The Mordern Recruitment:

Human resource management or managing “people” includes several activities. Today acquiring and retaining the employees is the biggest challenge. Thus staffing is a vital activity. Staffing facilitates the supply of employees. These employees are needed to fulfill the Organizational goals and objectives by their effective and efficient performance. And recruitment is a logical step in this staffing process. Recruitment is the process of creating huge pool of potential candidates. It attracts the prospective employees and stimulates them to apply for job.

Recruitment before nineteenth century was based on the apprenticeship system. Apprentices were not the employees of the Organization, but after completion of apprenticeship they were absorbed in the company. Compared to apprentices the skilled and qualified candidates were more desirable.

FORMS OF RECRUITMENT

              Forms of recruitment can be broadly categorized into two. One is centralized and the other is decentralized. Centralized recruitment is in action when the organization is having a centralized power structure and the departments are not involved in decision making, it is only concentrated in one central department. In government Organizations it is visible, like in State Bank of India.

Decentralized recruitment is having authority to each department to choose their staff. The companies who are geographically spread, or very big in size will find this form convenient. But the philosophy and Organization culture determines which to follow; like Bausch & Lomb have centralized recruitment form as well as G.E Opticals have the decentralized form.

NEW FORM OF RECRUITMENT:

E RECRUITMENT-

E-recruitment is a tool for many employers to search for job candidates and for applicants to look for job. Recent trend of recruitment is e-recruitment or the internet recruitment or on-line recruitment, where the process of recruitment is automated. The automation began in 1980 but was systematized in 1990 with the release of Restrac’s initial product. E-recruitment simply means the recruitment process through internet. Various methods can be used for it.

E-RECRUITING METHODS

Methods of e-recruitment are many, among those the important ones are-

• Job boards: These are the places where the employers post jobs and search for candidates. Candidates become aware of the vacancies. One of the disadvantages is, it is generic in nature. Special skill candidates to be searched by certain job boards.
• Employer web sites: These sites can be of the company owned sites, or a site developed by various employers. For an example, Directemployers.com is the first cooperative, employer-owned e-recruiting consortium formed by Direct Employers Association. It is a non profit organization formed by the executives from leading U.S corporations. Press release by Recruiters Network (February 20, 2003) showed the site has 98 members approximately 45 percent of which are Fortune 500 companies.

• Professional websites: These are for specific professions, skills and not general in nature. For an example, for HR jobs Human Resource Management sites to be visited like www.shrm.org. The professional associations will have their own site or society.

MODERN TRENDS OF E-RECRUITMENT

• Speedy communication: Company and the prospective employee can communicate with each other via the blogs. Thus blogs, podcasts, vodcasts are being considered a tool of e-recruitmant. No more the process can be blamed for being one way communication like mails, faxes only being speedy as done electronically. Podcasts are the services of digital media files. Vodcasts are the video podcasts.
• Candidate’s preference: History states that employers had the privilege to be selective in hiring process, especially in screening resumes but were not always fair. Because of the time constraint it was not possible to go through all the applications. Today the candidates can choose their employers as not only the financial state is known to them but also the culture is known. Applying for the Organization will no more be influenced only by the image.

• Search engine advertisement: Print ad is phasing out due the popularity of search engine ads. Pay-per-click is not only convenient but also more attractive.
• RSS feed: Job boards are embracing RSS feed. Hotjobs, Google deserves special mention. Google offers one to upload the jobs on Google Base even when one doesn’t have their own site. RSS can be read using software “RSS reader”. It is a family of web feed formats use to publish frequently updated works. Such as blog entries, news headlines in a standard format.

CONCLUSION-

         Traditional methods should not be replaced by the e-recruitment, it should supplement. The loopholes of e-recruitment can be covered by the traditional methods and recruitment process will be faster, global due to e-recruitment. One method should not replace the other. When two vacancies are there and two candidates are available the companies do not have much choice, thus they prefer to widen their search and attracts numerous applications. But when for two vacancies a company receive 2000 application, the in depth screening process is not possible. While other methods like campus interview, internal search has a personal touch. But receiving application in hand, communicating with candidates becomes time consuming without internet.

Article written by,

Arundhati Ghosh, Junior Faculty Member
Icfai National College,Kolkata