Global coverage; required resources; time and effort to implement; attractiveness of the mean to the job seekers (especially IT professionals and young graduates); risk of surplus of answers; and impact of the size and reputation of the company. The paper provides an insight on how the companies perceive and value online recruitment. KEYWORDS: Advantages, disadvantages, India, IT companies, online Recruitment. 1. INTRODUCTION Though the choice of its recruitment tool remains fundamental for any company, which is one of the latter steps in the recruitment process. The choice of the recruitment method of the organization goes through a complex procedure considering the cost of attaining the target group, the time scales involved, which best fit with the organizational culture and the opportunity presented to boost the public relations. One of the innovate recruitment tools at the disposal of employers is online recruitment. 1.1 ONLINE RECRUITMENT DEFINED The terms Online recruitment (O.R.), e-cruiting, i.e., cybercruiting or Internet recruiting, is the formal online sourcing of job information. The first references to O.R. appear in articles of the mid-80 s (Gentner, 1984, Casper, 1985), while systematic reference in HR journals begins approximately a decade later, in the mid-nineties, when IT companies and Universities begin to use the Internet adequately. Since then, the Online Recruitment industry has been developing and it is estimated that in metropolitan cities it will have soared in value from just over Rs500 crore in 1999 to 863 crores by 2005. (Taylor, 2001) Different authors have different concepts of what O.R. consists of because of the novelty of the term. This paper delivers a view on O.R. that has been promoted by the Chartered Institute of

62 Personnel and Development (CIPD, 1999). This states that the most familiar ways to use the Internet as a means to recruit are: To incorporate recruitment pages to the current organization site. It is a very common practice at the moment and its major advantage is minimal cost to develop a page on the corporate site, and also puts forward as the smartest way to recruit on the Internet. (Scheyer & McCarter, 1998). To use the specialised web sites in recruiting employees, like online recruiters, job portals, online job sites or job consultancies. Those sites finally act as mediums which connect the companies with potential applicants. These recruitment websites can take the form of Job listing websites, which are very similar to print media like advertisements; work-wanted sites, which stress the potential employee s side; and lastly online recruiters who make use of other websites as a resource for finding clients and customers (Rudich, 2000, Taylor, 2001). In this scenario, electronic ads appear similarly and at the same time with traditional printed ads in the newspaper or magazine. Classifieds on the newspaper s and websites are sometimes offered free to anyone paying for a print advertisement. The scope of O. R. also involve in providing the possibility to conduct interviews and assessments remotely, such as online psychometric or aptitude tests, and using Banner Ads and Smart Agents to search the web. Interactive tools, like search engines, interactive application forms, e-mail auto-respondents and electronic mailing lists which link the corporate databases with the website, are also at an early practice stage (Dysart, 1999, Taylor, 2001). 2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The main aim of the research undertaken was to identify some of the factors, perceived advantages and disadvantages that affect the company s decision to use O.R. The study was bound to be investigative, as there was not much information on the scenario s at hand. The basic assumption that drove the sample selection was that the IT companies should present a distinct behavioral pattern in relation to O.R. This emanated from the particular relation attributed between IT jobs and online recruitment in the literature (Finn, 2000), the greater easiness in technically implementing the O.R. development project and the intense shortage of labour supply for IT professionals at the time,(lamb 2000b, Rana, 1999 and Kucznski, 1999), which stressed the IT companies to intensify the use of all recruitment tools. Furthermore, IT companies were generally expected to use O.R. as a mean to enhance their image of being innovative and adopting new practices and ideas. It was anticipated, therefore, that the IT companies should be more into online recruitment and probably have gained considerable experience, which the rest of the companies lacked. A survey was carried out, in the form of a postal questionnaire, which was further followed by interviews with some of the respondents. The sample consisted of all the 99 IT companies whose shares are traded in the Bombay Stock Exchange Market. Postal questionnaires and electronic forms to complete were addressed either to the recruitment manager or, alternatively, to the person whose name is short listed on the recruitment announcement on the Web, while the

63 interviews were mostly held with the HR manager who was most familiar with the online recruitment practice. 3. RESEARCH FINDINGS In the total sample, 34 of the 99 originally contacted companies replied where seven companies which do not use online recruitment excluded from completing the questionnaire, but they replied by post or e-mail in order to disclose information on their current situation concerning online recruitment. In relation with the factors affecting the decision to adopt O.R., the results were unclear, although a general pattern has emerged. It appears that the cost effectiveness and the high response rate come first, followed by the access to the passive job seeker and the marketing purpose of O.R., which, however, seem to be of the most problematic notions in the O.R. literature. On the other hand, the factors quality of response and Global coverage are the least important for the respondents. The major negative factor considered is the risk of overload of applicants, along with the fact that the Internet still is not the first place for the people who seek a job will look at. The least considered negative factor was the lack of the resources and the extra effort involved when putting the O.R. project into practice. 4. DISCUSSION 4.1 IMPLIED ASSUMPTION 1: IT INDUSTRY: A DISTINCT MARKET SECTOR, IN WHAT CONCERNS RECRUITMENT? From the outcomes of a previous recruitment survey run by CIPD for the year 2000 (CIPD, 2000, Merrick, 2000) It is obvious that the findings of the current research are different from the findings of the CIPD for the total of the India economy. This suggests that the IT companies have a more established experience in the practice of O.R., and therefore that they might also have a clearer perception of the attributes of O.R. 4.2 WEB-BASED RECRUITMENT IMPLIES REDUCED COST A general inference from the analysis is that the O.R. decision is mostly a matter of cost. Low cost is the major factor of O.R. attractiveness, since it eases the companies decision making, by minimizing the risk involved in the difficult step of changing established recruitment practices. 4.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE QUANTUM AND GOODWILL OF THE COMPANY A further deduction from the issues discussed here is that the decision to adopt O.R. is still a privilege of the largest and best-known companies. This could be partly a matter of the relatively smaller risk that large companies have to face, by spreading the financial burden. Therefore, O.R. is still more popular and better developed in large and well-known companies, despite its

64 unquestionable potential to be successfully implemented by small companies, due to its low budget and user simplicity. (Raymond, 2001, Scheyer and McCarter, 1999) From the additional information provided in letters and e-mails from the companies not using O.R., I conclude that were their position taken into account, the effect of the size of the company on O.R. should be rated as most important factor. According to one of the interviewees, it was a major reason for their company not to use any O.R. agency, while two other interviewees stated that they envisage adopting some software for automated primary selection for online applications. 4.4 WEB-BASED RECRUITMENT AND SATISFACTION MAPPED However, the existence of such a positive relation cannot be easily interpreted, and there are two distinct explanations. Either the high satisfaction that some companies have experienced from their use of e-cruiting induced them to invest and intensify the use of this tool, or the enhanced utilisation of it results in higher satisfaction. At this point it is risky to sustain either position, as there is no hint on the direction of the influence. 4.5 RECRUITMENT, AND MARKETING; TENTATIVENESS OF POSSIBLE LAG FUNCTIONED One of the most puzzling attributes of O.R. is its effect on the corporate image. As the marketing purpose of O.R. has been greatly stressed in the literature, it was anticipated that perhaps the corporate image, rather than recruitment itself, is the major focus of O.R. efforts. The findings of the questionnaire supported the assumption that the positive effect on the corporate image affected the decision to use O.R. 85 per cent of the respondents do take into account the marketing purpose of the tool when they decide to use it. It is important though, that for 57.7 per cent, this is a secondary consideration for the HR department. Therefore, although most companies take into consideration the marketing purpose of O.R., this appears to be mostly a secondary factor in their decision to adopt O.R., with the exception of certain companies, for which the development of O.R. is taken up by the marketing or IT department, with the HR department left outside the decision process. In two of the companies interviewed, the marketing department had taken all the steps to the development of the process, which, in both cases, resulted in the HR department neither having active involvement in the O.R. process, nor forming any specific ideas on the effectiveness of the medium. 4.6 EFFICIENCY OF RESPONSE For the majority of the companies, better quality through the Internet was questionable. Unexpectedly, however, in two interviews the interviewees sustained that the Internet does provide better quality of applicants. In one interview, in particular, it was proved that the Internet agencies provide the company with fewer but substantially better applicants, than traditional recruitment agencies do.

65 4.7 GLOBAL REACH The ability of O.R. to successfully reach the best applicants from all over the world has been mostly promoted in the American literature, which could be related to a somewhat greater globalilisation of the Indian firms. 4.8 HIRING TURN AROUND TIME The research did not agree with the eminent views about the savings in time got through O.R. One manager stated that the savings in time are probably exaggerated, since the company has not experienced such effect since they adopted the practice of e-cruiting. 4.9 THE IDEAL INDIAN APPLICANT The other blown up issue about O.R. concerns its potential of reaching the passive job seeker. Although widely supported in the literature, it is debatable whether most companies actually succeed in their efforts to that direction. The common practice of keeping databases of online exploratory job applications from the corporate web site cannot be overseen as a way to target the passive job seeker and 86 per cent of the respondents accentuated the importance of the passive job seeker to the decision to use O.R. However, from the interviews, only one company has actually incorporated a method to attract people who are not actively searching for a job and keeps a record of them to use when future vacancies arise. No company of those contacted practices active search on the Web for resumes matching the post to fill. This is a finding that presents considerable difficulty to explain. Probably most of the companies feel that O.R. has the prospective to recruit the passive job seeker and that was a major factor in their decision to adopt this method. So far, they mostly rely on fate to access the passive job seeker, rather than actively search for such people online. 4.10 THE TARGET NICHE In study a major part of the human capital comes from the group of young IT graduates, so the minimal concern on the fact that the Internet is considered best for the recruitment of ITs and young graduates was somewhat expected. As most interviews revealed, particular interest is shown for the recruitment of recent graduates, while the majority of the staff are employed in IT positions (more than 60 per cent of their total staff; in one case 95 per cent). For those companies, this attribute of O.R. was not seen as restriction, but this was an advantage. There was an agreement that the Internet is not the first place that one will look for a job. However, the interviews revealed that, for some positions it is better to look on the Internet, even if that is not so far a mass job search tool. As a company put it most typically, the young IT graduate probably will first search on the Internet, and later on the University Careers Service. 5. CONCLUSIONS Major considerations on O.R. which came into limelight during the research are not new in the recruitment literature. Moreover, cost, time, coverage, reach of applicants, quality of response

66 and impact on the corporate image are accepted considerations in the decision on the recruitment method. The suitability of the media for certain specialties and the balance between overload of answers and lack of answers, as well as the effect that the reputation of the company has on the effectiveness of any recruitment effort have also been widely discussed in the literature (Sisson, 1994: 194). In fact, several factors that have been promoted as declines of O.R. are mostly symptoms of poor recruitment practice. An example is the consideration over the risk of overload of answers. Although the Internet reaches people from wider geographical and social contexts than advertisement on a single regional or national paper, it also provides for the possibility to better inform the applicant on the job description. The extended word limit of all O.R. job postings allows the company to communicate accurate and detailed information about the job to prospective employees, allowing them to self-screen and reducing the number of undesired candidature. This effect falls into the realism hypothesis, according to which, the realism of the job description that is provided to the candidate increases the effectiveness of the recruiting source (Griffeth et. al., 1997). It seems, that the effectiveness of the medium depends mostly on the implementation rather than on the recruitment source itself and many of the characteristics that have been attributed to the O.R. are highly dependent on the capability of the whole recruitment process. Concerning the future of O.R., the most top position holds that its use will continue to rise as it has up to now, following the expected rise of the use of Internet, in general. In addition to that, the recruitment-related software has become more readily available and cost-effective, a tendency that most probably will overcome in the future, while the HR-departments are seen as gaining high-speed access to the Internet at no cost, as part of the overall online adjustment of most corporations. (Hansen, 1998, Taylor 2001) On the other hand, it could be that the up to now raise of O.R. has been overstated, due to the high labour demand for technical and professional positions around the Globe, that made such recruitment practice seem successful (Rudich, 2000). Given the findings of this research, concerning the general satisfaction and positive attitude of the companies towards O.R., it would be predictable that, even if O.R. does not become the major recruitment tool, or proves to own part of its success to the tight labour market conditions, it definitely is here to stay. On the other side, advanced tools, like resume scanning, online selfscreening, video-conferencing and online psychometric tests, which are already used by companies like Cisco (Personnel Journal 1996, Useem, 1999), will be more broadly used in the future. Moreover, the provision of directing the candidates to any site that has posts matching their criteria has existed already and is expected to force the recruitment websites to adapt and offer more developed services than those of pure middlemen, in order to survive. (People Management, 2000) 6. IMPLICATIONS The implications surfacing from this current research are as follows:

67 6.1 IMPLICATIONS FOR RECRUITING COMPANIES The recruiting companies that use Online recruitment should see to fully benefit from this practice, by applying all the traditional best practice guidelines concerning the evaluation of the recruitment needs, the provision of full necessary information on the job, (from job description to job specification e. t. c.) and the specification of the recruitment target niche. The O.R. provides them in this respect with enhanced capabilities, like extended word limit and use of specialized agents, keywords and web sites to target the right people. The main deduction from this study was that the O.R., no matter how revolutionary, is just a channel and that the success of its implementation depends on the thorough planning and on the use of the established HR practices concerning the recruitment. 6.2 LEGAL IMPLICATIONS It is very important to legally regulate the ownership of the labour information gathered on the Internet (Thaler-Carter, 1998, Piturro, 2000). The major ethical issue around O.R. concerns the confidentiality and trust during resume handling by online recruiters. The existing law in the UK stipulates only that a candidate s information must only be disclosed in the course of looking for employment opportunities, but not if the candidate has made any requests to remain confidential. (Anstead, 2000) The common practice of companies to share the resumes sent to them with other firms, is seen as unfair to the candidate who has only applied for a particular position. Potential problems include a company forwarding a resume to a candidate s current employer, as the result of a resale. Concerns have also been raised over the common practice of recruitment sites to post pretended vacancies in order to attract CVs, which are then circulated to companies, often against the candidate s will. More disturbingly, some head-hunters unlock corporate websites and roam the site for staff directories, CV s, photos and organisational charts, which they later on sell either to recruitment agencies, or directly to companies that may be interested. Finally, O.R. raises concerns on the provision of equal opportunities to all applicants. E-cruiting should perhaps be used in combination with other more traditional tools, in order to eliminate the possibility of accusations that certain sites are not equally at the disposition of different social groups, and therefore constitute a source of indirect discrimination. Another, related issue is the risk of the documents proving that the proper procedures have been followed getting lost without a trace. A suggestion is always to fall back on traditional methods to confirm everything. (Whitehead and Rana, 1999) Such a practice, however, would definitely reduce the effectiveness of O.R. on time and cost savings. 7. RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS It is recommended that any future research, to examine the effectiveness of O.R., should establish the connection between the satisfaction (perceived effectiveness), with the size of the company, the number of O.R. practices and the extent of use, as well as the integration of it in the overall recruitment effort. Although not tested through quantitative analysis in the current research, those relations were suggested from a comparative analysis of the whole quantitative and qualitative findings.

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