12. RECRUITMENT

Nowadays online recruitment has become very popular. It is now the most common way to get through this process. What are the factors for and against it?



Advantages of online recruitment:
• saves time – when the job vacancy is put on the internet, first applicants answer immediately, so till end of the day the company can have many applications to choose within. It is simple as that and sometimes takes just a day.
• inexpensive – creating job vacancy on a job board or either in newspaper, radio or TV is expensive process. On the contrary, online job add costs nothing or really small money. Considering this fact, a company is able to make big savings during a year while using online recruitment rather than normal way.
• gives broad audience – the truth is that everyone today tends to look for job online, regardless to age. It does not matter - people aged 18 or 50, all of them look for job opportunities online, because it is easy and quick not only for organisations but also for job hunters. Today, this way of looking for a job is normal procedure for everybody.
• bigger chance for success – usual printed advertisement faces limitations. They depend on people who bought that particular issue of magazine or noticed the advertisement. On the internet is different, for job vacancy stays visible and available to read all the time, constantly till time when taken off by organisation.
• it is easy – it is as straightforward as it can be. Online recruitment procedure is usually user-friendly and intuitive in use.

Disadvantages of online recruitment:
• anonymity – as everyone can be anonymous while using the internet, there is a possibility of stupid jokes and lies. Some people might send fake applications, ones to make a joke, the others to lie and give good credit to themselves the CVs .
• number of applications – some people while looking for a job tend to send their CVs wherever it is possible, and often answer for vacancies without having a relevant experience and education. Dealing with many inappropriate and bad candidates is the terror of many HR managers. Applicants’ spam cause time wastage for managers who need to read all applications.
• dissatisfaction of candidates – some of them prefer traditional methods when looking for a job rather than online recruitment, that is the reason why companies which mainly use online recruiting might miss out some good and worthy to have candidates.
• extra expenditure – big companies that prefer to use generally online recruitment are necessary to employ extra staff to shortlist all received applications and choose the best ones to conduct interview with.
• limited face to face contact – prospective candidates might live far away from potential place of employment. It means that some interviews might only be conducted by phone what restricts face to face contact, which is generally the best way of interviewing.



Online based recruitment has generally the supremacy over standard ways of recruiting and its advantages exceed the drawbacks. However everyone must be aware of all inconveniences which online recruitment brings on.

There are many different websites with online recruitment purpose on the internet. Numerous of them are however neither clearly designed nor intuitive in use. To the group of the best recruitment websites, www.monster.co.uk can be included. The page layout is well designed and particular areas are well-defined. Gentle and subdued colours do not irritate. The usage of the website and procedure of searching for jobs itself are easy, so everyone, even older users should not have problems with it. It has very broad jobs’ base with appropriate division of work occupation. On the website can be found useful support like help with designing good CV, salary calculator, job interview tips or career development.

In the early 1960s the term of ‘psychological contrast’ was used first time. However, by CIPD (2009) it became popular after years in early 1990s. It can be described as an informal contract and relations between employee and employer. The view of both parts’ mutual obligations and requirements towards each other. The obligations are rather informal and inexact, on the basis of promises and expectations. All these are based on unofficial relationship between employer and employee. It is distinguishable from written contract which identifies mutual duties and responsibilities in a general outline.


REFERENCES

CIPD (2009) The psychological contract [online]. Available from: http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/empreltns/psycntrct/psycontr.htm
[Accessed 28 April 2010].