What is e-recruitment?

Thu 07 January 2010, Category: e-recruitment

This is an excellent article fom the CIPD, we have included snippets for you and a link at the bottom to the full article.

E-recruitment, also known as online recruitment, is the use of technology to attract candidates and aid the recruitment process. The use of technology within human resource management has grown considerably in recent years: a CIPD survey in 2005 showed that 77% of organisations used some form of human resources information system and 51% of organisations reported that their use of technology systems were for recruitment and selection purposes.

Similarly, almost two-thirds of respondees to our Recruitment, retention and turnover 2006 survey described themselves as using e-recruitment.

The key drivers for e-recruitment identified in the survey among those making use of technology were reducing recruitment costs (cited by 71%), broadening the selection pool (60%) and increasing the speed of time to hire (47%). Over a third of respondees believed it brought greater flexibility and ease for candidates, and over a quarter believed it strengthened the employer brand. However the survey revealed some concerns that e-recruitment could increase the number of unsuitable applicants and that it could act as a barrier to recruiting older workers.

Many different organisations use e-recruitment as a cost-effective method of recruiting new staff. It is popular among job-seekers – latest figures from the British Market Research Bureau show that using the Internet is the favoured job-hunting method for one in four UK adults, with the most likely job hunter to be 33 years old with 11 years experience, according to the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS). It is important to remember when designing a recruitment campaign that online job hunting is not the first choice for all.

Using e-recruitment

Technology can be used:

• to advertise vacancies – on your organisation’s website, job sites, or on social networking sites
• to deal with the applications – email enquiries, emailed application forms/CVs, online completion of application forms
• to select candidates – online testing, information gathering
• to enhance employer brand
• to create a personal relationship with your talent pool.

Advertising vacancies

This is the most basic form of using technology to recruit. Vacancies can be placed on an organisation’s own website or on a commercial job board. In the US it has been estimated that 19% of an organisation's recruitment advertising budget is spent on e-recruitment advertising, but the UK has a long way to go to match this as presently the spend is only 7.5%, but rising.

Advantages of using e-recruitment

E-recruitment has the potential to:

• speed up the recruitment cycle and streamline administration
• allow organisations to make use of IT systems to manage vacancies more effectively and co-ordinate recruitment processes
• reduce recruitment costs
• reach a wide pool of applicants
• reach a niche pool of applicants
• make internal vacancies widely known across multiple sites and separate divisions
• provide the image of an up-to-date organisation, reinforcing employer branding and giving an indication of organisation culture
• offer access to vacancies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week reaching a global audience
• be a cost effective way to build a talent bank for future vacancies
• help handle high volume job applications in a consistent way
• provide more tailored information to the post and organisation eg case histories of the ‘day in the life’ or self-assessment questionnaire or quiz to assess fit with role
• be spontaneous for candidates as ease of use means there is the ability for applications to be instataneous. 

The disadvantages, developments and tips can be seen on the CIPD website and reading the full article. The most updated version of the article can be found on the CIPD website.

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