Online recruitment eases soaring cost of finding talent

With the demand for talented human resources in the alternative asset sector soaring, recruiting agencies are cashing in. However, many companies are avoiding these eye-watering fees by going direct to online specialist recruitment sites like Hedgemedia Jobs at a fraction of the cost.

In the past six weeks the Hedgemedia Jobs site (http://jobs.hedgemedia.com) has attracted more than 2,000 new job seekers, 190 new jobs and several thousand online CVs.

Online recruitment, also known as e-recruitment, is the use of technology to attract candidates and aid the recruitment process. According to a recent recruitment survey, the growth of online recruitment has increased rapidly in recent years. Almost two-thirds of respondents to the annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey now say they are using e-recruitment.

Eighty-four percent of respondents have made greater use e-mail applications in the past three years, while more than 70 per cent of organisations say they are advertising jobs on their corporate websites and using online applications. Currently, online testing (used as part of the selection process in some way by a quarter of respondents) is less prevalent, although this is also growing.

The key drivers for e-recruitment identified in the survey among those making use of technology were reducing recruitment costs (cited by 71 per cent), broadening the selection pool (60 per cent) and increasing the speed of time to hire (47 per cent). Over a third of respondents believed it brought greater flexibility and ease for candidates, and over a quarter believed it strengthened the employer brand.

Many different organisations use online recruitment as a cost-effective method of recruiting new staff. It is popular among job-seekers - latest figures from the British Market Research Bureau show that using the internet is the favoured job-hunting method for one in four UK adults, with the most likely job hunter to be 33 years old with 11 years experience, according to the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey.

Technology can be used to advertise vacancies, whether on company website or on job sites, and to deal with e-mail enquiries and applications in the form of e-mailed application forms and CVs or application forms completed online.

Advantages of using online recruitment
Online recruitment has the potential to:
• speed up the recruitment cycle and streamline administration.
• allow organisations to make use of IT systems to manage vacancies more effectively and co-ordinate recruitment processes.
• reduce recruitment costs
• reach a wide pool of applicants.
• make internal vacancies widely known across multiple sites and separate divisions.
• convey the image of an up-to-date organisation, reinforcing employer branding and giving an indication of organisation culture.
• offer a global audience access to vacancies 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• be a cost-effective way to build a talent bank for future vacancies.
• help handle high volume job applications in a consistent way.
• provide more tailored information to the post and organisation, such as 'day in the life' case histories, or self-assessment questionnaires or quizzes to assess fitness for the role.
• be spontaneous for candidates as ease of use means there is the ability for applications to be instantaneous.

To view more than 2,000 new job seekers, 190 new jobs and several thousand online CVs, visit the Hedgemedia Jobs site at http://jobs.hedgemedia.com