The most triumphant personality- Steve jobs, considered Hiring to be the most important job. Nowadays recruitment has been placed as a core function which attracts large investments towards itself. If recruitment falls flat, similar to cases where the recruited person leaves without informing beforehand or if the person recruited is not productive, then the cost of the bad hire is in masses. This way the company’s profit could face a major blow. The costs include- lost labour, putting a new recruitment process into action, training & development cost etc. A well-known recruiter Jorgen Sundberg faces the cost of onboarding at $240,000. While according to the US department of labour, the price of a bad hire is at least 30% of employees’ first year of earning. Many HR professionals accept that bad hire has cost their companies thousands of dollars but numbers are just one of the ways. In many ways, a bad hire affects the company’s culture and echoes beyond an employee’s tenure. Even if you remove the bad hired employees from the equation, the HR may still have to invest a lot of time and resources to bring back the same rhythm in the company. So HR managers who effectively tackle bad recruit and its cost are the ones who make their company grow.

Changing trends

Today with the fast paced use of information technology, the recruitment process has turned towards online as well. Earlier companies used to post attractive advertisements to attract job seekers and then the process of staffing took place, now an all new process has emerged where mobile has become very handy when talking about the recruitment process. Now companies make use of online job websites effectively which helps them to curb the cost of hiring. Talent industry is now making optimal use of mobile gadgets and probably will be placed at the top of the list in the upcoming years.

Socially, professional networks are the fastest growing sources of quality hire globally. It stands at 43%, whereas the online job boards’ counts for 42% in 2016.

The Indian sub-continent has the largest share of internet users for job search. In India around 43% of people are hired through online job boards. Whereas the professional networks and staffing/RPO’s counts for around 55% and 42% respectively. Not only do talent leaders see employee referrals and online job portals as top sources of quality hires, they also see them as long-lasting trends.

Job seeker’s perspective

Age as criteria is negatively related to the rate of usage of online recruitment that is, the most aged person still prefers to go by old school process of hiring. On the other hand those who are much younger and tech savvy are more attracted towards online recruitment. Personality and education of a jobseeker plays an important role as a criteria.

Since application through online medium requires computers, mobiles, etc., individual with none of those have face constraints when applying for a job. Besides this, people using online recruitment portals are meant for white collar jobs, while people with blue collar job cannot make use of portals. Internet trends suggest that the internet attracts people with a four-year or a graduate degree. Conversely, those with a low level of confidence mainly due to lack of proper education, do not prefer using online recruitment portals for seeking jobs.

Boon or curse

An advertisement or attractive post in newspapers usually costs a descent amount of bucks from the pocket of the organisation. Besides this the inefficiency of the recruitment process that is the allocation of resources and time may not always be at par. Screening, competency mapping and authenticating thousands of resumes are time-consuming exercises for an organisation. Hence, the inefficiency may lead to contraction of profits. The all-time solution of all these muddles can be e-recruitment where the organisation is able to decrease their recruitment time, estimated to be 65% of the total hiring time usually taken. E- Recruitment also filters out the unqualified candidates in an automated way.

From the perspective of candidates, there are no intermediaries which may cost a bomb to the candidates. Job seekers can view valuable data and information regarding compensation offered by different companies at a single place, just a click away and gives 24X7 access to these online portals.

In most of the developing countries, talented candidates may not have the access to the computers or lack the required knowledge to work a computer. Along with this the candidates - as said before may not have access to the internet, so recruitment through online portals may seem impossible in that case. The trust of people in e-recruitment still needs to be developed.

Conclusion

Online job portals by far seem a very fitting tool as a marketplace consisting of employers and employees, requiring exchange of services. However, challenges from automation still may pose to be seen as potential threats and they could be dealt with outmost caution so it does not hinder the entire system.