Recruiting through the Web: better or just bigger? - includes related article on sources of and techniques in online recruiting

There is no question that both employers and job seekers are increasing their use of the Internet, or that web-based resources are providing more recruiting information. The real question is whether the Interact is becoming a better source of candidates as it gets bigger.

"The Internet is both bigger and better, but we need better understanding and stronger skill sets to take advantage of it," says Gerry Crispin, SPHR, vice president of Shaker Advertising Agency in East Brunswick, NJ, and co-author of CareerXRoads, a book that reviews web sites for job seekers.

The very breadth of Internet recruiting activity today can be mindboggling; The resources have quadrupled in number in recent years but not necessarily in quality, says Crispin, who is working on the fourth edition of the book. "I have to look at 10,000 to 15,000 recruiting sites to find 500 worth reviewing; three years ago, I had trouble finding 300 sites."

"What I see and hear is that the Internet is both a bigger and a better resource," says Peter Franks, head of the Boston-based World Association for Cooperative Education and an associate with HR Alliance LLC, a staffing cooperative in Jenkintown, Pa. "The concept certainly is growing, because there is a higher use rate in the job market among younger people coming out of academia - they are forcing the use of the Internet because they are so comfortable with it. The technology is getting better."

A special report from Best Software Inc. says that "while online recruiting is fast becoming an essential tool for HR professionals, its potential remains largely untapped. The Internet recruiting industry, estimated at $48 million in 1997, will grow almost tenfold by 2002, according to industry observers ... this explosion marks a change in the way companies attract job seekers."

With the industry's exponential growth, recruiters have benefited from using Internet sources and services. Crispin cites getting the word out about a job opening faster, as well as easing the recruiter's work in researching a job seeker's interest, evaluating the response, then moving and tracking the hiring information. "Saving time means saving dollars; effectiveness as a function of investment cost [makes the Internet] very reasonable," Crispin says.

Despite its rapid growth, low cost and potential, recruiters should not depend solely on the Internet, Franks warns. "The best companies use a variety of sources to identify strong candidates, and the Internet is one such source."

ETHICAL, LEGAL AND QUALITY ISSUES

The increased use of web-based recruiting and addition of new services and techniques (see box) present several ethical and practical issues. The value and ethicality of sharing resumes, while increasingly common and even encouraged by some Internet recruiting sources, is one big concern.

"There is a sense of confidentiality and trust that are breached when a company shares a resume without the candidate's permission," explains Alexander T. Godun, an associate with HR Alliance LLC and president of the Delaware Valley Technical Recruiters Network. "The biggest problem with sharing resumes is that it is potentially unfair to the job seeker. A person who sends a resume to a company usually is only interested in a particular job within that company, not asking to be considered for a variety of jobs with any companies that the initial company may do business with. However, if a candidate submits a resume to a job fair or Internet resume bank, the candidate wants the resume to be reviewed by as many people as possible."

Crispin shares these concerns. "Corporations have at least implicit agreements with job seekers who apply to them directly that the resumes they have submitted are for that corporation's use only," he says. "There is no implicit agreement between job seekers and third-party agencies. These issues need to be addressed by each company. Unless there is an explicit statement such as 'resumes received may be shared with other corporations,' a corporation reselling resumes without permission is, at best, ethically bankrupt and, at worst, liable for whatever problems arise."

Crispin also sees "significant ethical issues developing as more corporations dabble with direct sourcing. Technology can be abused unintentionally as the ability to search by nonperformance criteria creates demographically unbalanced applicant pools."

Misuse of information can have life-changing and even life-threatening effects. Potential problems include a company selling a resume to a candidate's current employer and contact information about female applicants getting into the hands of stalkers as a result of resale, Crispin warns.

Diversity can suffer if women and minorities have unequal access to Internet resources, notes John Sullivan, professor and head of the Human Resource Management Program in the College of Business at San Francisco State University.

"Some of the largest issues in Internet recruiting are still uncharted legal ones," Godun says. "There are the questions of who owns the rights to retain, and possibly even sell, resumes that are posted on web sites. There also are 'fairness in advertising' issues with the language in some companies' web sites and recruitment advertising."

Alan Priestly, general manager of human resources at Royal & SunAlliance Insurance in Sydney, Australia, and chairman of the Graduate Careers Council of Australia, sees issues from an international perspective. "There is a limited pool of job seekers surfing the 'Net, but a very large worldwide pool of potential applicants, many of whom will not be able to enter the country in which a vacancy exists," he says. "Many Internet ads carry a warning that only work permit and visa holders should apply."

Quality versus quantity is another concern, cautions Sullivan, who is also a consultant to high-tech and Fortune 500 companies and a frequent contributor to HRNET, a worldwide Internet information exchange. "Many [resume] sites go for volume and worry little about the currency of their resumes," he says. "The largest sites have such a volume that it can become a burden to sort through them." Putting job listings out to a national or international audience causes problems for companies that only hire locally, he notes, since national candidates who require expensive relocation are of little value.

THE RECRUITER'S CHANGING ROLE

Continuing use of Internet resources will change the recruiting function, some say, by decentralizing HR, enhancing productivity and expanding recruiters' market reach.

"With managers getting access to the web, it is easier to shift ownership of recruiting from centralized HR to line managers," Sullivan explains.

"The Internet will put significant market pressure on recruiters to be much better at what they do, which we welcome," says Dudley Brown, president of BridgeGate LLC of Irvine, Calif. "In the long run, I think the Internet will be like banking, where you have fewer banks but many more choices. Recruiters will have to do better work to stay in business, both internally and externally."

"While these new recruiting methods can improve recruiting effectiveness and efficiency, the web is not a panacea," says Godun. "A truly effective Internet recruiting strategy requires dedicating a large amount of time and staffing power. Many companies realize this fact and have officially dedicated one or more recruiters to focus all of their time exclusively to Internet recruiting. A halfhearted or occasional visit to the Internet to find candidates will rarely yield results."

Indeed, it helps to see Internet recruiting as somewhat of a two-tier activity. Direct Internet sourcing seems to require different skill sets from those required by indirect sourcing and intelligence gathering, explains Nick Burkholder, managing director of HR Alliance. Direct sourcing activities are so time-consuming and intense that they must be separated to maximize productivity.

"Recruiters can't pay attention to hiring top candidates and work the Internet at the same time," Burkholder adds. "It requires focus, so we see Internet recruiting as a subspecialty."

Recruiting via the Internet is "not a future issue; it's a do-or-die issue," especially in high tech professions and regions, says Sullivan. "Applicants judge a firm by the technology and the 'wows' in its recruiting. If you want to stay even [with the competition], you have to use the Internet."

In fact, he notes, "You can find better people on the web than through hard-copy ads because people who post on the web show they are accepting of change and familiar with technology, thus more likely to help a business grow and change."

Priestly also has found that "Internet resources are best used for target audiences, such as information technology professionals and graduates who are more likely to use the 'Net to find a job."

Burkholder agrees that the Internet is best used when looking for particular skill sets. As with any sourcing methodology, he says, the job requirements should dictate how the Internet is used.

But he recognizes that Internet recruiting is here to stay. "The more people use the Internet to communicate - or for any purpose - the more it becomes a viable recruiting option. It is here, it is worldwide and it can drive down costs, reduce recruiting time and make everybody feel better about the process. There is still much to be determined - but there is no turning back."

New Sources and Approaches

Online recruiting companies are aware of these "bigger or better" concerns and are responding by developing new services and techniques in online recruiting.

* Restrac Inc. of Lexington, Mass., has launched a new WebHire Network (www.webhire.com) to provide multiple sources and links to other job-posting sites through a variety of alliances. Restrac's subscribers now have access to the Monster Board (www.monsterboard.com), a service of New York-based TMP Worldwide, which provides desktop access to Internet resources for posting jobs, searching resumes and managing other recruiting activities. Through WebHire, Restrac can generate a single, integrated monthly statement of all Internet recruiting transactions, costs and activities. The company's PartnerPools is a thirdparty resume pool with areas for preemployment testing or screening potential candidates.

"By consolidating our Internet recruiting efforts through Restrac, we will dramatically streamline the process of marketing each of our open positions," says Shani Stickney, manager of staffing and HR systems at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

* Best Internet Recruiter (www.bestrecruit.com) from Best Software Inc. of Reston, Va., distributes postings through many career service providers, letting employers test several services for a single price.

William Arkins, president of Strategic Business Solutions Inc. (SBSI) in Aspen Hills, Md., says he steers clients to Best's online service because "it provides access to a broad range of recruiting resources with one contact, which lightens the management load for a recruiting staff."

* Online Career Center (www.occ.com) of Indianapolis is an online memberships service for recruiters and job seekers owned by TMP Worldwide. OCC provides unlimited resume access, job posting, a recruiters' forum, online recruiting tools, ways to track responses and build a resume database and company profile pages linked to corporate web sites.

Bill Kellner, HR manager at Datex-Ohmeda in Madison, Wis., says he likes the Online Career Center because "it offers an intuitive, easy-to-navigate site setup; identities new resumes to match the recruiter's requirements; and lets recruiters change, update and cancel ads at any time." He notes that OCC offers other desirable features, such as the option of canceling an ad from the web site but storing it electronically for future use, and a fee-structure option that supports unlimited use rather than cost per ad.

* Networker (www.alexus.com), from Alexus International Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md., is a full-service Internet-based recruitment network featuring a comprehensive, outsourced resume management service that lets companies share unused resumes with other participating companies.

* Hot Jobs (www.hotjobs.com), a service of New York-based Hot Jobs Inc., is a members-only job board that lets companies post jobs and access an exclusive database of resumes. Members can also post and unpost jobs promptly, so applicants do not waste time responding to positions that have been filled. Its HotSporT section lets applicants easily create, post, track and control access to their digital resumes. The Hot Lock feature lets applicants block specific companies from viewing and searching their posted information, and applicants can e-mail job postings to friends or colleagues directly from the site.

* RealResume (www.realresume.com) from Real Resume Corp. of Spokane, Wash., takes word processing document files from applicants' computers and processes them to create browser-compatible images that preserve the appearance and content of the resumes for delivery to employers and recruiters. "Employers can gather up resumes and 'dip in' to find employees," says Richard Hartman, vice president of development. Preliminary tests indicate the service may not work with Macintosh computers.

* SmartPost (www.thewebdesk. com), a powerful database-driven application by The WebDESK LLC of Killeen, Texas, offers online sourcing and management tools for managing and advertising job opportunities on company web sites, intranets or extranets. It lets users create private networks and maintain accountability between positions and the client or company division.

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Md., and a frequent contributor to HRMagazine. Her e-mail address is [email protected].

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