The E-Recruitment Process

E-recruiting

The technology of 21st century has brought a new impact to the world of recruiting. The World Wide Web (WWW), or Web 1.0, reduced the search time, costs and offered a transparent method of information for applicants (Salmen, 2012). In the early 2000s, companies only had their career websites running as their main source of communication about their organisation’s news: current open vacancies, contact details and changes in the organisation. The design of Web 1.0 imposed a one-way communication style where web surfers could absorb information from the site. Those candidates that did find the vacancies on an organisation’s website and had interest sent an initial e-mail with their CV and a cover letter attached to the contact person

The “E” stands for “electronic” and “recruitment”. Often, E-recruitment is known as online recruiting, social recruiting or Internet recruiting, however, this thesis will refer to E-recruitment for simplicity. To add to the previously introduced definition of recruitment, E-recruitment can only be described as the process of any personnel advertising or attracting, selection and application processing via the Internet, for external candidates, or Intranet, for internal candidates. The findings from Holm’s (2012) thesis were that there was a difference between the paper-based and the electronic-based recruitment process. From the findings, Holm’s found that the electronic-based recruitment process began with few electronic tools for line managers to commence the recruitment process, e.g. line managers were putting their hiring needs into a Word document and sending it to the responsible recruiter. The recruiter then had to read each applicant and rate the order. In some cases, this is handled through filter programs bringing top applicants to the forefront. Holm’s (2012) study was conducted between the years 2008 to 2010 in three companies in Denmark, which could have limited the validity of the recruitment process today as electronic technology has been developed for the evolving topic of

The report, originally written in German, shares valuable information about how recruitment was, is and will be in the future; at least in Germany. The roles of recruiters and recruiting have altered since 1995. In Figure 3 on page 16, recruiting generalists now have moved to being recruiting specialists. A generalist is often known as a “jack of all trades, master of none” whereas a specialist is able to focus on one field and have full knowledge of that field. There are positives and negatives about these two titles. A generalist is great for hiring blanket company positions, e.g. hiring in Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and IT all together. A specialist is beneficial for when hiring in a particular area of expertise, e.g. software engineers only. In an analysed case study with Bertelsmann AG conducted by CHRIS in 2011, the representative stated that it was the “Recruiter 2.0 is the team that combines all the skills in an enterprise and can operate in the common use of the recruiting skills.” This means that in today’s recruitment, there must be diverse professionals who are skilled in one or two areas of expertise. The role the recruiter has also taken a turn over the past 19 years. What had started off as an operation administrator where recruiting was interviewing