Change is happening faster than ever these days.
Changes in the global business environment, changes in the economy, changes
in technology, and changes in recruitment. Today, job recruiting via the
Internet is fast replacing the classified ad. This should help Hispanic
businesses find good employees quickly. But statistics show that fewer than
8 percent of Hispanic employers post jobs on Internet job sites.
In January, 1998 17 percent of Fortune 500 companies
actively recruited employees via the Net, according to the research firm
iLogos.com in Ottawa, Canada. Just a year later, that figure jumped to 45
percent. Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts, projects that
employer spending for online recruiting will mushroom to $1.7 billion in
2003–roughly triple the projections Forrester made in 1997. Already an
estimated 2.5 million resumes have been posted to 28,500 job boards, such as
JobOptions.com, Monster.com, and HotJobs.com, bringing employers and job
seekers together in the first step of the job process.
JobOptions.com, formerly E-Span.com, has one of the
highest percentages of Hispanic job seekers online. "We’re ahead of
the norm with Latinos," said Michael Forrest, company president. But
even though his job board may be ahead with Hispanic job seekers, he admits
he hasn’t tracked usage by Hispanic employers.
Forrester predicts the Net will eliminate classifieds as
we know them, with online recruiting affecting millions of people who change
jobs each year. Web sites on jobs have long been an Internet staple,
although the early ones were mostly electronic classified ads. But the
Career Network mirrors the Web's emerging transformation of the ways
employers, job-seekers and placement organizations find and fill jobs.
Advertise, Advertise, Advertise
For those Hispanic employers who haven’t tried online recruiting, the
first step is to advertise on job sites such as JobOptions.com. There are
many out there, and prices vary, but professional looking sites that are
easy to find prove most effective. Checking search engines like Yahoo using
keywords like "job" and "your city" will help employers
find local sites that specialize in advertising their jobs. Remember, the
easier it is for an employer to find a site, the easier it will be for job
seekers, too.
Low cost, high speed, and a wide reach are the main
advantages of recruiting online. Citibank, Hasbro, Lucent Technologies,
Marriott International, Prudential, and Universal Studios advertise
positions on the Net. But that doesn’t mean smaller businesses don’t
have a chance. In fact, the playing field is leveled on the Net, so everyone
benefits.
The most important statistical difference in online
recruiting versus regular channels is the number of days it takes to fill a
job. A study by ILogos.com indicates that, on average, using the Net shaves
20 days off a company’s hiring cycle. For any company, that’s precious
time.
Does the hugeness of these job boards–JobOptions.com
posts over 200,000 resumes-- make them less valuable to employers, burying
job opening among thousands of others? And what’s the point of
coast-to-coast geographic scope when most job seekers still want something
close to home?
While those are good questions, an explosion of niche
sites on the Net now enables employers to post to specific vertical
categories within the larger job boards. JobOptions.com currently has 15 of
these vertical sites and is planning to add 14 more soon. In addition,
employers can post to independent niche sites like overseasjobs.com,
christianjobs.com, bilingualjobs.com, coloradojobs.com, spacejobs.com, and
just plain jobs.com. There are sites for casino workers (casinocareers.com),
black engineers (nsbe.org), models (modelssource.com), finance types (jobsinthemoney.com),
project managers (projectsmanager.com), MBAs(MBAfreeagents.com),
Asian-language speakers (asia-net.com), and morticians (funeralnet.com).
Human Contact is Still Important
However, this new job marketplace also requires truth, and resumes are
notoriously untruthful. Which means that there still is a need for human
contact. On many of the job boards, employers can conduct virtual interviews
with job candidates through public forums, as well as private chat rooms.
In their desperation, some employers aren’t content to
post openings on job boards and wait for resumes to roll in. Instead, they
venture forth and stalk the Web seeking potential candidates. It’s
becoming almost as clandestine as the CIA. As people interact with each
other online, they leave traces that recruiters can find. Some recruiters
lurk on Internet newsgroups, where employees gather to discuss everything
from database administration to dating. They watch to see who says the
smartest stuff, then approach that person by E-mail.
Others use the Net to track workers around the globe.
Hewlett-Packard has created technology to process resumes written in many
languages.
The Web site of Inacom, a 12,000-employee
computer-services firm in Omaha, Nebraska, features a game called the
TechnoChallenge, which combines flashy graphics with a series at technical
questions. To play, contestants must enter their name, profession, and
contact information–ostensibly to quality for a drawing for a $1,500 prize
if they score 100,000 points or more. What most don’t know is that they’re
also being screened for potential employment at Inacom.
More aggressive than any online employer is Cisco Systems.
This $10-billion-a-year networking company hires 66 percent of its people
and receives 81 percent of its resumes via the Net. Its Web site is a Venus
flytrap of attractions. Visitors can fill a shopping cart with job openings
that interest them or join the Make Friends @ Cisco program, which connects
them with a real-life person from the department in which they want to work.
If they don’t have a resume handy, Cisco’s Profiler is a simple,
humorous interface that helps them build one. And because roughly 90 percent
of the "suspects" log in from their current employer, there’s a Oh
No! My Boss is Coming button, which quickly fills the screen with
"Seven Habits of a Successful Employee."
Companies like Cisco pursue online recruiting
aggressively. It has software that tracks where visitors to its Web site go
after leaving. It then places employment banner ads on those sites. Cisco’s
banners incorporate a domain-name reader, so that they appear only on the
browsers of people who might be interested in working at Cisco, for
instance, engineers at companies like Lucent Technologies. Of course, Cisco
also subscribes to a number of job boards.
Using Company Web Sites
Besides Internet job boards, employers can use their own Web sites to
advertise available positions. Their employment link, directing visitors to
available positions, should be directly on their site's main page. If it’s
difficult to find on their Web site, their results won’t be as effective.
It’s a good idea that their employment link be near the middle of their
main page, either on the left or the right. Their employment section should
be easy to navigate with current listings.
Adding a resume response form to an employment section
allows employers to receive comprehensive information from their applicants,
as opposed to the general information sent in by E-mail.
Getting visitors, who are looking for jobs, is the key to
a Web site’s recruiting success. Adding keywords such as "your
city" and "sales representative" will enable job seekers
using search engines to find the site.
It’s not hard to imagine a future in which employers
electronically screen candidates’ "soft" attributes, direct
potential hires to a special Web site for skills testing, conduct background
checks over the Net,. interview candidates via a videolink, and manage it
all with Web-based software. It’s not too hard to imagine, because all
those services currently exist, or will very soon--FutureStep for screening,
Owiztek.com for testing, PeopleWise for background checks, and SearchLINC
for video.
Forrest of JopOptions.com noted that the Net is
dramatically more effective than any medium ever known. "The Web is the
future of recruiting." |