For IT firms, e-recruitment can save time, money

A hotshot it company issues an ad for recruitment in a national daily and a few weeks later at the hr department of the company, a group of young graduates from prestigious b-schools are sifting through piles of resumes. The task on hand, to pick up a few hundred resumes which fit closest to their needs. Does it sound too far-fetched, where resources paid a few lakh per annum are used for a task that is mundane by their capability and skill level. Well, the reality is, scenes like this are quite common in every organisation big or small, after a round of recruitment ads. The enormity of this task can be gauged from the fact that, even middle and above management cadre are also pulled in to do their bit. "The cumbersome process of recruiting traditionally either through a newspaper ad or a consultant, can be to a large extent minimised by recruiting the electronic way," says murlidhar, managing director, jobstreet.com, a leading jobs portal. the most crucial element in recruitment to any organisation is cycle time. a newspaper has almost 95 per cent reach among the target group, but its shelf life is very less. on the other hand, a recruitment consultant's services cost a lot of money. The advantage of registering with a job portal is that for a fixed annual fee, the company has access to job seekers for the entire year. Plus the shelf life of the job is very long, till the company pulls out the announcement. it takes on an average 60-120 days to recruit a software engineer through the traditional recruitment channels like newspapers or consultants. Which means a loss of about $5,000 every month in billing, at the least, in comparison, "it takes just about seven to 15 days to recruit a similar resource electronically, this huge cycle time reduction is a boon to companies," says murlidhar. The e-recruitment model followed in job portals like brassring.com or jobstreet.com has certain advantages over the databases of resumes which other recruiters stock. In the former, the updating of skill set of the job seeker is periodical and the onus is on him to apply to an available position. The software of the portal matches his skill set and need, if it matches a job alert is sent out to the applicant and the procedure is carried further from there. while in the databases, it is nearly impossible to find out whether the job seeker is active or not and whether the job seeker has current needed skill set, etc. while companies are still warming unto the power of e-recruitment albeit skeptically, it is still early days as this concept is just about a year old in India and a little more than three years old in the us. But in the recent past, some of the very big names of Indian industry like HLL, Wipro, bel, I-flex and a few other big recruiters have been using the e-recruitment route to find new employees. .

Ganesh kollegal,

Account Director, PRHUB