Senior
HR professionals from Cadbury Schweppes and Glaxo SmithKline in the US have
used Internet recruitment to slash costs and reduce the time taken to fill
vacancies from weeks to days.
A
Web-based recruitment conference in London was told that new search systems,
which look at entire applications instead of key words and match vacancies
against the CVs of individuals inside and outside the organisation, has
revolutionised the task.
Adrian
Thomas, head of global manufacturing and supply recruitment at Glaxo
SmithKline, claims the company’s UK arm has now set itself the target of
filling each empty position within five days – a process which currently takes
as much as eight weeks.
The
company’s US operation took advantage of the country’s burgeoning Net
recruitment culture, which has allowed single job sites like monster.com access
to more than 4 million resumés, and achieved this goal 18 months ago.
But
Thomas urged delegates at the conference, organised by IQPC, to use
conventional advertising to promote Internet initiatives.
He
cited the case of an advert for monster.com, which was broadcast in a break
during the 1999 Superbowl, causing 2.2 million searches over 24 hours.
“The
results from using the Net in tandem with conventional advertising can be quite
staggering,” Thomas said. “Eighty per cent of the people you are looking for
will probably already work for your organisation – advertising jobs using
company intranets is equally important.”
Diane
Tomlinson, global resourcing manager at Cadbury Schweppes, said Net recruitment
had shaved off $700,000 (£489,785) from its $1.2m (£839,655) recruitment spend.
Tomlinson
said the company used the Internet to reinforce the company’s already positive
image in the Asia-Pacific region and to raise the profile of its best-selling
soft drink brand in America, Dr Pepper.
By
Richard Staines
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