E-Recruiting

Abstract

E-recruiting is the use of the Internet to find candidates to fill job vacancies. A number of websites and other services exist to connect potential workers with potential employers or with recruiting agencies working on behalf of employers. In the twenty-first century, online recruitment has become a major part of the work world, and while in-person or phone contact is still common at some stage of the recruitment process, most job seeking efforts will involve e-recruitment at some point, especially when the seekers are established professionals in their fields.

Overview

E-recruitment is the hiring of job candidates through the Internet and other electronic resources, a process that can include job posting, candidate screening, and relevant skills testing, among other functions. E-recruitment refers specifically to Internet-based recruiting practices, not simply to the use of recruitment management systems and other software packages designed to streamline recruitment. Though it began in the 1980s and was initially limited to tech fields, online recruitment has become more prominent and is used to recruit both employees and freelancers for everything from part-time minimum wage positions to executive level positions. Using electronic resources is cheaper than physical recruitment, more efficient for both candidates and recruiters, and makes it easier to both attract a larger pool of candidates and to sift through that pool to identify the ideal choices. In many fields, online recruitment has become the norm, at least for the initial stages of recruitment (in-person interviews will often still be conducted for candidates who pass through the first stages, for instance). It is also a necessary process for companies that lack a sufficient physical presence, such as businesses in which most positions are telecommuting positions.

Generally, job postings are advertised on a variety of websites—which can include general job search websites as well as websites for specific industries and skills—or candidates post their resumes, portfolios, or other relevant information on websites, where recruiters can screen for candidates with relevant experience or skills. Some websites allow searches to be conducted in either direction. Some companies will also post job listings on their own websites. Norms tend to vary by industry sector.

Recruitment may be conducted by in-house personnel, usually in the human resources department, but in some cases the managers in the department with a vacancy may oversee recruitment for that vacancy. Alternatively, external agencies, sometimes called headhunters, will conduct an active search for qualified candidates. “Executive search” is a specialized form of recruitment, because candidates need highly specialized skills or experience. Despite the name, the position being filled is not always an executive-level job, but may be a senior position that is particularly important within the company; executive search services have been used to recruit “quants” (quantitative analysts) for investment firms, for instance, especially when this position was newly defined and the people with the relevant skills were not necessarily looking for work in that sector. A good executive search service uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to assure that a candidate is well-qualified and a good fit for a position, because the service’s revenue depends on both sides being satisfied, in the long term. Agencies that work on contingency are paid once the search is completed, by the employer. Other agencies may be retained, in which case they are paid up front (either partially or in full). Agencies working on a retention basis usually provide a guarantee that they will find a candidate the employer is happy with, meaning that if the candidate departs from the position for any reason within a certain window of time (traditionally a year), the agency will recruit a replacement without an additional fee. Usually executive search agencies are involved to some degree in the negotiation phase, not just the search phase; they may advise the candidate about the norms for this position, for instance, both in terms of compensation and other contract terms. High-level executive positions carry significant non-wage benefits, for example, and may have a minimum salary increase schedule as part of the employment contract.

Applications

Recruitment can be either internal or external, but online recruitment is usually focused on external recruitment. External recruitment means hiring from outside the company, including both solicited and unsolicited applications. In some cases, it is mandatory for job vacancies to be listed with the government-run employment exchange, which is the most common source of recruitment for unskilled and semi-skilled positions, and which in some states is also available online. Online recruitment can include every step of the hiring process, from job posting through contract negotiation.

Online recruitment frequently happens through employment websites, also called job boards (though most offer more services than simple job listings). Employment websites began in the early 1990s, originally with newspapers posting the job listings from their classified sections online. Monster.com, which launched in 1996, is a representative example of its type. Previous sites had been limited to in-house usage, had been posting-only sites with no search function, or had been searchable electronic databases not accessible through the web. Monster’s predecessor was an online reposting of the job listings from the local newspaper, from a computer kept in a phone closet. This was soon expanded to include the first publicly accessible job search website and the first public resume database in the world. Users could also create job alerts to let them know about relevant job openings as they were posted. The original Monster offices were above a Chinese restaurant in Framingham, Massachusetts, but in a move emblematic of the way the tech sector shifted at the end of the twentieth century, it soon moved into a building formerly occupied by the Digital Equipment Corporation, one of the major hardware manufacturers of the late twentieth century.

In 1999, Monster aired its first Super Bowl commercial and became an official sponsor of the upcoming Olympic Games, and more expansion followed. It added a website, Monstermoving.com, to help those who were relocating for work—something that was now made easier and more practical by the Internet. It added a mobile job search service as smartphones became more common and acquired smaller companies, most notably HotJobs, its primary competition. HotJobs had launched as hotjobs.com in 1996, founded by Richard Johnson, who had previously headed a boutique employment agency for the tech sector; it later aired its first major television commercial during the same Super Bowl as Monster and, like its competitor, had been acquiring smaller companies for years. Monster first attempted to acquire HotJobs in 2002, but was outbid by Yahoo, which sold the company to Monster eight years later. Monster operates in dozens of countries, as well as running Military.com, which provides job postings for military members and veterans. Other major general employment sites include Indeed and CareerBuilder.

Employment websites like Monster are often free for job seekers, while employers generally pay a fee to place a job listing. A variety of services are offered to both sides: job seekers can see who has reviewed their resume, for instance, and manage their list of sent cover letters and resumes, as well as researching salaries and benefits and accessing interview or resume-building advice. Recruiters can track and edit their postings and screen for candidates for specific skills.

Employment websites have a variety of revenue streams. Usually recruiters pay a fee for their listing. Many sites are free for job seekers to use, but industry-specific sites are more likely to charge a fee, or to limit users to one or two responses to postings per month unless they purchase a membership. Advertising may also provide revenue, as well as lead generation for for-profit colleges, which is an area of potential ethical concern.

In addition to Monster-style employment websites, there are sites sometimes called employment auction websites. These are used by people seeking freelance work in various fields, like copy and ad writing, search engine optimization, coding, design, illustration, or translation. Once limited mainly to manual labor or secretarial work, this piece work economy has become increasingly white-collar, and many businesses depend on white-collar freelancers to fulfill important functions. Because freelancers are independent contractors, they are not paid benefits, are responsible for paying their own payroll taxes, and have fewer rights under labor law. Legal limits have been imposed on the circumstances in which businesses can use independent contractors in order to prevent permanent employees being falsely categorized as contractors.

Employment auction websites list postings for ongoing or one-time piece work opportunities. A local business may need someone to design and code its website, for instance, or to design its menu. Job-seekers “bid” on work, submitting information that includes their relevant skills or experience, their fee, and sometimes a list of references. Clients pick the winning bid based on what they are looking for; the lowest bidder will not necessarily be chosen, for instance, if another bid comes from someone with a more appropriate-seeming resume.

Some employment websites—whether traditional or auction—may also include online screening tests. These vary from skills tests, which is appropriate for certain skills that can be quantified through tests administered online (such as copy editing or computer programming), to interview questions. Online screening tests are also used by companies that administer them on their own sites as part of their recruitment processes; Walmart and McDonald’s, which hire large numbers of people, administer such tests online to streamline the hiring process.

The recruitment process is increasingly assisted by software, not only to manage or enable the recruitment process, but also to help evaluate candidates. Resume parsing or resume extraction software, for instance, analyzes candidates’ resumes in order to enter relevant information into a database so that a recruiter can quickly compare large groups of resumes to find the most appropriate candidate for a position. Such software uses machine learning and semantic searches in order to group or rank candidates, which assists with screening out the least appropriate. Though resume parsing software is not perfectly accurate, neither is human judgment, and when people have to sift through large numbers of resumes manually, it is easy for details to be confused. One benefit to software is that it avoids the implicit bias of a person; numerous well-known studies have found that hiring managers have a measurable implicit bias against candidates with identifiably female names, for instance, or names associated with specific races or ethnicities.

Issues

While the largest employment websites include job listings across all sectors, there are a number of sites that are devoted to specific types of work. Dice.com, for instance, is an employment site for IT and engineering professionals, and with 3 million registered users, is larger than many general employment websites. LawCrossing lists jobs in the legal sector, while other sites focus on the insurance industry, teaching positions, social work, or the video game industry. There are also sites that focus on multiple industries but with some other type of focus, such as green jobs (work for environmentally friendly or sustainable organizations), nonprofits, inclusive organizations, internships, overseas work, or seasonal work. Some websites do not host their own job postings, but offer a search of other sites (or they scrape other sites and repost those postings). These sites are sometimes called metasearch sites (searching other search engines), vertical searches, or scraper sites. Many of the larger sites like Monster use exclusion standards to prevent their listings from being scraped.

In addition to employment websites, there are work-oriented social media sites like LinkedIn, which are used for professional networking, with recruitment and job seeking as an ancillary purpose. LinkedIn was launched in 2003 and is free for most users, with premium memberships offering extra options and more flexibility. As with other social networks, every user’s profile offers specific information—generally a LinkedIn profile acts like a resume, but may also include blog entries and other relevant information. Not as active as other social networks, LinkedIn has nevertheless become an important part of the landscape, and it is common for college-bound high school students to create LinkedIn profiles, which are subsequently updated and maintained as they gain education and work experience. Generally less “social” in focus than most social media, LinkedIn allows users to search job listings and apply for jobs through the service and to endorse one another’s skills. This endorsement system is one of the ways that the basic social functions of LinkedIn vary from most social media. The key manner in which LinkedIn differs is the way its connections work. Any member can invite any other member to become a “connection” (LinkedIn’s term for what is called a “friend” or “follower” on other services), but if the invitee marks the connection as spam or “someone I don’t know,” it counts against the inviter, whose account may be restricted if their ratio of accepted-to-rejected invitations falls too low. Connections can be used to obtain introductions to second-degree or third-degree connections (the connections of one’s connections, and the connections of those connections), which naturally restricts the users any given member can contact. The idea here is to increase the sense of trust and accountability on LinkedIn, compared with less formal services. Users can then recommend individuals or jobs, or introduce connections to hiring managers, or ask for such introductions.

Revenue for LinkedIn comes mainly from advertising fees (including the fees recruiters and businesses pay for branded listings and access to the database of user resumes), premium membership fees, and skills-training through the LinkedIn Learning platform. Much as Facebook became the default social media platform for most American adults, LinkedIn has become the default professional networking site.

Glassdoor is a job search site somewhat different from most, in that it allows current and former employees to anonymously review companies and provide information about pay and other issues that would not otherwise be easily available. The site was launched in 2008 and initially focused on collecting real salary information, employee comments, and workplace photos of large companies, especially tech companies like Google and Yahoo. User-submitted information is checked for authenticity by various means, with about a fifth of reviews rejected as unverifiable, according to the company. The results are anonymized, and the salary information averaged (according to position). This initially gave prospective applicants a greater depth of information about job offers they were considering. Later, user reviews were used as the basis for Glassdoor’s Best Place To Work Awards, which helped to publicize companies that employees were especially happy with. Glassdoor also issues reports on the corporate culture of various companies, CEO pay, work-life balance, and job searches.

Terms & Concepts

Employee: Someone who works on behalf of an employer according to the terms of a labor contract, usually on an ongoing basis, and who, unlike an independent contractor, enjoys specific privileges such as non-wage benefits (group insurance, sick leave, vacation time, onsite daycare) and various legal or union-mandated protections.

E-recruitment: The recruiting of job candidates through the Internet or other electronic resources.

Executive Search: The recruitment of a candidate to fill an executive position, especially as conducted by a third-party agency.

Freelancer: Also known as an independent contractor, a self-employed individual who is hired on a temporary or per-project basis to perform work for an individual or business, but is not treated as an employee nor entitled to the benefits of an employee; may be paid hourly, by the project, or according to other metrics.

Headhunter: An informal term for a job recruitment agency, which recruits candidates to fill job vacancies on behalf of an employer.

Recruitment: The process of hiring a candidate for a specific job position.

Recruitment Management System: An electronic system, such as a software package, consisting of tools for managing the job recruitment process, such as tracking candidates and their stage in the process.

Bibliography

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Harrison, T., & Stone, D. L. (2018). Effects of organizational values and employee contact on e-recruiting. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 33(3), 311–324. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=130627797&site=ehost-live

Holm, A. B. (2012). E-recruitment: Towards an ubiquitous recruitment process and candidate relationship management. Zeitschrift Für Personalforschung, 26(3), 241–259. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=78384287&site=ehost-live

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Mihelich, M. (2014). E-recruiting: Dead and alive. Workforce, 93(5), 44–48. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=96996922&site=ehost-live

Rosoiu, O., & Popescu, C. (2016). E-recruiting platforms: Features that influence the efficiency of online recruitment systems. Informatica Economica, 20(2), 46–55. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=118331382&site=ehost-live

Simón, C., & Esteves, J. (2016). The limits of institutional isomorphism in the design of e-recruitment websites: A comparative analysis of the USA and Spain. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(1), 23–44. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=111727965&site=ehost-live

van Esch, P., & Mente, M. (2018). Marketing video-enabled social media as part of your e-recruitment strategy: Stop trying to be trendy. Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, 44, 266–273. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=131254040&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Dhiman, N., & Arora, N. (2018). Adoption of e-recruitment mobile apps: A study based on Utaut2 framework. Journal of Organisation & Human Behaviour, 7(2/3), 55–63. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=132819112&site=ehost-live

Kiselicki, M., Josimovski, S., Kiselicka, M., & Jovevski, D. (2018). Analysis of e-recruitment methods through snws, with special emphasis on the Republic of Macedonia. Journal of Sustainable Development (1857-8519), 8(21), 19–34. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=133802975&site=ehost-live

Rosoiu, O., & Popescu, C. (2016). E-recruiting Platforms: Features that Influence the Efficiency of Online Recruitment Systems. Informatica Economica, 20(2), 46–55. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=118331382&site=ehost-live

Selden, S., & Orenstein, J. (2011). Government E-Recruiting Web Sites: The influence of e-recruitment content and usability on recruiting and hiring outcomes in US state governments. International Journal of Selection & Assessment, 19(1), 31–40. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=58094561&site=ehost-live