Recruitment Strategies: Seek.com.au HR Manager Advertisement Analysis

This report delves into the online recruitment landscape, specifically focusing on advertisements for Human Resource Managers on the Australian job portal Seek.com.au. The research examines the structure, keywords, and commonalities within these advertisements, analyzing their impact on job seekers. A critical literature review provides context, exploring innovations and limitations in online recruitment, as well as sustainable recruitment practices. The methodology employs a deductive research approach, utilizing secondary data analysis to identify recurring themes related to career progression, training, and flexible work environments. The findings highlight similarities in employer strategies aimed at attracting young professionals. The report concludes with recommendations for innovation in online HR recruitment and acknowledges limitations of the study.

Running head: RECRUITMENT VIA ONLINE RECRUITMENT WEBSITE SEEK
RECRUITMENT VIA ONLINE RECRUITMENT WEBSITE SEEK
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this research is to delve deep into the online advertisements of recruitment in the
Australian job recruitment website www.seek.com.au. The research is mainly aimed at
investigating the similarities of the advertisements on the job portal aimed at recruiting Human
Resource Managers and professionals through Seek.com.au. The structure of the advertisements,
the terms and keywords used in such advertisements are examined and understood and their
impact on the job seekers are analyzed. It is seen that there are certain terms and keywords which
are repeatedly and regularly used in such advertisements, and the objective is to attract attention
of the high quality top professionals in the industry. The psychological tendencies of the job
seekers are to look for a job that is rewarding and sufficiently paying with opportunity of growth
and good work culture. Literature review is done and the background and context of the online
recruitment process is understood before the commencement of the secondary data analysis. The
literature review throw light on different perspectives of the online recruitment process and also
explores the limitations of the nee methods of recruitment. The literature review offers a strong
background to the secondary data research that follows. Findings state that there are much
similarities in the advertisements posted online by the employers and these are mainly aimed at
luring young enthusiastic professionals of the industry. Recommendations state that there must
be some innovations in the advertisements of human resource recruitment process via online job
portals.

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Table of Contents
1.0 PROJECT TITLE......................................................................................................................4
2.0 INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................4
2.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT....................................................................................................5
2.2 RESEARCH AIMS...............................................................................................................6
2.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS...................................................................................................6
3.0 CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................6
3.1 BACKGROUND AND INNOVATIONS IN RECRUITMENT MODELS IN HUMAN
RESOURCE................................................................................................................................6
3.2 OVERVIEW AND LIMITATIONS OF THE NEW RECRUITMNET PROCESS IN
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT..................................................................................7
3.3 GOOD AND SUSTAINABLE RECRUITMENT ADVERTISEMENTS AND
PRACTICES................................................................................................................................8
4.0 A DETAILED PRESENTATION OF THE METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH.........9
4.1 RESEARCH APPROACH....................................................................................................9
4.2 RESEARCH DESIGN.........................................................................................................10
4.3 DATA COLLECTION METHOD......................................................................................11
4.4 DATA ANALYSIS.............................................................................................................11
4.5 RESEARCH ETHICS.........................................................................................................11
5.0 FINDINGS FROM SECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS........................................................12

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5.1 THEME 1: SIMILARITIES IN TERMS OF CAREER PROGRESSION AND
ANALYSIS................................................................................................................................13
5.2 THEME 2: ON GOING TRAINING AND SUPPORT......................................................19
5.3 THEME 3: FLEXIBLE CULTURE AND WORK ENVIRONMENT...............................21
6.0 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS IN LIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED LITERATURE
.......................................................................................................................................................25
7.0 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................26
7.1 RECOMMENDATIONS.....................................................................................................27
7.2 LIMITATIONS....................................................................................................................27
7.3 REFERENCE:.........................................................................................................................28
7.8 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................31
7.9 APPENDICES.........................................................................................................................32

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1.0 PROJECT TITLE
HUMAN RESOURCE MANGEMENT: RECRUITMENT VIA ONLINE
RECRUITMENT WEBSITE SEEK AND HOW POTENTIAL CANDIDATES ARE
ATTRACTED VIA JOB ADVERTS ON THIS WEBSITE.
2.0 INTRODUCTION
Human resource is one of the most important department of a company as it is given the
responsibility of recruiting efficient employees on whom the company will run. Human resource
management is a dynamic field of study as the processes change with time in an endeavor to
ensure a more effective method of employee recruitment and retention (Cascio, 2018). The
online job portals are the recent medium of recruiting in a cost effective but efficient manner. It
does not require much capital to post recruitment advertisements in online job portals and the
audience reach can be customized according to need (Antoun et al., 2016). Therefore, more and
more companies are taking the online way for fulfilling the company requirements. In the year
1995 six major newspapers from USA, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, and the Chicago Tribune put a joint
effort in starting a website called CareerPath.com which was the first online job portal. The
website has now changed its name to careerbuilder.com (Careerbuilder.com, 2018). Since then
there are innumerable websites for job search and recruitment all over the world in all countries.
Seek.com is one of the most popular job searching sites in Australia. It is owned by the
Seek Limited, and has its headquarters in Melbourne and is a public limited company.

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Figure 1: New Job advertisements in Seek.com
Source: (Seek.com.au, 2017)
2.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Traditionally recruitment advertisements were posted mainly in newspapers in the
classified sections. The main limitation in this regard was it could not be tested whether the
advertisements were spotted by the proper target audience or not. The advertisements had to be
published in all the newspapers and many redundant sections of the population who would not in
take up the job were automatically included in the target audience. This was the main problem
which gave rise to the now popular online recruitment system which is much more efficient and
target specific (Brandão et al., 2017). There has been increase in the ratio of job requirement and

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candidate profile (Mahmood, 2017). Better people are applying for proper jobs. However, in the
new system of recruiting via online job portals there has been found much similarities in the
structure and the languages of the advertisements. This aims to research in this regards the
similarities of the advertisements on job sites and their impact on job seekers.
2.2 RESEARCH AIMS
The aim of the research is to understand various perspectives about emerging trends of
Human Resource Recruitment process through the online job portal Seek.com, especially in
recruiting Human Resource Manager for big companies. There are various commonalities seen
in the advertisements posted for recruitment of HR managers in Australia, the research aims to
understand these commonalities and why these common terms are used in the advertisements.
2.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 How the companies attract best professionals to apply for the positions?
 What are the various commonalities found in the job advertisements posted in
Seek.com for the post of HR manager?
 Why such commonalities are used?
 What impact does such common terms exert on the professionals searching for
jobs?
3.0 CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW
3.1 BACKGROUND AND INNOVATIONS IN RECRUITMENT MODELS IN HUMAN
RESOURCE
In the article “Employee engagement, human resource management practices and
competitive advantage: An integrated approach” the authors elaborate how the stakeholders of

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HRM process needs to move beyond just the usual approach of human resource management and
require to imbibe engagements like socialization, training and education and performance
management (Albrecht et al., 2015). Already there are a number of theories and frameworks that
state that how innovations brought in the HRM practices result in “competitive advantage”. The
research suggests that the expert job applicants are progressively looking for positions and roles
that includes scope of challenge taking and fast growth. On the other hand, Kehoe & Right
(2013) states how the perceptions of the employees about “high performance and innovation in
HR practices” relate to the overall organisation behaviour and success. They have refuted just
innovation as the driving point and included perceptions and cognition into the picture along
with innovation. The findings of this research suggest that such perceptions positively affect the
organisational behaviour and success therefore the employee expectation of innovations must be
ideally implemented at all levels. In the article “On-line consistent ranking on e-recruitment:
seeking the truth behind a well-formed CV” the authors have pointed out how the job markets
are gradually moving towards a complete online digital recruitment system and how algorithms
and programs sort out CV of the candidates to short-list the best ones (Faliagka et al., 2014), so
more than just innovations in process, machine intelligence in recruitment also comes to play.
3.2 OVERVIEW AND LIMITATIONS OF THE NEW RECRUITMNET PROCESS IN
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human resource is a complicated process as it deals with the most complex resource of a
company, its employees. Unlike other resources human beings are emotional beings with
complicated needs and desires. In the article “The link between perceived human resource
management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation model” the
authors have highlighted this point and also stated that a mediation model that is linked and

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based on the behavioural aspect of the human being (Alfes et al., 2013). The connection between
the recruitment and engagement of the employees and the outcomes depend on the perception of
support from the organisation and exchange between the leader and the members. However, in
the article “A resource‐based perspective on human capital losses, HRM investments, and
organizational performance” the authors had a different version about the factors that adversely
affects human resource process, they examine the problem of “human capital losses” and how it
affects the performance of the organisation (Shaw, Park & Kim, 2013). This research highlights
the problems in regards to employee retention issue. Proper care if not taken during recruitment
about hiring employees whose retention probability will be high, the company will bear losses in
human capital. Lately the companies have realised the competitive advantage possibility it gets if
the superior professionals are recruited, therefore there is fierce competition in hiring the best of
the market, which has led to lucrative recruitment advertisements which is the topic for study in
this paper. Dries, (2013) in his article “The psychology of talent management: A review and
research agenda” provided a clear picture about the psychological aspects of recruitment and
maintenance of human resource. In an organisation there is requirement of expertise of various
fields and recruitment is done in such way the perfect professional for executing that job can be
recruited. Talent management is one of the key responsibilities of the HR process in which talent
of a person is utilised in an optimum way and proper remuneration is provided in return.
3.3 GOOD AND SUSTAINABLE RECRUITMENT ADVERTISEMENTS AND PRACTICES
Renwick, Redman, & Maguire in their article “Green human resource management: A
review and research agenda” (2013) has given some processes which can make the human
resource management more sustainable and environment friendly. Reduction of paper usage,
giving importance on sustainable work practices among the employees are some of the ways the

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Human Resource department can contribute towards sustainable human resource process.
The online recruitment system has in many ways reduced the requirement of paper works and
made an environment friendly method of recruiting people. In the article “The impact of human
resource management on environmental performance: An employee-level study” the authors
have given a clear picture about how the human resource mechanism of an organisation has
direct impact on the environmental performance and footprint of the company (Paillé et al.,
2014). The companies are under pressure from all stakeholder’s including the direct and indirect
ones, to establish processes and practices that are environmental friendly, and a company will
have environment friendly overall process if the employees follow sustainable work methods.
The HR who is responsible must be serious about implementing policies that will result in
overall sustainability of the companies.
4.0 A DETAILED PRESENTATION OF THE METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH
4.1 RESEARCH APPROACH
The two types of approaches that are mainly followed in research are deductive research
approach and inductive research approach. The deductive research approach is the system based
on the system of evaluation of the existing researches, theories, ideas and models related to the
research topic and study. Inductive approach on the other hand is mainly based on the idea of
proposing and establishing new theories and concepts. The research approach is important in
understanding the process in which the research is done and its possible outcomes.
In this research the method of deductive research approach is adopted because the
paper is mainly based on research and analysis of existing theories and ideas (Mackey and
Gass, 2015). The research here is about the recruitment advertisements that are given in online
website Seek.com, and comparison in their effectiveness and similarity. Especially the case of

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recruiting Human Resource managers is taken into consideration. Critical literature review has
been done on various aspects of new trends in human resource management and the further
research is based on the literature review. Data that is taken is found online which will be
analysed by existing models and theories and the outcomes will be stated. Hence, the deductive
research approach is chosen over the inductive research approach.
4.2 RESEARCH DESIGN
There are mainly three kinds of research designs that are utilised, these are “analytical,
explanatory and exploratory research design.” Analytical research design is also known as the
descriptive research design. In the analytical research design there is a detailed discussion and
explanation about the topic of study in detailed descriptive manner (Marshall & Rossman, 2014).
It is mainly the description of the information and detailed analysis of them. Exploratory
research design has an approach of describing and evaluating the study and its relevancy in the
initial stage. It is about the relevance and the importance of the study. The last method called the
explanatory research method aims to develop and build a relationship and connection among the
two variables of the research.
In this particular research the descriptive research design which is also known as
the analytical research design is followed which will help in understanding the topic in
details and also all the relevant theories, models and ideas about the topic. In order to
understand the similarities of the advertisements posted in the portal and why such similarities
are used there has to be a study about the particular terms repeatedly used and their impact on the
psychology of the professionals who apply for the posts.

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4.3 DATA COLLECTION METHOD
Data collection method is one of the most important aspect of a research as the whole
research is based on the data that is collected. In quantitative research the data is mainly
collected from the primary sources through survey questions and interview, in secondary
research the data is collected from various secondary sources like existing information, journals,
articles, and researches (Lewis, 2015). The collection of the data for this research will be done
from the literature reviews and analysis of the online advertisements in Seek.com will be the
basis of the findings. Seek.com.au is the most popular online job portal in Australia and provides
thousands of job searches (refer to Figure 1 in Appendices). Therefore, the research is mainly
conducted on the secondary data. Research will be based on information from various sources
like online advertisements, relevant researches, articles and journals on the relevant topic.
4.4 DATA ANALYSIS
The main method of analysis of the data will be in the thematic method. The various
perspective of the research questions will be defined as themes and the analysis will be done
taking into consideration the various themes (Panneerselvam, 2014). Apart from that each of the
information and aspects will be set into their contextual backgrounds and analysis will be done
accordingly. Keyword search strategy is applied to search for relevant data and analyse
them accordingly. Keywords are the main tool to conduct a perfect online research. The online
research results are produced due to proper keyword searches. Keywords like “HR jobs in
Sydney”, “Human Resource Managers Job in Sydney”, “Best HR jobs in Sydney” and similar,
are used.