E-Recruiting

Online recruiting provides a means by which job-seekers and employers can more easily find one another. Mostly used in its infancy as a specialized recruiting tool for Information Technology (IT) talent, online recruiting has evolved into a strategic part of the recruiting efforts of businesses across all industries. Employers can use online recruiting to attract job-seekers to, and inform job-seekers about, their company. Online recruiting is considerably less expensive than traditional print media recruiting, and it also increases employers’ visibility to qualified candidates, thereby creating more value for their recruiting dollars (Gale, 2010). In essence, online recruiting provides a powerful marketing opportunity for employers. With this in mind, consideration should be given to the style, content, and ease of navigation when developing a recruitment site (Williams and Klau, 1997). Additionally, with the proliferation of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, employers can easily tap into the passive job-seeker population (Gale, 2013). This wider, yet targeted, approach further increases the efficiency of the recruiting efforts. Employers can also link their online recruiting site to those of specific professional organization in effort to bolster the diversity and specialization of its workforce.

The benefits gained through online recruiting do not come without the potential for risk and unintended consequences, however. Gillian Flynn identified some specific areas in which employers that utilize online recruiting may be exposing themselves to risk: discrimination against members of any protected class, lack of diversity, and privacy of applicants’ information (Flynn, 2002).Certain applicant screening software may unintentionally exclude applicants from federally protected classes. Software specifications should be thoroughly reviewed and tested prior to implementation to determine if this unintended risk exists. Younger...