science practice gap

8/12/2019 Science Practice Gap

1/7

E-Recruitment in Emerging EconomiesPramila Rao (Marymount University, USA

Electronic human resource management (e-HRM) is the process of using online technology for human resource

management activities, such as recruitment, training, performance appraisal and benefits (Rudich, 2000). The

goal of this article is to discuss the origins of e-recruitment and address some challenges of e-recruitment in

emerging economies like India and Mexico as multinationals seeks to establish strong presence in these

countries. E-recruitment originated in the form of independent job sites called bulletin board systems in the

1980s. Initially only the U.S. universities and military had access to Internet facilities. However, the PC revolution

that embraced the world in the early 1990s changed the corporate landscape completely (Rudich, 2000). Todaymore than three-fourths of the Fortune 500 companies use online recruiting and approximately about 18 million

people are posting their resumes on Internet portals such as Monster.com (Feldman & Klaas, 2002).

Corporations are aggressively seeking the best talent worldwide. Internet recruiting allows organizations to tap a

huge talent beyond their own national boundaries (Birchfield, 2002). E-recruitment has several advantages such

as its low cost (Galanaki, 2002; Rudich, 2000), quick response time (Hays, 1999), wide range of applicants

(Sessa & Taylor, 2000), and worldwide accessibility (Galanaki, 2002; Vinutha, 2005). Specifically to recruitment,

it has demonstrated a shorter recruitment cycle and lower cost-per-hire (Jasrotia, 2001; Pollitt, 2005; Sridhar,

2005). For instance, Nike has demonstrated with the use of e-recruitment the average time to f ill job positions

reduced from 62 to 42 days and the recruitment costs reduced by 54% (Pollitt, 2005). From the employees

perspective, is that it has made the recruitment process a very proactive onenow passive applicants post their

resumes online in anticipation of an interview (Mollison, 2001). Further, online recruitment allows applicants the

luxury of accessing jobs online at their own convenience 24 hours 7 days a week. It provides the comfort of

scrutinizing jobs without physically going through the stress of an interview. Finally, it allows applicants to get athorough understanding of the organization and its culture before joining the organization (Vinutha, 2005).

Eleanna Galanaki, (2002) "The decision to recruit online: a

descriptive study", Career Development International, Vol. 7

Iss: 4, pp.243251


2/7

Online recruitment is a new tool, at the disposal of the HR departments, which has known a phenomenal

success in very short time. This paper presents the findings of some descriptive research, involving UK IT

companies. The research tries to identify the effect that the perceived attributes of the practice have on the

decision of companies to recruit through the Internet. The attributes tested are cost effectiveness;

recruitment cycle time; response rate; quality of response; impact on the image of the company; targeting

of specific niches; targeting of the passive job-seeker; worldwide coverage; necessary resources, time and

effort to implement; attractiveness of the mean to the job seekers (especially IT professionals and young

graduates); risk of overload of answers; and impact of the size and reputation of the company. The paper

provides an insight on how the companies perceive and value online recruitment.

http://danialarj.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/e-recruitment/

E-recruitment; Types, Drivers and Challenges

Definition of recruitment: recruitment includes those practices and activities carried on

by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential

employees (Barber, 1998)

Definition of e-recruitment: E-recruitment includes those practices and activities carried

on by the organization THROUGH INTERNET with the primary purpose of identifying and

attracting potential employees. (Online recruitment is another name of e-recruitment)

This little change in the means of doing recruitment started during mid-90s that Edgley

(1995) said the recruitment industrys future is on the net. During 2003 to 2005, 94

percent of the worlds biggest companies (Global 500) have applied e-recruitment

(Onrec, 2005). 43.9 percent of respondents to KeyNote (2012) research across UK had

used the internet to search for a job whereas in 2006, Chartered Institute of Personnel

and Development (CIPD) found 64 percent of the UK organizations used e-recruitment
http://danialarj.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/untitled-2.png


3/7

(Parry and Tyson, 2008). Cappelli (2001) with no wonder declares 90 percent of US

companies were already doing recruiting by internet then. However most of the data are

not updated but it is enough to find out this approach is overwhelmingly being accepted

and used by companies. Yet, the proportion is obviously varying in different countries

based on the social infrastructure; or in terms of the size and functions of the companythis approach may not be favorable.

TYPES

There are two different ways for companies/organizations to attract job seekers for their

vacant positions: (1) Posting vacancies on their own websites which could be enabled by

intranet or internet (2) Third party websites which enabled a huge marketplace for

recruitment so-called Online Recruitment Industry. Smallest scale of e-recruitment

includes the boundaries of the organization, using intranet to find the best option amongincumbents which possess required knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics

(KASOs). When the company wants to seek for its favorite potential employee among

outsiders the internet is prescribed, but it could be done in two ways as I mentioned

before. If the company has a strong IT culture and recruitment is something that they do

a lot during a year they can invest on their own website to be equipped with necessary

modules to handle e-recruitment internally but if due to any reason it is not worth or

reasonable to have such a platform, there are plenty of companies nowadays which are

specialized to provide them with employees through advertisement, ranging from fully

specialized likeMonster.comor through social networks. However the company maychoose to use both, through advertising the position on the external platforms with

putting the link of apply on it which redirects user to the companys website to start the

procedure. International data corporation (IDC) estimates $5.3 billion was generated in

the US in 2011 through online recruitment industry and it is roughly increasing by 4

percent until 2015 (Silber, 2012).

DRIVERS (ADVANTAGES)

But why all these companies are using e-recruiting and what are the drivers? In acomprehensive review by Lang et al. (2011) you can find 14 important drivers for

companies to implement e-recruitment which were recognized by scholars from 1998 to

2010 which would be listed here: (1) Cost saving (2) Time saving (3) Increased number

of applicants (4) Independence of place and time -e.g. company can establish an

assessment for applicants easily (5) Recruiting qualified staff more easily (6) Improved

employer image (7) Efficient and effective personnel selection i.e. company needs a

suitable method to select (8) Providing additional workplace and organizational

information -by employer to applicants (9) Usability (10) Target group orientation i.e.

post job vacancies in the right place (11) Updating of job and applicant data i.e.possibility to update information even when the position is published (12) Expanding
http://monster.com/http://monster.com/http://monster.com/http://monster.com/


4/7

geographical scope of recruiting measures i.e. having applicant hundreds miles away

(13) Realization of competitive advantage i.e. through faster and cheaper recruiting

process to select more suitable candidates (14) Corporate policy [Original sources of

these drivers have been mentioned in Lang et al.s study].

DISADVANTAGES (CHALLENGES)

On the other hand the disadvantages of this approach can be extracted as well.

Regardless of the challenges which companies face in terms of IT and marketing

difficulties like security of applicants data, privacy problems (which is always on the

table speaking about digital world), importance of web appeal to attract job seekers

(Thompson et al., 2008) or those issues which were disappeared due to time

circumstances like For majority of job seekers, internet still is not the first option

(Galanaki, 2002) the remaining controversial disadvantages of using this tool in termsof effectiveness and behavioral influences which may have effect on companys overall

performance would be mentioned here:

One of the most negative consequences of e-recruiting which have always been on the

agenda is the trade-off between quantity (increasing) and quality (decreasing) of the

candidates. However the number of applicants would increase but it entails the higher

number of unqualified ones (Pearce and Tuten, 2001; Chapman and Webster, 2003;

Barber, 2006) which may increase the cost and time of processing.

Stone et al. (2006) posit e-recruiting modifies social interactions which for example

cause the applicant inability to perfectly present his/her own KSAOs to the employer.

Consider when a company is looking for a marketing manager or assistant. Appropriate

people for this position have to be outgoing and a little bit talkative. These kinds of

abilities cannot be measured through e-recruitment. Also they make another hypothesis

based on social values and argue people how prefer relationship-based interactions are

less likely to accept e-recruitment. What Pin et al. (2001) called it Lack of Human

touch refers to the same issue.

Discrimination among ethnic minorities group or diversity issue, and possibility to apply

for disable people is another domain which may be affected negatively by this method of

recruitment (Barber, 2006). Garca-Izquierdo et al. (2010) did a research on companies

listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange. They found out the level and type of information

which some of these companies ask in their application forms during e-recruitment

process may cause a discrimination. However they note according to the new changes

in legislation in 2007 it is too early to expect them to change their forms but still we can

see there is potential in this approach to create these inconveniences.


5/7

Pin et al. (2001) also resulted two other important disadvantages through their

methodology based on survey mainly in Europe: (1) Poor segmentation of the market;

One of the advantages of e-recruitment which was mentioned above was Target Group

Orientation which is in contrast with this finding. According to this study, 59 percent of

the companies noted this as the main reason not to use e-recruitment. As Pin et al.explain, due to the broad access which is provided by Internet matching the position

with the candidates is impossible and it cause having less qualified applicants with the

cost of losing qualified ones. However the level of classification of contents in internet is

improved and we almost can find the related domain but the footprint of this problem is

still observable (Suvankulov et al., 2012) (2) Higher rate of employees turnover; Smith

and Rupp (2004) confirms this disadvantages in their study on managerial challenges of

e-recruiting since an employed person may get interested in another position in another

company which is freely accessible through internet.

As a result, e-recruitment is inevitable with the existing trend of digitalization so that we

even have digital newspapers these days, but all the advantages could not be realized as

it was supposed to be like target orientation which offsets by poor segmentation, or

reduction in time or cost for recruiting which could be offsets somehow due to high

number of applicants that need to be evaluated. Also it seems by passing the time some

disadvantages of this method were faded like the accessibility to the internet, possibility

to have user friendly layouts, high fees for implementation (thanks to third parties

platforms it is possible to advertise cheaply) or Data transparency (candidate can be

untruthful on paper as well). But still there are some other disadvantages which are notsettled and the companies have to deal with them to create a balance in a way.

REFERENCES

Barber A. E., Recruiting employees(CA: Sage Publications, 1998).

Barber L., E-recruitment Developments (Brighton: The Institute for Employment Studies,

2006).

Cappelli P. (2001), Making the most of on-line recruiting, Harvard Business Review

79(3): 139-146.

Chapman D. S. and Webster J. (2003), The use of technologies in the recruiting,

screening, and selection processes for job candidates, International Journal of Selection

and Assessment 11(2-3): 113120.

Edgley K. (1995), The best job in the world may be one click away, The Times, 11

October.


6/7

Galanaki E. (2002), The decision to recruit online: a descriptive study, Emerald Career

Development International7(4): 243-251.

Garca-Izquierdo A. L., Aguinis H. and Ramos-Villagrasa P. J. (2010), SciencePractice

Gap in e-Recruitment, International Journal of Selection and Assessment18(4): 432-438.

KeyNote (2012), E-Recruitment Market Assessment 2012,

https://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10553/e-recruitment

(accessed May 20, 2013).

Lang S., Laumer S., Maier C., Eckhardt A. (2011), Drivers, challenges and

consequences of E-recruiting: a literature review, Proceeding: SIGMIS-CPR 11

Proceedings of the 49th SIGMIS annual conference on Computer personnel research,ACM New York: 26-35.

Onrec (2005), Statistics the growth of online recruitment, The Online Recruitment

Magazine, June 29, available athttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-

%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitment(accessed May 20, 2012).

Parry E. and Tyson S (2008), An analysis of the use and success of online recruitment

methods in the UK, Human Resource Management Journal 18(3): 257274.

Pearce C. G. and Tuten R. L. (2001), Internet recruiting in the banking industry,

Business Communication Quarterly64(1): 918.

Pin J. R., Laorden M., and Senz-Diez I. (2001), Internet Recruiting Power:

Opportunities and Effectiveness, International Research Centre on Organizations

(IRCO), Research Paper no. 439, July.

Silber J. M. (2012), Online Recruitment, US Business Services Research: BMO Capital

Markets Corp., March 5, available athttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDF

(accessed May 20, 2013).

Smith A. D. and Rupp W. T. (2004), Managerial challenges of e-recruiting: extending

the life cycle of new economy employees, Emerald online information review28(1): 61-

74.

Stone D. L. , Stone-Romero E. F. , Lukaszewski K. (2006), Factors affecting the

acceptance and effectiveness of electronic human resource systems, Human ResourceManagement Review 16(2): 229244.
https://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10553/e-recruitmenthttps://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10553/e-recruitmenthttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://research-us.bmocapitalmarkets.com/documents/4BD462AF-6564-450F-9A05-06A379E44584.PDFhttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttp://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/statistics-%C3%B1-the-growth-of-online-recruitmenthttps://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10553/e-recruitment


7/7

Suvankulov F., Lau M. C. K., Chau F. H. C. (2012), Job search on the internet and its

outcome, Emerald Internet Research22(3): 298-317.

Thompson L. F., Braddy F. W., Wuensch K. L. (2008), E-recruitment and the benefits of

organizational web appeal, Computers in Human Behavior24(5): 23842398.

Lang laumer maier Eckhart 2011---drivers challenges and

consequences

Using a literature review of 80 journals and proceedings we identified 23 research papers discussing driver,

challenges and consequences of e-recruiting. In total 14 drivers, 15 challenges and 9 consequences of implementing

and using e-recruiting has been identified. Based on these results the paper introduces a model of drivers,

challenges and consequences of e-recruiting and discusses implications for research and practice. The analysis

reveals that e-recruiting will reduce costs for recruitment and selection, increase the number of suitable applicants,

enable time savings for both organizations and applicants and improve the corporate image. These four

consequences also have been identified as major drivers of e-recruiting projects. The identified challenges include

the exclusion of potential applicants, the deception of applicants in e-assessment procedures, the security of

applicants' data and low qualification of applicants.

science practice gap

Documents