Online recruitment vs the human touch

As the dawn of e-commerce breaks over the world of recruitment in the IT industry, and more and more companies take advantage of the perceived benefits of online recruitment, the opportunities for specialist agencies appear to be on the rise.

The fact is that although online job sites can give instant access to a multitude of job applicants, this can often be more of a curse than a blessing. I believe newspaper advertising is similar in that companies will invariably have to sift through piles of CVs in order to find a group of applicants which best meet the job specification. What then follows is a series of interviews to narrow the list of candidates.

Companies are content to recruit in "herds" but are disappointed when they struggle to find unique individuals to fill key positions.

Jill Hamlyn, MD, The People Business

There is no getting around the fact that this is a diversion of the core business of many companies that are in the IT business and not the recruitment business. Indeed, although recruitment is often lumped together in the `soft skills` set, few executives would haggle over the imperative of finding the right skills for the job the first time round. Time wasted by interviewing can detract from the productivity of company executives who have their plates full with corporate and operational issues. The human resources department of any company is not, and never should be, a recruitment station.

Companies should stick to their core business - it`s what the market demands. Recruitment should be outsourced to professionals who understand their needs. Internet-based mass marketing is not the panacea to finding the right person for the right job.

I cannot tell whether a person is a good fit for the job or the company until I meet them. I doubt whether anyone, experienced or not, can make that judgement without spending some time with a candidate.

Given that this is the case, the initial selection and narrowing down process should be done with a recruitment partner. Employment is not a production line and there is no better proof of this than when companies start incurring costs - whether on the payroll or through lost productivity - by poor placements.

On a strictly pragmatic front, although it has more than a touch of humanitarianism to it, companies are content to recruit in "herds" but are disappointed when they struggle to find unique individuals to fill key positions.

The bottom line is that companies that invest in their employees are the most profitable. Well-placed employees who fit well within a group`s cultural structure are always going to be more productive, more creative and as such, a greater asset with higher earnings potential. This calibre of person can`t simply be cherry-picked off a Web site but needs to be selected by professionals with an intimate knowledge of the recruitment and IT industries, the company and the job-applicant. You may get it right on the Net once or twice, but it will become increasingly difficult to master on a sustainable basis. The costs of getting it wrong though, can be enormous.

Quite apart from the hit and miss nature of online recruitment, its legal repercussions are being held up for increasingly closer scrutiny. One of the lesser-known hazards waiting to befall companies using the Internet to recruit is that the labour relations act could make the process a logistical nightmare.

Advertising a job on the Net is essentially no different to advertising in the newspaper. Under the labour relations act, every applicant has the same rights as an employee. What this means is that under the law, a company has to communicate with applicants and inform them of the reasons for their rejection for any post advertised.

With unrestricted access to the Internet, the very reason for the success of online recruitment, it could also be the quality which makes it impossible to manage. This is another reason for IT companies to pass on recruitment to outside specialists which have the infrastructure in place to deal with all the eventualities and administrative quirks which the process inevitable throws up.

I feel, however, that online recruitment is not totally without merit. When managed properly, it can be a powerful tool. But agencies fulfil a critical role in filtering out the inappropriate and wholly unsuitable candidates that fall into any recruitment process. Agencies can have ready access to the biggest pool of possible candidates but can pick out the few who are most likely to fit. After face-to-face interviews, this number is whittled down further to a targeted group which represents the best potential fit. This reduces the possible margin for error and scales down the time needed for interviews - both company and job candidate benefit.