Critical investigation of the e-recruitment process

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

This research is particularly based on the critical investigation of the E-recruitment process in the Indian software Industries. The aim of this study is to investigate E Recruitment strategically in terms of a Cost cutting and time saving factor that would be beneficial for organization during like current economic downturn. This study would also be beneficial in looking at the concept of Technology as a solution to reduce cost and save time. In addition it is hoped that the study would also benefit Strategic analyst and Human resource managers to view E Recruitment as a strategic tool.

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1.1 Background

The research focus is on the factor of E Recruitment in today’s cut throat market in terms of strategic benefit towards Cost cutting and time saving. The researcher has chosen the particular topic, since it would be helpful in current downturn. To make this statement valid the researcher investigates the concept of E Recruitment in Software industries in India. The rationale for investigating software firms in India starts from the fact that such firms actually adoptCost cutting measures in all possible practices in current downturn.

The study seeks to review the concepts of E recruitment in Software firms by understanding the subjects in terms of Human resource process. In addition the study investigate’s E recruitment process in Software industries by acquiring data through Questionnaire and Semi structured tool that shall constitute questions based on the critical sections of E Recruitment in terms of Human resource process, Cost cutting and Time saving factors. The primary research is acquired and the possible respondents and population would be the Human Resource managers and employees in HR department from Chennai and Bangalore working in Software firms. The researcher intends to use contacts within the IT firms to access the relevant data set.

1.2 Literature background

Organizational recruitment efforts have to a great extent relied on computer technology and one vicinity that has developed is recruiting through the Internet, otherwise known as e-recruitment (Mottl, 1998). This technology can be utilised in application tracking, job posting and electronic job application. In addition, it can assist the human resource function and lessen human resource works.

From the applicable literature, there is an argument that e-recruitment is required to be used in conjunction with other techniques. Internet-based recruiting will not put back conventional practices, but a well-implemented e-recruitment strategy can facilitate the recruitment process there by making it more successful (Borck, 2000; Caggiano, 1999). Internet recruiting ought to be one of many tools used to find and recruit applicants. Likewise, even though the organizations see the advantages of e-recruitment, There is a tendency to adopt more conventional methods in the form newspaper advertisement, personal referrals, and search agencies for most their recruiting. Organizations tend to view the Internet as an vital additional tool (Pearce and Tuten, 2001)

E-recruitment is not treated as a stand-alone human resource instrument how it is integrated into an overall recruiting and selection strategy that comprises, amongst other things, sophisticated behavioral and skills assessment, interviewing, and added means of documenting requirements and sourcing candidates. Consequently, a human resource department still uses both conventional method and e-recruitment in their recruitment process (Cullen, 2001). According to Portal (2003), Shows that more than 75 percent of HR professionals current use Internet job boards apart from conventional recruiting method (HR Portal, 2003).

One of the key considerations of e-recruitment it’s cost-effectiveness and the economy attained in the course of its usage. This is since publishing obtainable positions on the company’s website costs less than publishing in other media for instance newspaper. In addition, employers can place the vacancy positions on the job board website as this too is at a lower cost (Pearce and Tuten , 2001).

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Research

The aim of this research is to investigate the process of E-Recruitment as strategic driving factor in cutting costs and saving time in the Indian IT sector.

The objective’s of the study are as follows:

To investigate the various factors and trends in Recruitment in India.
To Explore E-Recruitment as Human resource process and evaluate various implications in hiring
To critically examine the effectiveness of e-recruitment in Software industries
To identify merits and demerits in E-Recruitment process

1.4 Research Questions

What are the trends in recruitment in India?
What is the impact of conducting E-Recruitment process in Software firms?
What is the strategic impact of E-Recruitment on Software organizations – in cost reduction and Time?
What are the driving factors of E Recruitment towards jobs with merits and demerits?

1.5 Methodology

In order to fulfill the aims and objectives of this study, the study shall employ both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative method were be usedthrough semi structured interviews with high level and Middle level Human resource managers from Software companies in India and take suggestions from the experts from the company’s through focus groups and compared data will be presented. Quantitative approach were be carried out through questionnaire methods, the like scale type questions have been adopted as the suitable, where the questions are designed in different scales likert scale, rate order scales. Questions vary from open to closed end questions based on author’s point of view. The respondents will beemployees working in Indian Software firms at Chennai and Bangalore in Human Resource department.

The type of sampling method used in this research thesis will be Non probability sampling method. It involvesidentifying and questioning the informants based on their experience and their roles. The type of sampling used in non probability method is Purposive sampling, which involveschoosing independents on the views which are relevant to the subject (Jankowicz, 2005). The number of samples for Semi structured interview is 5 and Questionnaire samples is 30.

1.6 Structure of the dissertation

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter explains the topic of study and the background of research in brief giving values and reasons why the researcher has chosen the topic and how the research is focused or dealt to fulfill the research questions and research objectives.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter provides the reviews the academic literature related to the topic that shall constitute whole research. The academic literatures are reviewed from Books, Electronic journals, Articles etc. This chapter reviews the existing literature on research topic so that it can helpful in identifying the gap and to study the various theories used by the other authors.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

This chapter highlights the methodology that is used in this research. The chapter begins with an outline of the research aim and objectives finally, the researcher explains the Sampling techniques and how well the samples are grouped to observe validity and reliability of the research.

Chapter 4: Analysis and Findings

This chapter analyses the data that are gathered through primary research and it provides a detailed outline of the research findings. In addition, The chapter contains a disclaimers of findings. infers in drawing various conclusions from data presentation.

Chapter 5: Conclusions and its recommendations

This chapter contains various conclusions drawn from discussion’s in the analysis chapter. The limitation of this research is also discussed, andrecommendations for further research presented.

1.7 Summary

In this chapter we have reviewed the research background, research objectives and the scope of research by looking into the research background. The research aim and research objectives are stated with research question which ensures the researcher understand the subject based on the problem statement to fulfill the research. We also looked into theoretical background on E Recruitment on different perspectives. Finally we have looked into the overall structure of the review. In the next chapter we shall review and look into various literary articles to gain more understanding on the issues under investigation.

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the theoretical background of the study. It review various literature articles on the topic, The main aim of this study is to analyse E recruitment in software industries in India with a focus on Cost cutting and time saving factor. This is strategic and the research is conducted with a focus on Recruitment as a strategic tool and its various trends in software organisations. Many researchers and practitioners had identified that the necessity in the manner in which the applicants are getting attracted towards Jobs and organizations and the use of the Internet as a tool to cut cost and save time. The set of rules in filling up recruitments through web can incur less cost than mailing paper application packets. Apart from the reported benefits in the form of cost efficiencies, the role of HR in this model is taken as more of a facilitative role, According to the various theories it is clearly specified that this model gives a chance of time for the recruiters in order to involve the strategic issues within the resourcing.

Having outlined the research aims and Objectives it is essential to look at the definition of E Recruitment to have an overview of the research. Recruitment is a process of hiring candidates in filling up the vacancies through possible stages. There are several number of stages in selecting suitable candidates for employment are being organized by the organisation. E Recruitment is different from this conventional recruitment process.

2.2 Human Resource Management & The Recruitment Process

Human resource management (HRM) and Recruitment process go hand in hand and recruitment is central to all management process. Failures in the recruitment process can lead to difficulties for any organization and consequently have an immense effect on its probability and variance levels which include inappropriate of skills and staffing. Consequently some of the problems of inadequate recruitment, which leads to shortage of labors or problems in the decision making (Veneeva, 2009). From the above literature the researcher can come to a decision that recruitment plays a vital role in the central management process.

According to The University of Melbourne (2009), recruitment is an imperative process of human resource management. They suggested that there are two major stages or levels in the recruitment processes. The first stage refers in the process of searching or hunting the candidates with respect to job opportunities available and the seconds stage refers with the process of selecting candidates who are qualified for a suitable job by a company with the use of technologies in terms of test and interviews.

However recruitment is not a simple selection process and it requires extensive planning and decision making to be able to employ suitable manpower. There exists growing competition amongst the business firms for recruiting the best potential candidates, There is now a shift focus on innovation and also amongst management decision making. The selectors aim to recruit candidates who would suit the ethics, corporate culture in accordance to the organization (Terpstra, 1994). This means that management would specifically look out for potential candidates capable of being a team player and team work and that would be crucial for positions available in organization. Human resource management approaches towards any business process would be based upon focusing the core objectives of an organization and realization of strategic plans by training the individuals or personnel that would be beneficial tothe organization, Thusimproving its performance and profits (Korsten, 2003).

With the following discussion the recruitment process does not end with selection and application of right candidates to the job but rather it involves maintaining and retaining the employees chosen. In spite of well structured plan, selection and the qualified management team involved in recruitment processes followed by firms, there is a possibility that the Firms can also face significant difficulties during the implementation. With this notion HRM can provide new insights towards the best practiced approach to recruitment. But companies have to use their management skills to apply theories within context of organization (Veneeva, 2009).

2.2.1 Recruitment Trends

We have seen the recruitment context towards organization efficiency. We shall now have a look into the various methods towards recruitment. According to the specification of several theories, they mainly classify the recruitment methods in many directions. According to The University of Melbourne (2009), there are two prime methods of recruitment called traditional and online recruitment. Basically the recruitment methods that are performed by the organization themselves or by a third party recruitment providers such as recruitment agencies are termed as Traditional recruitment. The information exchange in the traditional recruitment is offline but still they does not use internet as a source of information exchange. It adopts avenues such as Television, newspaper, and also through Job centers etc. The job recruitments are approached in a straight forward manner or filled through the agency or also it can be conducted by the physical address of the organization in order to conduct various test and interviews such as face to face interview.

In the past two decades recruitment has changed with number of evolutionary phases. According to the white paper of Frontier Software (N.D) these are,

Pre-online era – This is networking face to face.

1980’s – These are the solutions based on the commissioned agencies that provides alternative that had become paper based and time consuming process.

1990’s-The rise of Internet as a tool that made solutions as Job boards that offers inexpensive and effective solutions reaching many target audiences.

2000-present -This transition phase is the emergence of Internet recruitment called e recruitment solutions and Web 2.0 is the platform for recruitment process.Social networking style, interactivity connections as well.

The rise of job boards marked the beginning of the evolution of Internet recruitment which makes readily available a pool of job seekers and their Curriculum Vitae to the agencies that advertise jobs. Thus internet has become a major source for the active and passive job seekers. Active job seekers opt to make available of CV’s and Passive job seekers are being the candidates that is non searchable and hidden but can be responded to job advertisements Frontier Software (N.D). According to the Research advisory panel (2006) of Public appointments service had identified the most common recruitment types as Newspapers, Recruitment agencies, internal recruitment and Internet recruitment.

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having identified the two major types of recruitments as Traditional and Online recruitment. According to Othman and Musa (2006) cited from Arboledas et al. (2001) and in Galanaki (2002), traditional recruitment being the firms who wants to post jobs, announces the job opening at the marketplace through proper advertisements or to a job fair , or to an executive recruiter or to other medias. From this source candidates submit their profile for the announcement. Newspaper advertisements are used than any other source of traditional recruitment. On the other hand, the traditional recruitments are used in majority of recruitment processes and are effective while other types of recruitments are proved to be appropriate in specific situations. The employers use different methods based on different positions.

Accordingly Bussler & Davis (2002) cited in Othman and Musa (2006) and Mottl (1998) suggests that, In order to determine which mode of recruitment is used by the employers we have to look into the various aspects. Aspects in terms of Time scale of the recruitment process, Recruitment cost as reaching the candidates and the organization culture. But in recent years internet has revolutionized and made an impact on resource field of the humans. Now a day’s organization rely mostly on computer technology and with the recruitment through Internet. The internet technology can be used in tracking the application, job posting and electronic applications. Apart from these applications it can be used in reducing the human resource work load and human resource functions.

2.3 E- Recruitment Overview

E-recruitment can be explained as any recruiting processes that a business organisation carries out through web-based tools, in the form of a firm’s public Internet site or its corporate intranet (Armstrong, 2006). The terms Internet recruitment, online recruitment and E- Recruitment are Identical and can be used interchangeably.There are various definitions of E Recruitment, According to Hoffman (2001),

“E-Recruitment can be defined as the utilization of the Internet for candidate sourcing, selection, communication and management throughout the recruitment process”

According to Armstrong (2006), the E- Recruitment process consists of attracting the candidates, screening, tracking the applicants, selection and finally offering jobs and as well rejecting the candidates.

According to the studies of Hogler (1998) and HR Portal (2003) cited in Othman and Musa (2006) supported that employers can advertise jobs, scan and store their CV’s, conduct tests and alsocontact the qualified applicants with the use of Internet that could match the candidates for jobs. Vidot (2000) cited in Othman and Musa (2006) suggested that the use of Internet will benefit and attract candidates of high quality, branding, reiterate the profile of the firm and also streamline application and the selection processes.

According to Cullen (2001) cited in Othman and Musa (2006) , there are various perception to E- Recruitment, it is integrated with the overall selection and the recruiting strategies as a standalone human resource tools.These strategies include interviewing behavioral and assessment skills and other additional strategies such as identifying other needs and candidates sourcing. However studies show that the Human resource departments still also use both e- recruitment and other traditional methods. According to the study by HR Portal (2003), More than 75% of Human Resource professionals are using Job boards in addition to the Traditional recruitment methods.

2.3.1 E- Recruitment Factual Evidences and Process

There is evidence in the academic to suggest that the literatures based on E-Recruitment are gaining popularity in today’s job market. E-recruitment is significant in today’s cost cutting markets to save huge amount of money. According to the research of Whizlabs Software (2006), the study of Forrester Research Institute, a famous market research firm found that by 2005 the expenditure on the recruitment based on Internet was $7 billion. Many firms as of 96% of the companies required internet for the recruitment needs. A survey conducted by Employment Management Association (EMA) of USA found that online ads would cost $377 than estimated with printout ads that cost per hire at $3295. A study conducted the CIPD (2005) found that 75% of organizations in UK use corporate website in order to attract applicants and in the 2006 research 73% of applicants use online job applications.

According to an Intelligence report of iLogos Research of Global 500 Website recruiting of 2003 survey has found that 94% of global 500 companies have corporate career websites.

Recruitment websites are more useful in saving both money and time. Apart from a Recruitment process it is becoming a part of organization or corporate strategy. The online recruitment sites have continued to multiply in the numbers in value added services and can help to improve long term time survival in the current market trend. ‘E’ drive is primarily based on the IT organization and software solutions. E recruitment primarily uses software solutions for effective and efficient recruitment process. There are various differences with the recruitment from an IT organization that compared with traditional or conventional recruitment process such as selection and training process. The important study also suggested that IT organizations hire more people; consequently recruiters have to really focus on providing solutions that would ultimately maximize effort, save time with the best talent pools (Whizlabs Software, 2006).

2.3.2 E- Recruitment – Application with HR and systems

Having explored E-recruitment and its process are, at this context we are now need to explore how E- recruitment is linked with technology and Management i.e., E- recruitment links with HR systems, Line Managers and Human Resource managers in the recruitment process.The application of E – recruitment and HR systems are explained by Research Advisory Panel (2006) as;

HR Role in the E-Recruitment process is essential, as the general time management seems to play a crucial role as a facilitator and coordinator in the recruitment process. With the e recruitment process it can be evident that it can reduce the HR burden and that in turn leads HR managers to operate on a strategic level within the organization.Line managers are usually involved in the process of selecting the applications in relation to the vacancies that are listed accordance with the job role. At this instant HR can work on to the overall strategy as defining and controlling. This also ensures the system to develop top notch effective talent strategies. In this whole process the role of Line managers would be limited with the access to the entire e recruitment systems even though the systems quickly facilitate in transferring candidates information. During this HR would acts as broker between candidates and the Line managers Research Advisory Panel (2006).

From this literature, HR acts as a central unit between the Line managers and the candidates. Many organizations are usually opt for solution or depend on the Third party suppliers can make use of the alternative form of suppliers and Job boards of systemsusing the application tracking software.There are two main forms of categories in enabling the E recruitment process they are, E recruitment tools such as Enterprise Resource and Planning (ERP) such as Oracle and SAP and the other being the developed products from the vendors who are specialized in the recruitment software’s like testing and application tracking software’s Research Advisory Panel (2006).

2.3.3 E- Recruitment Developments

E- Recruitment has been developed more recently with the use of job domains. Job domains were started during the early part of 2005they make most use of the Internet for assigned numbers and names. The job domain is in the top level of the domains that would allow efficient and easy websites navigation. From the survey conducted by the society for human resource management (SHRM) suggested that those firms that use job domains can produce better results in E recruitment (Minton-Eversole, 2007 cited in White, 2008) .

From the study of Schramm (2007) cited in White, 2008) explains, apart from the key development of E recruitment though Job domains, there are several advancements in the internet recruitment such as the online communities or the internet communities known as Web 2.0. These online communities are like the social networking websites that are meant for social stances. These internet communities’ websites such as Facebook, Myspace that are used by the recruiters in order to find suitable candidates who are looking for the employment offers.These developments in the Internet communities would benefit in many ways such as, verifying the necessary credentials and other information that are not listed on the candidates resume. In the major cases candidates would also be eliminated with the contents listed in the Internet social sites.

2.3.4 Merits of E-Recruitment

This section of the literature review seeks to focus on the cost cutting and the time saving measures of the E-Recruitment process.

2.3.4.1 key role E – Recruitment in the Cost cutting measures

E- Recruitment is Cost efficient and it can bring a lot of benefit to the organization. Using the internet as a source for recruitment in the E-Recruitmentprocess it can help us to save huge amount of money. Posting jobs in the websites costs less when compared to the job publishing in other forms of media such as newspapers. Job boards are really beneficial to the recruiters who can post vacancies at low cost than other advertisements.According to iLogos research in 1998 there are three main areas in which E – Recruitment reduces costs they are as follows,

Direct costs savings from the advertisements posted on Newspapers
Reduces mail costs from paying fees to the head recruiters or Job fairs
Reduces Human resource workload in the Human resource department that yields great pace to the recruitment cycle that ultimately lowers cost (Othman and Musa, 2006)

From the above , we can see the saving benefits associated with E-Recruitment. In addition, The internet is used as a major source of E-Recruitment resumes are posted via mails which is very cheap on the other hand traditional recruitment uses communication system such as phone calls, Fax, etc and in some cases if the candidate is from a long distance it costs him more for the communication itself, also incase of applying via post it can be more costly and the time consumption is more for communication, So it is better and also more advantageous for E-Recruitment process since the cost is very less and communication is made easy and more faster, Such that it can be (The University of Melbourne, 2009). Launching a new career website for a company costs less that would eventually track every details of candidates required in the recruitment process costs less. The process also reduces in temporary manpower spending of manual sorting or applicants (White, 2008).

2.3.4.2 Key role E – Recruitment in the Time Saving measures

E-Recruitment has more effective advantage that helps the employer’s in time saving on the other hand it provides efficient benefits to the employer’s.

E-Recruitment provides recruiters with the ability to work simultaneously with traditional recruitment processes. This means that firms are able to source and process the application quickly, thus saving long hours of hiring process (Marr, 2007). Time saving is a strategic measure in the hiring process. According to the study of Barber (2006), the ease of completing online application form and the time taken to process applications are done in minutes faster than weeks, the advantage of this, is that recruiters and job seekers have saved time. The hiring time is saved by pre selecting the application and receives quick response electronically. The most important variance would be that, companies can update their information quickly by typically speeding up the front end processes Othman and Musa (2006), According to the Bussler & Davis (2002) E-Recruitment can reduce the amount of time used for hiring in the recruitment process by two thirds.

2.3.4.3 Other Key advantages of E-Recruitment

In addition to the cost and time saving benefits identified with E-Recruitment, there are various other merits in the E-Recruitment process. The access to the candidate pool is wider when compared to the traditional recruitment methods to the candidate pool. This would range from National, International to local levels that provides greater chances in finding the suitable candidates for job roles. This provides opportunities in the online graduate recruitment of more diverse graduate pools responding with opening all doors. This would better show of best recruitment techniques across the business units allowing more recruitment information (Barber, 2006).

Another benefit would be brand reputation as a key account of benefits to E-Recruitment by promoting the corporate brand and corporate image of an organisation. Corporate websites gives values of choices with an indication of better values and better organizational culture. It also gives a better feel of the candidate to share why they would want to work in the organisation. When any candidate applies for a job with the firm, sometime it mostly rely on the way they are treated. At this context if candidate have bad experience it would ultimately give negative impact to the brand (Barber, 2006).

The benefits of E-Recruitment strategy benefits on the talent pool is supported by Shipton (2004), According to him talent pool is efficient in E-Recruitment strategy in that it helps group candidates who have applied for the advertised position in terms of either a speculative basis or as a result of direct responses to an advertisements. These are done by communicating at the regular intervals in the form of E-newsletters.The author also found the benefits after the implementation of E-Recruitment system in The Tussaud’s Group in the form of saving time of hiring reduction upto 66%.

E-Recruitment would provide proper access for the passive job seekers who are the individuals already working or already in a job. It gives opportunity to appear for better job roles advertised on the Internet. These are the type of job seekers of better quality due to the fact that they are not desperate for change in job when compared to the active job seekers who are frustrated in finding a new opportunity (Richardson, 2005).

2.3.5 Demerits of E-Recruitment

We have reviewed various literatures on E-Recruitment processes and the merits in terms of Cost and Time saving benefits. We shall now look at the various demerits of E-Recruitment process. E-Recruitment is very effective in saving cost and time; apart from these prime benefits it also provides wider access to the candidate pool, as well as improving brand reputation of a company etc. There are many challenges that needed to be reviewed and be aware of the fact that it has disadvantages from traditional recruitments.

The demerits outlined by Othman and Musa (2006) include:

Ethnic Minorities

E-Recruitment can impact to the certain groups of ethnic minorities in a particular kind of people who does not able to access the internet. The role of impact on certain minority groups would be a threat for the organization that can lead to discrimination issues.