E-recruitment
is more than a smart web site

UK HR directors
running or setting up their own corporate recruitment web sites can find out
more about best and worst practices in the area of on-line job boards from a
study of top US companies by Boston-based Cambria Consulting.

The study,
which aims to help HR professionals use e-recruitment more effectively, shows
that most companies have yet to master some of the basics, even though many of
the companies included in the study are featured in Fortune magazine’s lists of
America’s Best Companies to Work For and Most Admired Companies.

“Clearly,
some companies don’t realise how big the stakes are. It is estimated that more
than two thirds of employers hiring college graduates are recruiting via the
Internet and, by 2003, 100 per cent of the Global 500 companies are expected to
be recruiting via the Internet,” says Bernie Cullen, partner at Cambria
Consulting, who headed the research team.

In some
cases, the report found that recruitment sites of major corporates did little
more than offer candidates a post office box on their sites to which to send
their CVs.

Not
surprisingly, Cullen points to computer, technology and finance companies as
some of

the best
practitioners of e-recruitment. “The people who helped create the Internet are
using it to scour the world for outstanding job candidates,” he says. “They
don’t just tell candidates to send in resumes. They question them interactively
on the web site about their experience and interests and then direct them to
the specific jobs for which they are best qualified.”

Web sites
were rated on their overall usefulness to employers and overall ease of use,
awarding companies one to five stars in each category for a maximum of 10 stars.

Several
factors were identified in the study as common to the most successful sites.
These ranged from targeting audiences and describing individual jobs in much
greater detail to more technologically aware features, such as ensuring
personal data is regularly revisited in order to match it to available job
openings on the site. Sites should also give candidates an idea of the company
culture and what it would be like to work there.

But
continued success of

e-recruitment
in a company depends on more than a good web site. Cullen emphasises that companies
should also integrate other staffing functions in the electronic loop.

“Leading
companies have fully integrated their staffing processes making them not only
paperless and efficient but also highly effective,” he says.

“They have
re-engineered these processes so that the right people have the right
information at the right time for evaluating the right type of candidates.
Designing effective e-recruitment sites has been an important catalyst for
these major redesign efforts.”

An
executive summary of Cambria Consulting’s Study of  e-recruiting is posted on Personnel Today’s web site at: www.personneltoday.com/features
  

The 10-star companies

EDS (www.eds.com)

Fidelity (www.fidelity.com)

General
Electric
(www.ge.com)

Guidant (www.guidant.com)

IBM (www.ibm.com)

Intel (www.intel.com)

Johnson
& Johnson
(www.jnj.com)

Lucent Technologies (www.lucent.com)

Microsoft
(www.microsoft.com)

Pfizer (www.pfizer.com)

PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwcglobal.com)

Procter
& Gamble
(www.pg.com)

Sun
Microsystems (www.sun.com)

United
Parcel Services
(www.ups.com)

Good
corporate recruitment sites

According
to the US study, effective job sites shares many of these characteristics:

·       
They
understand target audiences and can address their needs

·       
Candidates
can navigate the site easily and quickly link to career pages and job openings

·       
Career
opportunities and individual jobs are described in much greater details than in
typical help-wanted ads

·       
Qualifying
categories, such as location, job function and keyword search, help candidates
find the jobs for which they are most qualified

·       
Information
about the company, including profiles of archetypal employees, gives candidates
a sense of what working for the company would be like

·       
Job
baskets let candidates apply for multiple openings

·       
Self-assessment
quizzes ask candidates about their experience and interests and direct them to
careers they would be good at and enjoy most