Recruitment and Selection Strategies

This assignment analyzes current trends in electronic recruitment (e-recruitment). It examines the role of social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook in attracting talent, the impact of AI and chatbot technologies on recruitment processes, and the growing importance of data-driven decision making. The assignment also considers ethical considerations and future directions in e-recruitment.

MANAGING HUMAN CAPITAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Recruitment and selection is the most important responsibility for Human Resource
Department of an organization. Traditionally, this is considered as one of the rudimentary tasks
for this department. However, in recent times, with help of technological advancements, it has
become interesting and intriguing. Drastic changes from paper based advertisement to computer
based recruitment has helped in the rise of information technology and internet. A demand
function was, still is and will always be the sole trigger for initiating the quest for workforce.
Because of globalization post 1991, opening of economy occurred due to which accelerated
industrial growth led to such demand. This essay concentrates on the revolutionary elements
which supported recruitment in an external labor market with the help of IT and internet.
Thesis Statement: To critically assess the revolutionized methods of recruitment by using
information technology and internet to target the labor market.
MAIN BODY
Emergence of IT and internet has played vital role in shaping the recruitment procedure
transparent and convenient; easy accessibility by various mediums such as social media
platforms, mobile applications, artificial intelligence etc. An external labor market can be
considered as the pool of candidates with qualifications that can assist an organization. There is a
dearth of availability of qualified candidates that boosted the job market. According to Babu and
Rao (2018) companies admitted that 40% of total hiring is done on internal basis as part of
integrated talent management piece. Whereas, Thite, (2019) has found out that nearly 48 % get
recruited from the external labor pool. For this, there are following components found on internet
for this purpose and is beneficial for employer are: website of company, online job portals,
Social sites e.g. LinkedIn, twitter, face book; referrals and others. These mediums help in saving
considerable amount of time and also aids in gaining large pool of potential candidates.
However, there are certain applications of IT and internet that supports in making whole
recruitment quick and at ease. In this context, cyber vetting, artificial intelligence, standard
online forms, and more are found quite useful for HR team for employment.
The internet has revolutionized computer and the communications world in an infinite
manner. With this context, signaling theory offers an understanding between the internet
usability with an aesthetic appeal that assist the managers to propose and oversee all the
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activities and processes related to recruitment in order to enhance the attraction of applicant
towards their companies (Kapp, Peters and Oliver, 2013).
In the above context, Online Platforms lay a foundation in today’s technological world. It
has provided wings to new candidates to reach the organization’s doors virtually. Online
accessibility for job search and usage of tools such as emails, company’s website, job portals,
bulk messages, etc. can be extensively used by fresh under-graduates or post-graduates (Ramo
and Prochaska, 2012). This emphasis on filtration of documentation of candidates online. They
can directly apply on the company’s website by filling up forms offered on it and providing
details like personal background, qualification and the vacancy or post they would like to apply
for. This will give the employers or HR an opportunity to effectively select them and will help in
saving time as well as resources that would have been spent on some personnel for doing that
same work.
In addition to it, Candidates can send resumes directly to the HR department of a
company by using email applications like gmail, zoho, yahoo, outlook and more. Along with,
they can receive promotional mails by the HRD of company so that information regarding any
vacancies or notifications can be obtained conveniently. Later, candidates may subscribe that
particular corporation’s mails or website, which has proved beneficial and act as a promotional
strategy for hiring. HR’s can even use global job boards like monster.com etc. to stay active
about their job vacancies in terms of various locations (Bryant and Allen, 2013). For this, the
applicants just need to build a profile by uploading their CV’s along with other additional
information that involves their expertise, preference for location, salary expectations, industry
they are looking for. Although, it is considered as one of the legitimate tools, there are few
loopholes attached with it. Spam mails are in abundant these days claiming that many positions
have been vacant in a specific organization and such fraudulent mails con people asking for a
small fee to let such candidates in attaining a back entry or calling out for interview, have
become common these days. Thus, one must be aware about such scams and should not fall prey
to it and losing out money as well. This scam can tarnish the reputation of employer too.
Besides this, Mobile technology is another tactic used for recruitment that can support
these people in employing inexperienced candidates to provide them knowledge about the most
recent news and openings/positions with respect to their companies. This consists of many
forms: mobile recruiting by text, apps or sites. According to Goasduff (2018), it has been stated
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that approximately 89% of job seekers use their mobile phones, especially 45% use it at least
once a day to search. This made research convenient for HR on the basis of user-friendly
interface to check and observe their applications and also allow them to notify about plenty of
prospects in their companies, managing on-boarding of employees and scheduling of group
discussions or interviews. For e.g. LinkedIn: it is referred as an employment oriented service
which can be operated through mobile application and websites as well. This technology is
flexible in context of approachability as the back-end database has a record of all back up files or
data on physical storage devices like external Hdd or USB flash drives because of cloud storage
that saves time of recruiters.
WhatsApp has become the recent trend used for instant messaging and thus, company can
share links of their websites or online forms through it for instant response; along with, it can
frequently be used by HRD to send about the latest job related updates (Holm, 2012). On the
other hand, it can also act as hindrance for them as few qualified graduates who either have no
smartphone access or live in remote areas. It also spoils the credibility of a company as they
sometimes become vigorous for employee engagement and visibility for hoping to reach out to
every single candidate.
Moreover, Social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.
are amongst the most popular medium to be updated with latest news in context to recruitment of
many companies or PSU’s and also improve connectivity with such seekers from diverse sectors
like retailing, IT, HR, consultancy and others. These allow graduates to create profiles on such
sites and provide details in casual means like hobbies, likes or dislikes, candidate’s opinions on
few viral topics or videos, which also reflects their entire personality in an informal approach and
hence, the recruiters can easily compare and evaluate about candidate’s temperament and
aptitude with respect to organizational context. As per Hardy and Skilbeck (2017), 32%
companies can easily market and advertise about their openings on these platforms efficiently
leading in minimizing time, energy and resources as well as cost of operations will be decreased
for the HRD.
According to Boon and et.al. (2011) e-recruitment is amongst one of the HRM practices,
which is defined as the practice to be carried out by corporation with a primary purpose of
identifying and attracting potential candidates with minimal efforts and maximum outputs. This
has provided a wide audience of varied and diverse qualified graduates to the recruiters and is
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amongst one of the cost effective techniques that can be used by them. There are plenty of
options to choose from and the real time response of this platform has been beneficial and
productive for the employers in context of investing their time and resources. They can share
posts immediately either through forwarding posts in inbox separately or promoting about latest
vacancies through articles or blogs or sending links on emails because its reach is beyond any
geographic boundaries. However, there are no limitations on its visibility, it might be dangerous
for the enterprise’s credibility as the demand-supply of this external labor market is
exponentially increasing but, there might be a possibility of few discrepancies in context of the
available data found are authentic or not. Glassdoor has investigated that HR refers at least six
applicants before forming an opinion on an individual (Olajide, 2014). Along with, reliability on
such sites cannot be done blindly because false information with impreciseness like any
ambiguity, or wrong information about personal background or opening at particular office etc.
can be given as well.
As per stated by Breaugh (2013), relevance of computer to management is evident by
incorporating timely and accurate information with respect to company’s needs for formation of
basis to make decisions in relation to operational activities and future plans as well. He further
stated that inclusion of computers in management was done only to apply control on production
section of an organization. These days, companies are establishing tie-ups with consultancy firms
or agencies so that in absence of that physical contact with applicants, they can assist the
company by contacting the suitable individuals by intimating them with help of emails or text
messages to gain talented people from the large pool.
Additionally, Cyber-vetting can also be considered as one of the effective tools for online
recruitment. It must be done in an appropriate sequential order to optimize the search done to
find suitable candidates by HR’s of organizations (Sylva and Mol, 2009). The availability of
information on internet has vast and diverse expansion in context of recruitment. Therefore, to
conduct such internet searches, it must be executed in such a manner that potential people can be
called out for interview process in order to evaluate their suitability, qualification or prospective
for a specific designation. Nevertheless, validity and reliability related to this process is
questionable as different recruiters have various approaches to fetch the outcomes and the data
gathered may not be accurate or subjective to any partiality.
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It is evident that there is high Competition found in the external market that emphasized
on extensive innovation and management decision-making for employing the best people for job.
Therefore, for this, Talent Acquisition (TA) can be considered as an extension of recruitment as
it concentrates on finding specialists or leaders with a very specific skillset to meet the
organizational objectives. With regard to TA, it is not essential to follow traditional or on-going
methods for recruitment. Nonetheless, for employing a new individual, a detailed and well
planned structure must be applied to gain right candidates at right time. Any failure in sound
recruitment process might pose difficulties for employers as well as management (Caers and
Castelyns, 2011). For the same, conducting qualitative analysis with qualitative outcomes must
be the key-words to employ the application of IT tools in recruitment as sometimes in hurry for
unfilled positions or false image presentation of candidates can compounded to wastage of many
check points of company and might create a vacuum of prospective individuals, who got
neglected due to it.
Artificial intelligence is the latest fad for this recruitment process and has been
considered as the potential replacement for online platforms that are presently used by
organizations. Its application part is becoming prevalent and there has been a prediction that in
the next 10 years, HR jobs will be replaced by 16%. As per Goasduff (2018) who stated that 50%
of high performing employees will redistribute workloads frequently to these bots by 2030 This
prediction can be verified by using Adobe example, which surveyed that 66% of U.K. employees
took assistance from AI assistant. This can make the entire method faster and easier. It assists in
focusing on hiring of correct person rather than the steps/stages involved to make it happen. It
also supports in targeting the set labor market as it could have been easier for companies to
simplify searches on various criteria like industry, job title, location, experience, salary,
education and more. It is tending to be beneficial for both candidate and recruiter by supporting
each of them in creating a profile suitable as per requirements respectively.
AI recruiting video interviews have become an integrated part in terms of mobile
recruiting for shortlisting individuals. This saves time as well as resources to conduct an
interview. On the other hand, personal interviews were time-consuming and energy taxing
(Catanzaro, Moore and Marshall, 2010). With the help of it, use of psychometric and biometric
analysis can be done. Along with, an evaluation could be completed on the basis of answers
given by candidates as well as their voice energy and quality, body language, use of fillers, pace
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of speech, tone and facial micro-expressions. AI powered assistants, popularly known as
chatbots is a computer program which imitates human conversation via text or audio to
encourage interaction between consumer and organization’s assistant. A remarkable example is
Google Duplex technology, where a conversation of Google assistant, the AI-powered virtual
assistant with a human was showcased, without the human’s knowledge that it was a bot.
Whereas, this method has a loophole that HR can filter without contacting the candidate, that
might lead to missing out an opportunity to even consider that particular person for any job.
Consequently, to sum up on the effectiveness of internet, it can be inferred that it is
crucial in overcoming challenges which were prevalent because of traditional methods of
recruitment as it is cost effective medium that also saves time. It made the entire hiring
procedure proficient and result-oriented by the help of fast paced technology as the world
reached the fingertips of everyone and from everywhere, for both employers and new
inexperienced candidates (Ma and Allen, 2009). Furthermore, it can help the recruiters to direct
the candidates as per their specifications and standardizations with the assistance of this
technological development leading to an evaluation of gaps between the emerging trends of
particular sector or industry practices and the employees’ engagement towards the company’s
policies and creation of vacancy for business expansion.
However, sometimes the implementation can result in poor handling of its planning and
its evolution can take time for effective decision making while picking such new candidates.
Internet has a darker side where crime or fraudulent cases have become easier to commit. IT and
internet both have contributed to surplus human resources but there has been a scarcity on the
rate of employability. False information is available which might deviate the recruiters in the
wrong ripple of poor qualified job searchers, leading to exploitation of company’s allocated
resources.
CONCLUSION
It is summarized as that recruitment process for new employees is the first step to enter
into the work space. It can be either internal or external and in both methods, the role of internet
as well as information technology has been imperative. This methodology consisted of numerous
processes like job application, advertising, interviews, assessment for making proper decisions
by following the professional and legislative set up applicable in that specific company.
Moreover, appropriate implementation of various tools of IT with internet has given extensions
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to HRD to be creative in this employing process and making it suitable for them by adding
optimum value to provided resources of business.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Babu, N.V. and Rao, A.V., 2018. RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES IN
MANAGING/EFFECTING THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS. PARIPEX-INDIAN
JOURNAL OF RESEARCH. 7(5).
Boon, C. and et.al., 2011. The relationship between perceptions of HR practices and employee
outcomes: examining the role of person–organization and person–job fit. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management. 22(01). pp.138-162.
Breaugh, J.A., 2013. Employee recruitment. Annual review of psychology. 64. pp.389-416.
Bryant, P.C. and Allen, D.G., 2013. Compensation, benefits and employee turnover: HR
strategies for retaining top talent. Compensation & Benefits Review. 45(3). pp.171-175.
Caers, R. and Castelyns, V., 2011. LinkedIn and Facebook in Belgium: The influences and
biases of social network sites in recruitment and selection procedures. Social Science
Computer Review. 29(4). pp.437-448.
Catanzaro, D., Moore, H. and Marshall, T.R., 2010. The impact of organizational culture on
attraction and recruitment of job applicants. Journal of business and psychology. 25(4).
pp.649-662.
Kapp, J.M., Peters, C. and Oliver, D.P., 2013. Research recruitment using Facebook advertising:
big potential, big challenges. Journal of Cancer Education. 28(1). pp.134-137.
Ma, R. and Allen, D.G., 2009. Recruiting across cultures: A value-based model of
recruitment. Human Resource Management Review. 19(4). pp.334-346.
Nikolaou, I., 2014. Social networking web sites in job search and employee
recruitment. International Journal of Selection and Assessment. 22(2). pp.179-189.
Ramo, D.E. and Prochaska, J.J., 2012. Broad reach and targeted recruitment using Facebook for
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research. 14(1).
Sylva, H. and Mol, S.T., 2009. E‐Recruitment: A study into applicant perceptions of an online
application system. International Journal of Selection and Assessment. 17(3). pp.311-
323.
Thite, M. ed., 2019. E-HRM: Digital Approaches, Directions & Applications. Routledge. Holm,
A.B., 2012. E-recruitment: towards a ubiquitous recruitment process and candidate
relationship management. German Journal of Human Resource Management. 26(3).
pp.241-259.
Online
Goasduff, L., 2018. Why Not Work with a Bot? [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/why-not-work-with-a-bot/>
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Hardy, A. and Skilbeck, R., 2017. Top 10 hiring trends to watch. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.pageuppeople.com/2017/12/15/2018-recruiting-trends/>
Olajide. A., 2014. Data-Driven Appointment and Recruitment System. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280300408_Data-
Driven_Appointment_and_Recruitment_System>
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