IT's Ease of Employee Recruitment

Business operations seek employees who are skilled, effective and resourceful, which are necessary components in building a competitive advantage. These employees are not only top notch managers, researchers, specialists, customer service representatives and salespeople. Whatever position that is held, employees must understand the company’s vision, be self-starters, have exceptional communication skills and must be creative in providing innovation to the organization.
However, these employees are hard to come by since not many prospective and current employees’ posses these skills. Businesses must research to determine what skill sets exist in their geographical location and what the company is willing to pay to entice these workers in addition to forecasting future employment needs. Often businesses have to go outside of its geographical location to discover these workers. Information systems (IS) and technology (IT) provide the needed provisions to gain such data needed to make the decisions that will lead an organization closer to its critical goals. IT makes this task more efficient by providing the ability to research and attract job seekers across the globe through various internet and extranet sites. Here they can see who is available and job searching, when they are willing to begin working, where they will work or relocate to, what skill sets exist and what pay is competitive among job markets in order to present a figure that will attract these workers.
IT allows instant access from remote locations and instant communication. All this is available within seconds and provides immediate data used to make sound decisions. IT is definitely a competitive advantage over shuffling papers, word of mouth or any other system as IT provides quick and easy results. Further, these benefits often result in employers gaining great selective power as information gained from business competitors through IT is available as well.
Because of the ease of use and efficiency in employee selection, the trend of IT usage extends to how people look for jobs. A huge number of electronic job resources are currently available: resume posting sites, job vacancy databases, employer websites, discussion boards and newsgroups, industry salary and information sites, general career information sites and networking organizations. Although, many of today’s job seekers go directly to a company’s web site to search for job openings where they can also research the organization’s growth prospectus, available employee benefits and get an idea of the company’s culture. Therefore, any company that has a well-designed and user friendly website has a significant advantage in recruiting employees. Consequently, a company that doesn't take full advantage of a website in recruiting risks losing qualified candidates to a business competitor who does.

More and more companies have begun to use IT in assisting with employment recruitment to simplify the selection process by outsourcing on-line employer advertising agencies. These agencies post and cross post an organization’s available positions to reach a wide and diverse range of potential employees. Such websites as Monster.com, Gojobs, CareerBuilder.com and Yahoo hotjobs are leading online recruiting agencies. One can enter his information via these websites and submit it using IT and the result is as if he were actually submitting it at the place of employment. An important difference is that using such a service may increase the chances of one’s information be reviewed by the hiring authority. IT also provides ease in applying to a position in a separate state from where one resides as one gain and sends information remotely. The Internet gives job seekers access to vast amounts of information about vacancies and employers, 24-hour availability, broader geographic reach, networking, career development advice, simplified resume distribution and the goals and prospected growth of the organization. For recruiters and employers, the Internet can speed up the hiring process, provide a large pool of qualified applicants, and reduce advertising and operational costs that had previously been spent in large sums of employee management.

However, one must proceed with caution when submitting personal information because if a website is unknown, then researching it to ascertain its credibility is critical. Submitting personal information should not be viewed lightly as security should be one’s main priority.