The web has become such an integral part of working life that HR directors can no longer afford to ignore the benefits of pushing recruitment online, is the message from Christopher Berry, managing director of Computers In Personnel, after receiving responses from a survey questioning 100 HR directors and managers in mid-sized and large organisations within the UK.

Social networking

The Recruitment 2008: from marketing theory to the practicalities of web-based hiring survey uncovered a surprising reaction to social networking. The overall finding revealed that social networking is not viewed as a significant recruitment tool now or even in two year's time. However, Berry argues that HR directors need to appreciate that community/networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn lend itself to onboarding and will become an ever increasing tool to attracting new talent.

"Social networking is now widespread and efficiently embedded in our culture. It's now a standard way of communicating," he says. "For example, lots of professionals are using LinkedIn to develop business contacts, but HR directors haven't fully realised how to take advantage of such sites."  

Internal processes

With 79% respondents believing their biggest challenge in recruitment is finding enough good quality candidates, and 85% agreeing that recruitment should be viewed as a sales and marketing exercise, Berry goes on to further suggest that HR directors can be clever about the way they use web-based recruitment to slash costs in the recruitment process, build up a talent pool and track candidates' activity. 

Only 14% admitted to using recruitment software to manage their internal processes, but Berry estimates that an organisation hiring 20 people a year could save over £100,000 pounds over a four year period and be saving money in their first year of working effectively with a web-based system - based on the CIPDs figure of estimated costs of £7000 per hire and assuming a 10% recruitment cost saving in year one rising to a 40% saving in year four (where the organisation has built up its own talent pool through the use of software).

Sales and marketing

Recruitment should not be considered just a process or just part of an overall HR function. Organisations have to invest in their employer branding, and should be looking at websites as part of that offering and offer consistency in messages. "Make it easy and straightforward to maintain dialogue with applicants," says Berry.

While national newspaper and trade print advertising were identified as the most useful sources in generating applicants, respondents said that in two years' time, online job sites/job boards would be at the top, followed by job adverts on their own websites, then media websites.

Line manager delays

61% of interviewees admit delays were caused by line managers, but Berry argues that recruitment automation software can be used to manage applicant data, route information, schedule interviews - to help speed up the process.

Other findings

• Recruitment reporting is still largely centred on HR-specific metrics such as time/days to hire, rather than business-centric measurements.
• 23% report on the direct cost of recruitment today, and just 6% on indirect costs (HR/line managers time).
• One third report on the business impact of unfilled vacancies (impact on productivity) with another 28% expecting to do so within 12 months.