How the latest advances in technology have impacted on the recruitment

Review how the latest advances in technology have impacted on the recruitment and the selection process Managing People – 4BUS1037 Benjamin Walker – 10236758 Module Leaders – Marilyn Farmer and Wendy Yellowley Word Count – 1845 This essay will review the impact that the latest advances in technology have had on the recruitment and selection process. “ Recruitment is the process of having the right person, in the right place, at the right time” and is crucial to organisational performance.

Recruitment is a crucial activity, and a number of areas of a company are usually involved in the selection process, not just for the HR team (CIPD, 2011). There are a number of ways that technology can be applied to the recruitment and selection model at nearly every stage. Firstly in Appendix 1 the personnel specification and the information pack for applicants could both be prepared on a word processing programme.

The advertising for the job could not only be just put on job advertising website or the company’s actual website but technology now allows companies to use; blogs, podcasts, reports about their industry, reciprocal links, reciprocal banner ads and even coupons (Verio, 2010). When getting a response from applicants it is usually linked to a company’s HR email address so it can be dealt with instantly. Advantages in technology now mean interviews can take place in several different ways, not just over the phone or in person but now video communication can be used through programs such as Skype.

Skype can be used when interviewing people anywhere and at anytime (Doyle, 2011). Over recent years, the biggest change in the human resource and recruitment industry has been the advancement of technology. It has allowed HR departments to reduce the amount of staff time being wasted on manual administrative tasks (Byron, 2009). Online technology such as e-recruitment software uses information technology to help speed up the selection process despite an increasing number of job applicants in many sectors (Local Government, 2010).

In the UK e-recruitment is a lot more advanced than in other countries, and it will continue to grow, as it is a cost effective process allowing all companies to fill their job vacancies with the best candidates. As previously mentioned the use of internet technology, such as blogs, wikis, video clips, podcasting and social networking sites will be used on a large scale to improve and aid HR and recruitment. This may lead to a reduction in the amount of administrative HR jobs, but will also lead to an increase in HR jobs for technology expertise (Byron, 2009). Appendix 2 shows the facts and figures of how much each recruitment method is used.

It suggests that the method to grow the largest over the previous three years is both personal networks and recruitment agencies. However, online job boards and newspaper advertising continue to be the most popular method of job searching (Jobsite, 2010). More and more recruitment sites and company websites are using online testing services to get more knowledge on a candidate’s technical skills. Most people feel that the online tests will not replace face-to-face interviews but they will complement them as the results could be used to create questions for the real life interview.

A large number of recruitment companies are taking full advantages of the online testing assessments, by using them to find passive applicants, who have put their CV online in the past, but are now not actively trying to find a job (Whizlabs, 2010). A study by Recruitsoft/iLogos Research of 50 Fortune 500 companies revealed that the average company posting jobs on the internet rather than in newspapers cut its hiring cycle by six days of 43 days, another four days by switching to on-line applications rather than paper ones, and more than a week by electronically screening and processing applications.

It’s no surprise that about 90% of large U. S companies are using the Internet to aid recruitment with all the time that is saved when using these methods (Cappelli, 2007). Companies continue to try and embed technology into their recruitment system whenever possible. One example of it being successful is when Imperial Tobacco launched an online recruitment and talent management platform to reduce the amount that the company relied on recruitment agencies, resulting in a huge saving of 10, 000 within weeks.

Rebecca Male, HR business partner at Imperial Tobacco UK said: ” Within a month of rolling out the new software, we successfully recruited an area sales manager directly which, on its own, avoided an overall recruitment cost of as much as ? 10, 000. A typical sales recruitment campaign can result in five or six employees being appointed, at a cost of at least ? 6, 000 each time. The return on investment potential is therefore substantial, and we are predicting the software to have paid for itself within six to 12 months” (Woods, 2010).

Many companies have followed Imperial Tobacco and have been trying to implement an online recruitment system including; John Lewis, Mamas and Papas, Manchester City Football Club and WH Smith just to name a few, as they feel it would save huge amount of costs and time (Woods, 2009abcd). Skype is ever growing and is now being used by firms to interview candidates due to the fact that is saves considerable amounts of costs. One positive for it is that some find that being interviewed in the privacy of their living room or another quiet place is actually more relaxing than a face-to-face interview (Davies, 2011).

In 2009 Time magazine published an article stating that a recruiting manager for online retailer Zappos. com reduced the retailer’s excessive human resources budget by turning to Skype. Zappos. com used to fly customers to their headquarters and pay for them to stay in a hotel, which was costing the company up to $1000 per candidate. By using Skype for the first interviews it allowed the firm to filter the top two or three candidates for their job vacancies, which in turn saved them thousands (Florentine, 2011).

All types of companies are using Skype, the CEO of 360JobInterview stated that they use Skype video to train people looking for jobs by having interview coaching lessons with counsellors. By doing this it allows all job seekers to improve both their interview and presentation skills (Brock, 2011). The term ‘psychological contract’ has been defined as “…the perceptions of the two parties, employee and employer, of what their mutual obligations are towards each other”(Guest and Conway, 2002).

The contract is very subjective and tend to have a major influence on employee behaviour as it is a deal that they believe they will get in return what they put in (Briner and Conway, 2006). Recruiting online will have an impact on the psychological contract, as it will result in less face to face opportunities. This may in turn make it more difficult for companies to firstly manage expectations, as they wont have the personal chance to tell new employees what they can expect from the job.

Secondly communication has is a big influence on the contract and when everything is sorted out online it gives the employee less chance to give their opinion (Furness, 2008). If the employee and employer only have an online relationship it will result in the employee having less respect for the employer and they are less likely to be satisfied with their job (CIPD, 2011). There is a considerable amount of advantages of using e-recruitment. Firstly, it is very cost effective as companies can post adverts on their website for free.

Job boards only costs around a few hundred pounds and when compared to the large fees that recruitment consultants charge or the thousands it costs to advertise in a newspaper, the savings are enormous (Whatjobsite, 2011). Secondly, it is instant, job adverts can be put onto a job site early in the morning, candidates could have applied by midday and interviewed at the end of the day. This is not always the case but merely an example of how quickly things can happen when recruiting online.

E-recruitment gives firms more of a chance of success when recruiting, as it can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and candidates can go back to the advert as many times as they wish (CIPD, 2009). Another advantage is that the audience is much wider; many people think that only young people look online to find jobs but the average age of people looking for jobs online is around 35 years old (Williams, 2011). To advertise a job on your website is also very simple, as is it to post a vacancy on CV databases and job sites as they are extremely user friendly.

It is even easier to use social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook and IT companies like Wipro, HCL and TCS have taken full advantage of this. HCL Global has a team of recruiters who scan blog sites and social networking sites to hire new candidates. Social media recruitment is becoming more popular and over the next couple of year it is expected that a third of total recruitment will come from social media (Mohanty, 2008). A further benefit is that Talent Pools are created automatically, which can then be used for future needs and allows companies to keep track of all applications for future jobs vacancies (Reid, 2011).

Lastly search engine advertisement is continuing to grow in popularity by firms, resulting in print advertising to be used less and less (Ghosh, 2011). Whilst there are a number of advantages to e-recruitment, there are also a few disadvantages. It is proven that e-recruiting has a much larger platform for recruiting, but it might exclude people who do not have Internet access. This is more likely in less affluent areas, due to demographics, as they may not even have excess to a computer let alone Internet (Williams, 2011).

Although the majority of job sites will offer help with the uploading and optimisation of the job advert, the whole process is not managed completely in the screening and filtering process. People searching for jobs do not make it any easier for HR managers to find genuine candidates, as they try to make add attraction to their profile by giving fake referrals and certificates (Sah, 2009). This therefore means that employees have to screen and filter the applications if the company wants to find the best skilled reach the candidates (TechnoJobs, 2010).

Companies must take this hindrance into account when creating online questionnaire applications to evaluate job seekers, ensuring only qualified candidates reach the selection stages (Reid, 2011). The latest advances in technology have had an impact on the recruitment and the selection process, but many recruiting processes have remained unchanged. Elements like job boards and tracking systems are still being used today, but new technology such as social networking is being exploited more and more to reach candidates as there is such a wide audience (Stovall, 2008).

The advances in technology have only improved recruitment as it gives firms the opportunity to save huge amounts of money and improves companies personal recruitment systems. Finally traditional methods of recruiting should not be replaced by e-recruitment and other methods, it should work with it in order to find and select the most appropriate candidates (Ghosh, 2011). References •Brock, T (2011) Skype – Enterprise blog – Using Skype for Your Job Interview: Jeff Garber of 360 Job Interview On What You Need To Know. [ONLINE] Available at: http://blogs. skype. com/enterprise/2011/04/using_skype_for_your_job_inter. tml. [Accessed 31 December 2011]. •Briner, R and Conway, N (2006) Recruitment and staffing – Trade secrets: Protecting the psychological contract – 21/11/2006. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www. personneltoday. com/articles/2006/11/21/38212/trade-secrets-protecting-the-psychological-contract. html. [Accessed 02 January 2012]. •Byron, C (2009) Human resources and recruitment: Future trends | Prospects. ac. uk . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www. prospects. ac. uk/industries_human_resources_future_trends. htm. [Accessed 29 December 2011]. •Cappelli, P (2007) Making the Most of On-Line