E-Recruitment
Table of Contents
Introduction
Human resource is one of the key pillars in an organization that is considered as something that is vital in order to have an organic growth and strength. Employees are one of the factors that make an organization prosper and survive in a world of highly competitive business environment. Therefore, to be able to have and achieve the greatest efficiency on human resource, that is tapping the talents of the people in order to have an organization with creativity and innovation, there must be a set of guidelines that will be the core way this part of the organization be managed and operate.
The changes in the business environment, especially through the proliferation of globalization, make the functions of human resource management has also been evolving. One of the functions of human resource is recruitment.
This paper will be discussion the recruitment with the focus on the E-recruitment. As the selection process of new employees for the organization is a classic function of human resource, its changes of efficiency has changed by utilizing the new tools available such as the internet. Nevertheless, this paper will be discussing the important uses of the job description and specifications. Part of recruitment is the planning of the human resource that will constitute the size of the organization as well as the functions and job descriptions of employees. This is important as jobs would be filled and to ensure that the human talent pool are not over loaded or otherwise that may cause fatigue or unnecessary stress which may all contribute to the inefficiency of the organization.
The use of the internet is a way of improving the selection or recruitment process. With the use of e-recruitment, especially by the multinational companies would ensure that the reach of the need for talents to fill in job functions would be farther.
Discussion
Part of the recruitment process is the human resource planning. It is a process of analyzing the organization’s human resource needs under a dynamic business conditions and developing the required activities to be able to satisfy these needs. One of the activities would be the recruitment process. This activity is considered a dynamic management process to be able to insure that at all possible times, the organization or the department or division within the organization would have the correct number of people. However, this number of people, it is important that they also be characterized with the right set of skills and talents that would be using for the right jobs. This is to ensure that they can contribute well in the most effective ways and means. Having an effective talent pool would be able to have an organization with high productivity and profitability.
In essence, human resource planning and recruitment is concerned with the efficient procurement and maximum utilization of the organization’s human resource to be able to help the organization achieve its goals and objectives. Remember, that the human resource pool of an organization is the source of innovation and creativity that can propel it to greater heights. Thus, human resource planning, selection and placement of its people are all elements of the recruitment process. To be able to understand better e-recruitment, which is an improvement of the traditional recruitment process, we must be able to understand first the importance of human resource planning and well as its impact to corporate planning.
At the highest level of the organization where there is the strategic long-range planning. This activity at the top level would ensure to have the formulation of corporate philosophy. In this sense, including the human resource planning is an important function as well as in engaging the company in e-recruiting procedure.
To be able to have a well-scoped human resource planning, which is a prerequisite in the e-recruitment, there must be a well-structured steps and guidelines. The human resource management people must first be able to determine the workload of a job function that is based on the corporate goals, philosophies and objectives. This is to ensure that the job description that will be posted in the e-recruitment process is accurately matched to the actual job function to have a perfect fit with the talent of the individual to the company culture and job requirements. Further, there should be a studying well the jobs in the company to be able to write the job description and specifications. In addition, there must be a good forecasting of manpower needs. To have a good forecast is part of an effective planning activity in order to have the correct determining of the number of skills of people that are required in the organization. Also, having an excellent forecasting would mean ensuring that the organization will not be too fat that would be causing a high level of operational expenses that will be burdened by the organization. Also, having a good forecasting would be ensuring that the organization will not be too lean causing the people to be too stressed and overloaded that may result to human error in operations which may cost the organization high costs.
Having a good human resource planning would also ensure that the size of the whole organization is very much fit on the budget and ability of the company to absorb the expenses. Inventory of manpower is also required in the human resource planning. The inventory of manpower is the analysis of the present manpower complement of the organization. This is to determine if there has enough, less or more personnel that is required. In a modern world, especially with the sensationalized and much watched news on the economic recession of one of the most powerful countries in the world, the United States of America, there are a lot of known retrenchment and redundancies. This is the result of human resource planning of the organization where the needs of the organization on the required functions and its ability to absorb human resource costs such as benefit administration and salaries are deeply analyzed. Sadly, when the economy is at a recession, the profit bottom line of a business organization is hit and the result of human resource planning would mean a retrenchment. On the other hand, if there are no recession bouts and the economy is at is normal roll of growth, an effective human resource planning is a prerequisite for the recruitment process.
E-recruitment is very much on the rise today. One of the factors that might have contributed to such is the proliferation of the use of the internet. In e-recruitment, there is a database of job functions that are announced needed for filling up. This is in turn viewed by prospective employees that are available in the internet. Thus, other manual forms and materials such as bio-data or curriculum vitae can be submitted through the internet. Thus, the inefficiency of having snail mail which may take weeks or the risk of loss is eliminated. The requirement for data in the recruitment process can be submitted immediately and in real time. Thus, the time that was initially required in a manual or traditional recruitment is shortened.
An organization can collaborate with job recruitment databases such as Jobstreet or
JobsDB. These are the most viewed and known internet databases where jobseekers can look at. In addition, an organization can have its own website in the internet and include there the postings of job functions.
However efficient e-recruitment can be, the human resource department cannot discount the need for the pre-works that are also present in the manual or traditional recruitment procedure.
In this sense, e-recruitment can be considered as the centralization of personnel selection and hiring. The hiring policies of the top-level management should be effectively and consistently carried out. If this is so, then the screening and hiring process can be centralized in the personnel department, which can be institutionalized better. However, this does not automatically means that the personnel department alone can decide on which employee to be hired. Selecting the right person for the right job should be a joint responsibility of the personnel manager as well as the immediate superior. Some organizations use the Rule of Three, which means that the screening in the recruitment process is made by the supervisor or the manager requesting for the employee. While the personnel department is acting as the control center for accepting application, as part of the e-recruitment process, the line supervisor or immediate superior must be able to have the assumption of having his rightful share of the responsibility in selecting the right person most fit for the job. This is because the recruitment process is just the beginning of a long relationship between the immediate superior and the prospective employee. For one, the immediate superior has the role of developing and training the employee after the recruitment.
A number or organizations have been employing the services of consultants. Moreover, the recruitment process, especially with the onset of e-recruitment, can be outsourced. This can have the organization referrer the applicants for proper screening, testing and evaluation. Since the process of e-recruitment would be more and greatly efficient than that of manual training. This is actually the practice of many companies especially those of multinational companies in nature because of their requirement of a diverse work force. They are considered the forwardlooking companies in operations and the way they regard of their human resource. The consultants or outsourced partners screen the applicants and submit the names of those who would be able to meet the requirements and deemed to be fit. The client company would then be making the final choice of who would be hired. This process and practice would be reducing the tasks and processes that are about to be considered within the bounds of the organization eating up important manpower hours.
In the recruitment process, one more function that can be outsourced is the testing procedure where psychological clinics for testing and selection of applicants. This practice is being proliferated and widespread among organizations who would want to have a lean process and outsource non-core competency of the company. Industrial psychologists are trained in some of the best schools and must be able to help and contribute their respective skills to the organization’s betterment in terms of efficiency and efficacy in the recruitment procedure.
Below are the vital steps considered as part of the pre-work for the e-recruitment of employees for the organization’s needs (Sison, 1994):
- Determining the workload. This is the first step in the process of pre-works for recruitment process. This is to determine the business objectives of the company and analyze the corresponding impact on the department or unit’s operational responsibilities. Once the human resource management objectives are determined, the workload can be determined which should be aligned to the company’s overall company objectives and philosophies. These objectives and philosophies must be part of the corporate strategy by the high level of the organization. This part is important and vital in the process as the magnitude of the workload is considered as a charter between the prospective employee and the company. Further, this would determine the organizational structure or table of organization, the number and set of skills that the employee must possess in order to do the job effectively. Questions can help in the determination of the workload in order to have the right answers and data needed in this vital procedure. For instance, before launching the requirement in an e-recruitment website, we can ask the following: what are the overall organizational objectives; what is the nature and volume of the operational workload input such as in the production, financial or marketing. To be able to help and in determining the workload inputs, the organization must be able to consider important factors such as business development, economic forecasts, change in plans and products, new product roadmap or other business trends.
- Study of jobs in the company. This is considered to be the analysis of all the jobs in the company since these jobs are interrelated to each other.
- Forecasting human resource needs. After determining the work input of the immediate superior of the jobs to be filled, forecasting the manpower need can be institutionalized. Important questions that need to be answered on this respect would include the number of specialists, professionals or executives be needed in the organization. The forecasting is an important process to provide the indicator of how much the company would be preparing for labor costs and if the company would be able to absorb or shoulder the costs. A simple forecasting methodology involves the collective opinion of experts in such. The comments and opinions of experts must be backed up by qualitative and quantitative documents for support. These are then integrated with the organization’s strategies.
- Inventory of Manpower. In this process, there is an audit and assessment of the skills, career aspirations and strengths and weaknesses of the manpower of the organization. The variance is then studied and analyzed versus the needs of the company. This would in turn be the requirement of the company for the recruitment procedure. The net result of this activity would be that the organization would be able to determine that there is an enough volume of manpower within the organization that recruitment is not deemed as necessary or that there is an excess in the number of available manpower. A lack of manpower would be a good justification for the recruitment to be able to address the need for an important and vital job function to be filled.
The importance of well-organized e-recruitment program cannot be underestimated, as this is also an activity that can mirror the quality of the organization to the outside world. This is actually the link of the organization to the reach and finds the manpower outside the organization to fill in an operational or strategic need.
The main and most important goal of a good employee e-recruitment process is to acquire people who possess the right skills, talents and competence to be able to successfully accomplish the duties and responsibilities expected of the job needed to be filled. This is to ensure that the talent and full potential of the employee can be tapped and trained by the company to be able for the employee, in return, to be effective and efficient on his own role. This employee would surely help the organization achieve its goal of growth to be able to survive and win the ever challenging business environment.
The success of any organization whatever its size whether a multinational corporation or a small and medium enterprise, would be highly depend on the ability and skills of its people in its talent pool. People are therefore hired to be able to do and achieve job objectives. Since people are using company resources such as money, materials, tools and equipment to be able to produce products and services. Jobs are very diverse in an organization and differ and as much as possible differ form one another. If an employee is assigned to a job that does not necessarily fit to his own talents and skills, then the potential of the employee is then put into waste. The company, on the other hand, would not be getting the finished job which the employee was paid for in the first place. The e-recruitment process is therefore a major stop-gap of any future errors in the job-employee fit.
Thus, the importance of having a company policy of attracting and hiring employees through e-recruitment where every vacant job position must be filled is deeply recognized in an organization that puts value to its people. The e-recruitment is an efficient gateway on having a farther reach to get the employees with the ability, right personality and potential to grow with the company to be able to develop and train them to become efficient, loyal and satisfied employees.
In fact, according to a three-year study of about 300 thousand employees across 600 companies in the United States, as conducted by Joseph E. King, poor recruitment and low morale of employees were the root cause of a great employee problem. The study was able to provide conclusion that increased welfare activities were always the answer to these problems emphasizing that to be able to avoid such, it was stated:
“One answer is more scientific selection that is efficient which can be e-recruitment. The object is to build and maintain a working force, which will be stable, productive and satisfied, and to insure union-management relationship, which will be free from conflicts. In short, sound recruitment practice is designed to get the right kind of employees, place them properly and handle them effectively.”
Therefore, because of the very fast pace of the way businesses are operated today, utilizing the internet to launch an e-recruitment program is very timely. Unlike that of the traditional process where the announcement and communication plan of a job vacancy is through major broadsheets, the internet is a powerful tool that can be updated once in awhile. Further, since majority of the people are now using the internet, they do not need to wait for the dailies to arrive in the morning since the internet is accessible 24 hours of the day. The delivery of the message that the company is in need of talents would become more efficient. The organization can also have a faster way of assessing the applicants by their faster submission of requirement such as curriculum vitae or an essay on an important question that the company would like to be answered. These can be sent via internet and the delivery would be in a matter of seconds.
Therefore, the recruitment process is being able to find the right man for a job and finding the right job for a man (Sison, 1994). This is the very essence of recruitment. The launch of an e-recruitment is for the sake of efficiency.
Any extra cost that an be added to the recruitment program due to converting the process into an e-recruitment procedure for the improvement of the selection will more be outweighing the cost itself because of bringing in efficient employees in the organization. There will be less employee dissatisfaction that must be dealt with. With the use of e-recruitment, which can be scientific in nature as a new technique, a lot can be done in order to reduce and eliminate the inefficiency of manual recruitment or errors in the selection of employee.
Further, having an e-recruitment would be able to help the organization have a reach on the database of employees that had bad records in previous selection program of other companies. With the use of e-recruitment, organizations can have access and filter applicants who had a bad record such as not showing up on interviews or signing contracts and then backing out which caused some discomfort to past employers. This may not be present in a manual or traditional process because of the absence of database versus the use of modern technology with that of e-recruitment.
There are factors that need to be considered in what makes a good employee. Catching a good employee through the job market is the essential objective of having an effective erecruitment program. The selection of such is basis to an effective human resource management.
However, there is no full guarantee, even if the recruitment process has changed from traditional to something that is electronic, that the employees who are selected will be efficient and productive because many other factors are influential to the performance of an employee. A prospective applicant may be interested in placing a job not solely because of the corresponding pay but possibly on the opportunity for having his talent and ability be demonstrated and enhanced. There should be given an enough opportunity for the job and a chance for advancement to be able to achieve career aspirations and growth. The e-recruitment might have been successful in searching for the right man for the job because he might have the right and perfect set of skills needed. However, if the employee is assigned to jobs that he is very much qualified but the working climate is not made in such a way to foster individual growth such as proper incentives and other motivations to do a better and more than what are expected, the organization may not get the highest potential or quality performance which the employee is capable of.
On the other hand, the e-recruitment process is not only beneficial to the company but to applicants as well. Besides foregoing the costs of buying broadsheets and shouldering the cost for sending out curriculum vitae to the employers through snail mail or even taking up a leave from a current job just to walk on the business district and drop off a bio-date, the applicant can search for the job anytime of the day without the need for a cost for snail mail and production of printing of curriculum vitas in good papers. He just needs to do one in electronic form and submit via email. This makes the job hunt for the applicant very much efficient as compared if the e-recruitment process has not been invented. Therefore, the right talent for the job is being able to be found in a faster rate. The selection process of an organization to fill in a job will definitely be faster and more efficient as well as effecting. The elimination of dealing with an incorrect job fit will be eliminated and the whole organization needs not to suffer because of a bad apple in the organizational tree.
There are several reasons why organizations must be able to have an effective erecruitment process (Sison, 1994):
- Employees who have been properly selected in an efficient manner had better achieve organizational objectives.
- An incompetent employee is a liability to the organization.
- Personnel requirements vary form job to job.
- People who have varying degree of intelligence, aptitudes and abilities.
- Labor laws protect employees, making it difficult to fire incompetent and problem employees.
- Individuals have different interests, goals and objectives in life.
- Careless and inefficient hiring is costly and can cause problems to the company, especially to the supervisors and managers who have to deal with the workers.
It was mentioned that an incompetent employee is a liability to the organization. More than incurring costs to the organization in order to pay for the labor cost and benefits administration as required by law; the employee is not delivering the minimum expectations of job output from him. Moreover, other employees of the organization will be affected by such liability because other employees to ensure that the business is at its usual roll would absorb the work that is not done.
When an incompetent employee was hired because of inefficient process, the liability of the company starts. For example, in a traditional employee recruitment, because of the inefficiency of the process and the urgency of the need tosses to the company fill up a job vacancy, the personnel department might have been very much pressured to make a decision already despite the roster or applicants seem to be not fit or do not possess all the qualities required. They may be thinking that the employee can be trained in order to provide the right qualification for the job.
The result, an employee may only cause direct losses to the company in terms of substandard performance and low productivity but he is also a potential source of other problems to management, his co-workers and even to customers. For instance, a person that is with high temper might have been selected to be a front liner and would be dealing with customers. Since the customer is king in this time of the business, and the employee is with high temper and would not be able handle the customer well. In this regard, the company may lose customers and the result would be opportunity loss. Customer dissatisfaction due to low quality of work, unsatisfactory or unpleasant associations with the incompetent employee can result to loss of loyalty of customers (Sison, 1994).
If an incompetent employee has been selected to fill in a job vacancy, it would require longer job training and need for closer supervision. Thus, the immediate superior would be entailing more time in order to have a closer management of the work of the employee. Instead of allocating the precious time of other employees this is being used up in order to help the incompetent employee finish his job. Materials and other resources of the company are wasted. If the incompetent employee is given an important equipment to be used such as expensive databases, it could result to damage, which the organization has no choice but to replace immediately to ensure business continuity. That is why in a high-technology driven organizations where databases are important because information are consisting of money and confidentiality to subscribers such as in banks, telecommunications and customer services, data administrators are very well picked in order to ensure competence. Imagine in a telecommunications industry if an intelligent network has crashed down, it would mean rapture in the services providing to subscribers. In banks, if the database have been damaged and are not restored immediately thousands of its depositors who might wish to withdraw from ATM machines or through the internet are deeply affected.
Further, longer time for completion of assignment and poorer quality of finished product is required. The wages and fringe benefits paid by the organization because of accident or errors in line of duty due to the incompetent employee’s carelessness and inattention to his work or even to follow the basic safety rules.
Low employee morale and inefficiency can result to hiring an incompetent employee. The members of the team or department can expect everyone to be punctual, efficient and helpful. An incompetent employee seldom possesses these qualities and be therefore arouses the resentment of his co-workers who feel he is not doing his own share of the job. His continued presence in the team would foster the team’s low morale because a person from the team is
getting the same level of wage and yet he is not delivering the right job.
As a result, there could be a disadvantage to the organization as an indirect cause of the problem. Problems of employee turnover, discipline, grievances and even or possibly court litigation such as the tension and strained relations with the supervisor and management may all
result.
On the other hand, however, having an e-recruitment in the selection process may result in the reduction of costs of training and supervision as well as utilization of every employee’s best skills. Because of having a right fit in the organization, an employee would be experiencing job satisfaction and greater production. The result for the organization would be having higher earnings.
Conclusion
An organization that must be able to meet competition and survive in a cutthroat business environment must have a core human resource that is powerful and rich in terms of talents and skills. This would only be possible if it can maintain leadership it its field in terms of employee recruitment.
As discussed in the paper, the importance of the efficiency of the selection process can be achieved through the utilization of e-recruitment. This would ensure that the reach for employees with talents and set of qualities and skills are fit for the organization’s needs. Further, the erecruitment process is the benchmark of the use of the internet, which the forward-looking companies are using. This would entail and ensure that the company will not be left behind on the usage of available tools in the market.
It was also emphasized that the installation of a program for recruitment and hiring is important. It is not assumed though that in the utilization and implementation of e-recruitment does not mean avoiding the pre-works of the traditional recruitment process.
An organization needs people who can contribute to the company’s where people have the right qualifications and attitude for the job. The right job should be more economical to maintain because from the right recruitment process competent employees learn faster are less costly to train and easier to supervise than unqualified employees. People who possess the right qualification and attitudes in their jobs would be surely to be able to give better work performance, get along better with other co-workers and are happier and satisfied in their jobs. These type of employees are far less likely to do damage or liability to the whole organization with the work dynamics, equipment and other resources.
The e-recruitment program must be able to be sold to the management. This must be
presented to the top management in order to be aligned to the entire strategy of the business. It is important that the advantages and disadvantages of an e-recruitment process be presented to be able to get a go decision in the implementation. It is important though, that the recruitment program of the company is able to get top management support. The communication of explaining the rules and procedures of the program from the top to the bottom of the organization should be addressed to be able to have support from all over the organization.
The liabilities of an incompetent employee was presented and its direct and indirect damage that may cause to the organization’s resources and work dynamics. Therefore, the importance of having an efficient and effective employee selection process through the erecruitment process can never be underestimated.
Truly, an asset of the organization must be fully utilized to be able to propel the company in greater heights especially during the challenging times. The people, as the most important asset of the organization, can be a source of productive ideas and innovation, which can yield to reaching business objectives.
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