Successful Online Recruiting

The War for Talent

As mentioned in previous sections, the war for finding talented business managers and leaders is becoming harder and more competitive each day. Companies needing to attract and retain high quality employees are having to adopt many new and varied techniques in order to simply keep the business going as it is today.

So, the opportunity to win this war using the Internet could not have come at a better time.

Online Recruiting – Like finding a needle in a haystack!

Some people have likened using the Internet for recruitment purposes to be as difficult as ‘finding a needle in a haystack’! Whilst we understand this concern, we believe it is possible to find that needle!

But to do so requires clear thinking, knowing where to look and above all – a well-constructed management process. 

Benefits of On-line Recruiting

Current research suggests that finding future employees using the internet is at least five times less expensive than newspaper advertising and twelve times less expensive than using a traditional recruitment consultancy. It is also being suggested that by adopting professional  on-line recruiting techniques, companies can reduce their time to recruit future employees by up to one third, thereby not only saving cost, but also maximising future revenue opportunities.

The benefits are becoming more widely accepted, and as time progresses, they are being realised by more and more companies. The Internet can be used to reduce both the time taken to find new employees and the cost of hiring those employees. But it also allows managers to reach larger numbers of potential candidates in venues that weren’t available in the past, and so allows companies to target their recruiting efforts more specifically.

Needle in Haystack

However, “companies that use the Internet solely as an extension of paper-based recruiting practices are failing to exploit the power of this new medium”, says Terry Williams, a high-technology specialist from Pennsylvania. “In this tight labour market, companies must use the Internet to reach both ‘active’ and ‘passive’ candidates”.

The ‘active’ candidate is that person who has registered their desire to find another job on a commercial on-line jobs board, like Monster.com. A candidate is considered ‘passive’ if they have not registered with on-line jobs boards. They are considered to be happily employed at present, but may be interested if the right opportunity comes along.

Passive Candidates

Finding these so-called ‘passive candidates’ is rapidly being held up as the ultimate challenge in this talent war. The inference being that those who are registered on commercial job sites are not the ‘best’ ones for their current job, or they have fallen out with their current employer, or are not loyal in any way and therefore, not the type of employee you want.

Whilst we endorse the concept of seeking out passive candidates for the purposes of broadening your reach into the candidate market, we would caution against the misconceptions upon which this view is based. Many high quality candidates are using commercial job sites to register their desire to move on. For many, there is simply a need to further their career elsewhere, having perhaps reached a stage in their employer’s organisation where they have achieved all that was asked of them. To consider these people as ‘not as desirable as’ passive candidates is dangerous and inaccurate.

Winning the Talent War

Today on-line recruiting is more than just a human resources job function: it’s a whole culture. Pretty soon, the culture will extend beyond the new economy into many sectors of the old, transforming the way everyone is hired. A new breed of employees will come to see the Internet as the only way to find a job. And companies that stay on top of these changes will get the cream of the crop.

But in order to stand the best chance of finding the right people for your organisation at the right time (or even before time), there is a comprehensive management process which must be followed.

Successful Online Recruiting

The ‘Successful Online Recruiting’ process developed by Web Match Services International and MBAmatch.com takes you through a step-by-step approach to uncovering your real organisational needs, the types of people you need and how to find them on-line. We explain some of the traps to watch out for, how to adopt the best technology platform designed to make your life easier despite handling many more job applications than ever before, and help you create the processes for managing an on-going talent acquisition pipeline.

The key to winning this war is not about writing exciting advertisements; it’s actually not about the Internet either; it’s not even about jobs; it is however, about having a successful on-going programme of talent attraction and retention.

More Information

If you would like to find out more about how to win this war for talented business managers & leaders using successful on-line recruiting methods, please complete the form on the next page and we will get back to you with the information you require.

If you don’t know where to start, who to choose from or even why you should be using on-line recruiting techniques, don’t worry, you’re not alone.