Busting e-recruitment myths

E-recruitment has been around long enough for misconceptions to spring up around it – these are three particularly pernicious ones.

BY Rose Sneyd 22 Apr 2013

E-recruitment, the use of internet-based tools that help businesses to streamline their recruitment process, has been around for a while now – long enough for a few unhelpful misconceptions to spring up around it. HRM Online talked to Sharon Ballantyne, manager and founding director of e-recruitment businesses Talent Propeller and Big Splash, about three of these.

E-recruitment is too expensive!

This was true when e-recruitment was in its infancy, since the technology had been designed to fulfil the complex requirements of corporates. However, this is changing. “I think that there are now a lot of very viable solutions that are incredibly easy to use, that are incredibly cost-effective,” Ballantyne said.

It encourages too many applicants.

Some have accused e-recruitment tools of swamping an employer with applications, but this is something that Ballantyne vehemently denies. “I don’t actually think that e-recruitment contributes to that at all,” she said. In fact, even if an employer does receive more applications than they were bargaining for, a good online tool should assist in managing those applications more easily. In addition, e-recruitment tools may deter low quality, or unengaged applicants, by forcing them to follow the company’s application process, rather than simply allowing them to email their CV.

“I think that low-quality candidates mass apply for jobs anyway, and there are a lot of job boards out there that aid them in doing that by letting them set up a profile and have auto send-outs of their resume,” Ballantyne added. However, that’s not e-recruitment.

It’s only relevant for large companies that do a lot of hiring.

E-recruitment is a trend – and one that is relevant to all businesses, according to Ballantyne. Once-upon-a-time job applicants posted CVs, then technology allowed to fax them, in the 1990s people started emailing them, and e-recruitment is the next stage in the recruitment evolution.

“They [most businesses] think that it’s not relevant to them because they’re not big enough or they don’t do enough recruitment, but they fail to realise that the way you present yourself to the market, and to a potential candidate, says so much about your business,” Ballantyne said. And, if you want to project a professional employer brand, and to be able to select the talent that best suits your business needs, then you have to stay up-to-date with recruitment trends.

Key HR Takeaway:

Businesses should define what they need the tool to do. “Do they want to have a whole lot of reports to spit out for a board that tells them where applicants are coming from, where they’re advertising, how much they’ve spent, time to hire, and all of that sort of stuff, or are they more concerned with having a very easy tool that they can give access to various managers?”
“First companies need to decide what they need to get out of it and then research companies that can fill that,” according to Ballantyne.
Go local. “It’s probably a personal preference for me, but I think dealing with someone local that can back-up their technology with service is critical,” Ballantyne said.