'Online recruitment may soon be a market reality'

By Harichandan A.A.

BANGALORE, JULY 8. In 1996, there were 500,000 resumes online. In 2000, there have been eight million CVs on the net. In 2002 this number is expected to double. By the year 2003, an estimated 95 per cent of all companies are expected to go in for online recruitment. These are some of the figures that Dr. Denis L. Cauvier swears by to promote his "mantra" that e-recruitment is here to stay.

He was here to speak to HR professionals from the industry about e-recruitment, at a seminar organised by JobsDB India Pvt. Ltd. He spoke to THE HINDU on why online recruitment will soon be a market reality.

Online recruitment would become an imperative in an increasingly technology-driven market, said Dr. Cauvier. With hitech companies jumping in first, others too would find it difficult to ignore the clear advantages it offered.

The most compelling advantage, according to Dr. Cauvier, is the saving in cost. One way this can happen is by online pre- screening of candidates, which can go even up to a preliminary interview on the Internet in real time.

Dr. Cauvier admitted that this was still in the future, but not unforeseeable though. An online ad may cost as less as one-tenth of the equivalent print ad in a newspaper, he said. However, the reach of the newspaper was not necessarily supplanted by that of the net. This was particularly true in India.

"What the Internet does is not to give us a better way of hiring people but a mechanism that amplifies the existing system of recruitment." In other words, technology was not the goal but hiring the right person was.

Given a sound recruitment policy, the advantage in the long-term came from global access and greatly enhanced speed that the net gave to the process in the short run. He cautioned that the industry should be careful and take a holistic approach. Each company must decide if online hiring was essential. While those that had the infrastructure to recruit online may use it, others may subscribe to a jobsite or pay for a banner on a website that had good traffic of potential employees.

One of the issues that required to be addressed seriously was the market perception that the net was not a secure place so far as information was concerned, Dr. Cauvier said. To the extent that it was so, one could only say that a hacker would make his buck in better ways than stealing and selling curriculum vitae. On the other hand, better encryption levels coupled with a good awareness campaign on how online recruitment actually worked would help.

An interesting observation he made was that in the long run newspapers would not lose out on revenue. The truly smart papers would actually offer their clients a comprehensive package that would promote the company on print and cater to their needs on the paper's own website. Barring this, the paper would make strategic tie-ups with a company that had a proven record on the net.

On the flip side, several representatives of various companies who attended the seminar, told this correspondent that while they did get resumes online, serious recruiting was still being done through newspapers or referrals. Surprisingly, this applied to the software companies too. However, companies were actively exploring the e-avenue, and the jury was still out on it. The question was how many of the eight million resumes on the net actually got converted into long-term successful employment.

Dr. Denis L. Cauvier is a leading speaker on human resources in Canada where he lives with his family, and the U.S. He is the author of How to keep your staff productive and happy, How to hire the right person and "Achieve it! A personal success journal." He is also a consultant to IBM, Johnson & Johnson and France Telecom. He may be mailed at dcauvier@magi.com

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