Blog 11- Recruitment

Recruitment relates to the activities related to locating potential employees.  Mullins (2010) suggests that its aim is to obtain a pool of suitable candidates for vacant posts within an organisation. Recruitment can be conducted in-house as part of the human resource department or by an external recruitment company. Recruitment sites such as monster.co.uk and fish4jobs.co.uk are becoming increasingly popular with both employers and potential recruits. These websites allow employers to promote their job vacancies online which increases the potential audience as it’s visible by a greater number of people.

Monster is one of the top recruitment websites which advertises many job vacancies across the UK in all types of employment sectors. The homepage of their website provides users with a search bar where they can enter information on the type of job they are looking for easily. There is also the option underneath the toolbar to browse by categories and industries for those who are unsure of the career path they would like to take. The site also allows company’s to post their job vacancies on the site and if there are any problems then there is IT support that can help. To test the use of the site I typed estate agency and my postcode into the search bars. This then provided me with a list of vacancies that may be of interest based on this information. There is also the option to refine your search for example by reducing the mile radius of search, these options help ensure that the results provided are closer to the users job requirements. As well as providing information on job vacancies the site provides the opportunity for users to upload their CV and receive advice from recruitment specialists. The layout of the website is very user friendly and isn’t too complicated which makes it more accessible for those that aren’t computer literate. They have also used soft colours on their website; I find this important as sometimes bright and bold colours can distract the user from the content of the webpage.



Monster home page



Estate Agency search results

A recruitment campaign that I have found particularly interesting was when the HMS prison service tried to encourage more women to apply. They advertisement broke all current advertising rules as it didn’t have a heading, an image or a conventional template for the advert. This in itself caught the attention of over 5,000 applicants which applied for the job. The advert took the form of a back cover of a paperback book. Out of the 5,000 applicants that applied over 2,000 got through the initial screening and then 635 were short listed. As you can see from the image below the article took a very unique form in that it seems more like a story. From reading the article individuals are able to judge for themselves whether they feel that would be tough enough to do the job before they job. This advertisement also shows a different side to prisoners that we stereotypically don’t think off and helps to remind us that they also feel the same emotions.

Advertising possible job vacancies online is a useful method recruitment. Whilst having many advantages there are also some disadvantages of online recruitment. What job (2011) suggests that many companies and organisations use online recruitment as a standard recruitment process. The first advantage is that online recruitment is cost effective as it costs a company nothing to promote the vacancy on their own website. If they were to use a recruitment consultant this could cost them up to 20% of the candidates first salary. The second advantage is the online recruitment is quick, by putting the vacancy online in the morning candidates can see it the same day. It has also been proved that online recruitment provides a better chance of success. Job vacancies are available online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for as long as the employer desired. If this vacancy was posted in the paper for example then it would have a time limitation on its availability. Another advantage is that online recruitment provides a wider audience as its accessible by a large number of applicants. The final advantage is that online recruitment is easy, most job site databases are user- friendly and you don’t need to have an in-depth knowledge of IT to post a vacancy advertisement.

One of the main disadvantages of online recruitment is that there are too many candidates for employers to choose from. This wastes time for HR as they have to sort through the inappropriate, irrelevant and bad candidates. Another negative is that the type of recruitment doesn’t always work as not all vacancy posts online will be filled. However this is becoming less of an issue as online recruitment is becoming more popular meaning that their are now more diverse job roles. The final disadvantage is that it is hard to judge a candidates character online without meeting them personally.

To conclude, online recruitment is becoming an increasingly popular method for employers advertising job vacancies. Websites such as monster.co.uk widens the audience therefore resulting in more applicants applying for the position. Although online recruitment has some drawbacks I feel that the positives far outweigh this. As we are currently in a technologically advanced society, I feel that it is important for recruitment to also take this path.

 References

Books

Mullins, L. (2010) Management and organisational behaviour.9^th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Websites

Buckinghamshire new university (2011) Recruitment blackboard slides [online]. Available from: http://blackboard.bucks.ac.uk/ [accessed 31 March 2011].

Monster (2011) Home page [online]. Available from: http://www.monster.co.uk/ [accessed 31 March 2011].

What job site (2011) The advantages and disadvantages of online recruitment [online], Available from: http://www.whatjobsite.com/ [accessed 31 March 2011].