Anita, an IT professional in her twenties, completed her bachelor of engineering (BE) and was looking for a job. To make the process of finding a job easy and quick, she posted her resume on a job portal, and, within a month, she managed to bag a plum job with an ITeS company. Incidentally, Anita is not alone; she is one among millions of Indians who are logging onto the Internet to post resumes and apply for vacancies online.

A recent survey by Kelly Services, a global Fortune 500 company offering staffing solutions, has revealed that Indian job seekers are increasingly logging onto the Internet to find jobs, and almost 50% are able to find their most recent positions online.

Even though it may sound like a death knell for the Indian print and other forms of job advertising, online recruitment has eclipsed all other recruitment channels, including direct approaches, newspaper advertising, and word of mouth, according to the survey results.

Indian IT companies seem to agree with the recent findings of the Kelly Services survey. Most HR managers say that the findings of the survey are not in the least bit surprising; India has a young population with high career aspirations, with the Internet serving as a convergence point for companies and consultants as it is a quick and convenient route to locating right jobs in the market.

Agrees C Mahalingam, senior vice president and chief people officer, Symphony Services: Indian job seekers are very net-savvy and, therefore, it is not surprising that they surf for job opportunities globally. Particularly those in their twenties and thirties are ambitious, mobile, and career-minded, and they understand the opportunities across the globe and within the Indian subcontinent, and hence they are willing to give it a try.

A number of corporates are using the online medium for hiring, and modules like jobsites, websites, intranets, and interestingly, social networking sites like Orkut and LinkedIn are increasingly being used, says Dr Dwivedi, group head, HR, Financial Technologies Group.

The job portal or the companys website offers the first insight into a vacancy and companies are increasingly deploying automated resume tracking systems in order to scrutinize resumes without wasting time with these automated tools. Most new age organizations post vacancies on the Internet right at the beginning of the recruitment process, thus, ensuring a wider reach to the prospective candidate community in a cost-effective manner. Posting vacancies online also enables job seekers to reach out to multiple job openings simultaneously, believes Abhay Valsangkar, senior director, HR, Symantec India.

Hype or Reality
Fundamentally, HR managers agree that online recruitment is a win-win approach for both the job seeker and the organization hiring. But online recruitment has several dimensions.

Online recruitment could include candidates who visit the company website and apply directly for the vacancies posted on the website. It could also include job seekers who notice job opportunities posted either as a banner advertisement or as new postings on job boards like Monster.com or Naukri.com.

And last but not the least, it could also include prospective employees who explore opportunities through social networking and other websites. All these are great online recruitment media and can be leveraged extensively. The key thing is to recognize which online avenue will get you the kind of profile you are looking for and optimize your opportunity accordingly, says Mahalingam.

With increasing dependence on Web portals, a majority of candidates have gained confidence in posting their resumes on the Internet; thereby maintaining confidentiality and providing their profiles better viewership. Dharmaraj Nayak, senior manager, HR, CSC India, admits to having closed many positions, including niche skills, using Web portals. Web portals have always come handy while recruiting in huge numbers and lately, the dependency has increased to a great extent, he adds. Even Raghuvanshi says that over the last ten years, online recruitment has become an important plank in the recruiting strategy of large and mid-size companies.

Being a reasonable mode of communication, the power of reach with this medium is very high. A single text search of a vanilla skill can lead to a hundred plus profiles. But when it comes to finding the right candidate, it, more or less, depends on the capability of the recruiter to find the right resume through correct searches and then matching the profile with the requirement, says Jay Menon, VP, Talent Acquisition Group, Polaris Software Lab.

However, the probability of being able to find the right candidate for the job is higher for relatively junior levels. Online recruitment is most effective for the lower and middle level requirements than at senior levels. This is because the candidates aspiring for these positions are more forthcoming in letting the world know that they are available. This trend, however, is not common with the senior profile candidates, says MV Subramanian, director, Staffing, HP India Sales. Valsangkar of Symantec feels that there will be an emergence of some online communities that will be leveraged by organizations for reaching out to senior professionals.

Joji Gill, director, HR, Microsoft India, feels the online recruitment medium lacks sophisticated filters for instance, when reaching out through a placement agency, the company can be sure of filling a position with the exact fit talent which might not be true of online recruitment.

There is a difference of opinion when it comes to online recruitment replacing other channels of recruitment with HR managers divided over the issue. While Nayak believes that online recruitment merely serves as secondary source of recruitment, Valsangkar feels that online recruitment enables HR to source employees who suit their criteria in a faster manner, and gradually, the industry has risen to overtake other modes of recruitment. Therefore, it would be incorrect to assume that online recruitment is subservient to other channels.

Although online recruitment was initially considered a supplement, the trend is fast changing as almost all large companies now have an online presence in recruitment but users invariably use more than one channel. Infosys, for instance, uses a mix of various channels in its recruitment process, be it the career opportunity page on the companys website, advertisement, campus relations, search firms, or employee referrals.

Behind the Boom
With a large percentage of Indians regularly logging onto the Internet, the online recruitment market is seeing a lot of action. Almost every other job portal is looking to grab a bigger chunk of the market via advertisements and campaigns in print, Internet, and television, and by offering niche services.

Online job portals, too, are becoming aggressive on TV campaigns, and have increased their share by featuring their jobs in business newspapers, and by conducting job fairs in association with major brands.

Apart from being a cost-effective medium of recruitment and having a wider reach of audience, online recruitment provides a very significant branding opportunity for organizations. Over the portals, companies can repeat the adverts simultaneously without refreshing the same, to make it more captivating for capturing user attention, says Nayak.

By using an online platform, companies can eliminate geographical and time zone constraints, particularly useful in todays workplace where diversity is seen as a competitive advantage in the global marketplace, says Somnath.

Cost, however, is one of the most important factors driving the growth of the online recruitment market considering that companies would have spent a huge sum on advertisements in the print. More often than not, online recruitment also acts as a support to other mediums with candidates identifying vacancies on job portals and approaching companies via other means like agencies or employee referrals, says Gill of Microsoft.

Stumbling Blocks
Outdated resumes are a big problem area. This could be due to two reasons: either the person is not interested in exploring a change in the job or the candidates updated contact details are not keyed in correctly leading to problems for the HR department when it comes to contacting the right candidate.

HR managers also feel that many people place their resumes online mainly to evaluate their marketability rather than searching for a job opportunity. This invariably leads to wastage of time as well as ONJs (offered but not joined) candidates.

Agrees Subramanian that this situation mostly arises with the entry-level resumes as most candidates aspiring for the position also apply with other companies.

In response to a particular posting, a lot of irrelevant resumes also come in therefore sifting through a large candidate base to ascertain the probable right fits becomes a mammoth task. A large number of unsuitable resumes, whether at an entry level or at a higher level, is an issue. Another issue to be tackled is being able to distinguish between active and passive job seekers, says Somnath, senior officer, HRD manager, global entry-level recruitment and campus relations, Infosys Technologies.

Proliferation of resumes that dont meet the employers specific needs is a major problem area. This is a problem with those who go to the website and expect a response from the company. Although an automated response goes to the candidate, thanking him/her for showing interest in the company, they do expect a response and assume that the company would respond to each and every one of them including those who did not meet your requirements.

The poor quality of services offered on job portals also needs to be addressed, says Jay Menon. Also, in the market, there is not much differentiation in job portals in their service offerings giving dependable profiles. Job portals could offer enhanced services like having the background verified; having a database based on the skill or experience, and, most importantly, tie-ups with skill registry certified by a recognized third party agency or industry body like Nasscom, he says.

Miles to Go
The growth of the online recruitment medium is dependent on the economic growth of the country, and if the Indian economy continues its robust growth, online recruitment would be the fastest growing channel in the recruitment industry, owing to the economies of scale and efficiency that it offers.

The online recruitment industry is set to become far more broad-based, so the spread of jobs, both types and numbers, will be much greater than today. The quantum could go at least 10-20 times of what it is today. What will happen is that purely from a response or resume basis, there will be a qualitative shift to how refined a search can be and how good resumes can get. So, from pure sourcing, the shift would be to include sourcing and screening resumes, says Rajeev Gaur, chief operating officer, Times Business Solutions.

While the size of the website would be important, how well it would be able to cater to a client or a candidate would become the key differentiator. Technology and attracting people to the website would remain critical components.

Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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