CIPD - E-recruitment

Recruitment and talent management

Revised February 2009

This factsheet gives introductory guidance. It:

defines e-recruitment
provides details on the usage of e-recruitment
comments on the advantages and disadvantages of using e-recruitment
discusses future trends
includes the CIPD viewpoint.

What is e-recruitment?

E-recruitment, also known as online recruitment, is the use of technology to attract and recruit candidates. For further details on the recruitment process more generally, see our factsheet on recruitment.

Go to our factsheet on Recruitment

The use of technology within human resource management has continued to increase over the years. One particular area of growth is for recruitment and selection purposes. Our 2008 Recruitment survey shows that 75% of organisations used their own corporate website in 2007 to attract applicants.

See the results of our recruitment survey

For more information on our research into HR and technology, see our research pages.

Go to our research pages on HR and technology

In the past online recruitment advertising and online applications have been the most common activities that e-recruitment has been used for. Online testing can be used as part of the selection process and the number of organisations making use of it is growing. Global recruitment website yasni.co.uk found that 'although 68% of recruiters said they had not searched for applicants online, 44% of these said they probably would do in the future'¹.

In addition to this, technology has developed and the employer brand has grown in importance presenting technical opportunities together with a greater need for employers to gather intelligence on candidate behaviour to strengthen their attraction strategy which makes the Internet a useful mechanism to support this.

CIPD research highlights that the key drivers for e-recruitment among those making use of the technology were:

reducing recruitment costs
broadening the selection pool
increasing the speed of time to hire
greater flexibility and ease for candidates
strengthening of the employer brand.

The main concerns raised was that e-recruitment could increase the number of unsuitable applicants and act as a barrier to recruiting older workers.

The internet is popular among job-seekers – figures from the British Market Research Bureau show that it is the favoured job-hunting method for one in four UK adults, with the most likely job hunter to be 25-34 years old according to the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS). Many candidates use online sites to register for job alerts by email and to register their CV. However, 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 better understand your audience and learn about how you are perceived in the market place
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.

Own website

The amount an organisation invests in its e-recruiting (from custom designed sites to basic information pages) will depend on organisation’s ‘e-strategy’, resources available and competitor activity. The basic option is to provide a list of vacancies and contact details. A more in-depth approach would involve a dedicated web site area that gives details of vacancies, person specifications, benefits, your organisation’s mission and values and the application process, for example, for online application forms. Large organisations may have areas for specific types of employees, for example graduates, technical specialists, or have a search facility for candidates to view all vacancies.

Job areas are often signposted directly from an organisation’s home page so that more general browsers can access them too. An intranet may also be used to host vacancies for internal staff to access.

Some organisations take a ‘partnership’ approach, working closely with recruitment consultancies and specialised web agencies who manage the online process for them as they don’t have the necessary skills in-house.

Commercial job boards

These are large databanks of vacancies. These may be based on advertising in newspapers and trade magazines, employment agencies, specific organisation vacancies, social networking websites and many other sources. They often have questionnaires or tests for applicants to improve their job-hunting skills to act as an incentive for them to return.

Some vacancies are purely extensions to ‘old media’ printed advertisements so that ‘online’ is merely an alternative communication medium, while other vacancies are only found online with no printed equivalent. Ideally, vacancies shoud have a link back to the organisation’s website for candidates looking for further information and to get a ‘feel’ for the type of employer that is recruiting. . It is also important that job board candidates can apply back into your e-recruitment system. Monster.co.uk and Fish4jobs.com are examples of commercial job boards. Some job boards target specific groups so it is important to explore who the target audiences for particular boards is.

Advantages of using e-recruitment

E-recruitment has the potential to:

reduce recruitment costs
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
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 on the post and organisation, for example, case histories of a ‘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
build up a picture of your target audience to support your attraction strategy.

Disadvantages of using e-recruitment

The disadvantages to using e-recruitment include the potential to:

limit the applicant audience as the Internet is not the first choice for all job seekers
cause applications overload or unsuitable applications if care isn’t taken drafting the job profile/specification
exclude those who do not want to search for a new job online
limit the attraction of those unable to fully utilise technology eg certain disabled groups
give rise to allegations of discrimination, in particular the use of limited keywords in CV search tools
make the process impersonal, which may be off-putting for some candidates
impact on the ‘cultural fit’ dimension of recruitment
‘turn-off’ candidates, particularly if the website is badly designed or technical difficulties are encountered
lose out on candidates, especially if your own website is below the search engine ranking of your competitors
base recruitment decisions on subjective information found after trawling the Internet for personal information on candidates.

Monitoring

E-recruitment may not be cost effective for all positions so it is important to review the use of technology along with the overall assessment of the effectiveness of the recruitment process.

Some tips

Integrate with other recruitment methods so that all recruitment ‘tools’ work in harmony.
Evaluate and monitor use – get feedback from applicants about how their experience of applying for a role with your organisation and take appropriate actions.
Keep content fresh – don’t display out of date vacancies. If you don’t have any, say you don’t have any.
Avoid jargon and ‘company speak’ in advertisements.
Invest the same time in preparing online copy as you would for printed.
Have a policy on how to deal with unsolicited applications.
Provide contact telephone numbers in obvious places for those having technical problems.
Ensure the site is accessible and user-friendly.
Conduct research into the most appropriate job board to host vacancies.
Determine where and how to reach your target audience.
Make it easy for search engines to find your vacancies – think what keywords job hunters will use and how to improve your website's ranking.
Realise your own limitations – think about partnership working to develop your e-recruitment strategy.

Recent developments and future prospects

Due to its relatively low costs e-recruitment will become a more powerful and important tool in the current economic climate and as organisations continue to strive to attract and recruit key talent. Research conducted by DEMOS² looks at the trends that will shape the recruitment industry for years to come. Recommendations with implications for e-recruitment include::

companies should align human resources, public relations and marketing, and be clear on core organisational values
companies should find ways to connect with the passive job seeker
companies should broker and make use of peer-to-peer relationships
companies should use Web 2.0 technologies (such as blogs, web-based communities and hosted services including social-networking sites) to build personalised relationships online.

Marketers also believe that consumer insights, behavioural targeting and brand strategy will become more important by 2010. Creating relationships with potential employees is important, the key way being through employer brand. In order to maximise a brand’s potential to attract the right people, it must express core organisational values and messages and be found in the right places. Find out more about employer branding from our factsheet.

Go to our Employer brand factsheet

Specific opportunities for e-recruitment include:

Tailored messaging through multimedia and social networking sites
Using specific web channels relevant to candidate talent pools
Using employer and employee blogs to build personalised relationships with your talent pool.

The current online recruitment model is predominantly about organisations posting jobs. Enhance Media predicts a shift in this model to a more proactive approach of finding candidates and using the Internet to tap in to the passive audience.

Some employers are also taking advantage of Web 3D to engage with candidates in a live and virtual environment. An online 3D environment lets users interact with one another and their surroundings in real time, representing new channels of innovation. The most popular and mostly quoted virtual world is Second Life.

Online testing

Companies are extending the electronic recruitment process by conducting assessments, such as psychometric or aptitude tests, online. This process significantly reduces the administrative overhead of distributing and collecting written test papers though care needs to be taken in how feedback is given. For more information see our factsheet on Psychological testing.

Go to the factsheet on Psychological testing

Broadband

Broadband access to the Internet has become the norm in the UK. It makes the transmission of live images via the Internet a feasible alternative to a conventional video linking. For recruiting purposes, this enables the hosting of ‘live’ employee video profiles and virtual office tours to illustrate life within the organisation and create engagement and commitment early in the recruitment process.

Social networking and blogs

A number of companies have started to make use of recruitment ’blogs’ (or online diaries) from employees as part of the information they offer to potential candidates about working for the organisation (for example based on the experiences of graduates on a development scheme). This is a potential way to build relationships with would-be candidates - and to feature different areas of your company and vacancies.

The use of social networking sites to target different talent audiences is a new opportunity also. For example, social networking site, Facebook has 150 million global users and in the UK more than 14m users with 50% of users returning daily. According to our 2008 recruitment survey (see link above), the most popular social networking sites used by employers to attract and recruit employees are: Linked-In (62%) and Facebook (58%).

New recruits can also benefit from social networking through learning about the organisation and its culture, and connecting with others sharing similar experiences to help speed up their induction into the organisation. For more information see our factsheet on induction.

Go to our Induction factsheet

A rise in the number of employers using the web to gain information on prospective employees has highlighted a number of challenges that need to be considered. For example, there are employment law risks associated with using social networking sites to vet job candidates³.

These include:

not processing personal data fairly under the Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998, and breaching guidelines in the DPA code
claims for discrimination on any unlawful grounds
breaching trust and confidence.

Employers can make the practice of using the web and social networking sites to gain information safer if they:

tell candidates that website checking may be part of the vetting process
separate the web-vetting from recruitment decision-making
give applicants a chance to explain discrepancies in CVs and applications
ask if the job justifies such in-depth vetting, and whether the information could be gathered in another way.

CIPD viewpoint

An effective recruitment strategy is essential to all organisations. There are no fundamental philosophical differences between recruiting using ‘old media’, such as advertising in newspapers, and the ‘new media’ such as e-recruitment. Organisations may use a mix of traditional and online methods depending on what meets their strategic recruitment needs and which reaches their talent market in the most appropriately way. Making use of technology has great potential to speed up the recruitment process and provide cost savings giving recruiters more choice and flexibility in how they wish to fill their vacancies and attract talent. It also provides an opportunity to achieve a more personalised approach to recruitment.

The purpose of both is to fill a vacant position with the best fit candidate, cost-effectively and on time. Using e-recruitment involves expertise in both the technology and the recruitment cycle, so it is important to have the resources and expertise to achieve this. Ensuring that the technology is used effectively and is fully integrated into the recruitment strategy is also key. The method chosen should be appropriate to the vacancy to be filled. As technological change moves so quickly, organisations need to keep abreast of new developments and opportunities for e-recruitment as they emerge.

Useful contacts

People Management
For details of vacancies in people management and development

National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS)

References

WOODS, D. (2009) HR staff use social networking sites to find out what employees get up to. Human Resources. 4 February.
CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF PERSONNEL AND DEVELOPMENT (2005) People management and technology: progress and potential. London: CIPD. Available at http://www.cipd.co.uk/surveys
CRONLY-DILLON, M. (2007) Face up to rules on researching recruits online. People Management. Vol 13, No 21, 18 October. p20.

E-recruitment