Dan Schawbel wrote an interesting post on The Future of Online Recruitment.  He says

“The days of applying to jobs through corporate websites and job listing repositories will end. As the competition to get jobs increases year over year, the amount of resumes and cover letters HRM’s (Human Resource Management Systems) will hold will overflow and even crawlers won’t be able to save them. When you have a million resumes, and a crawler finds certain keywords, there will still be too many leftover, meaning they will have to interview a larger batch.  This costs HR more money and the applicant more time.”

Dan also suggests that Online Recruitment has 2 faces, 1:Many and 1:1.  1:many is when you respond to a posting through a corporate site, along with thousands of other hopeful candidates, and 1:1 is when hiring companies want to hire someone they know, trust and respect. Dan contends that 1:many fails because there is no human element involved.  He adds 

“the future of online recruitment is in 1:1 relationships, where you find people online, through social networks or blogs and form a relationship through mutual interest and a job opportunity is created.”

I agree that the days of job boards and resumes are numbered, but let’s look at the current online recruitment process. It has multiple stages; Attraction, Engagement and Submission. In the past each stage of this process was sterile and not responsive to the needs of the job seeker and not reflective of the targeted needs of the employer. There has been lots of wasted effort and money spent on poor matches.

This model began with the Company wanting to fill a job. The process was to post a job opening  and wait to get a resume and application.  There was little filtering and frustration on both sides of the process. 

Enter the age of social media and the process changes significantly.  The company begins with a need for attracting a passive or active job seeker to the company’s work environment and challenging positions. They use an Integrated Recruitment Marketing strategy which includes creating an employer brandadvertising as well as search engines, networking, blogs and social networks.  They direct the jobseeker to their career showcase which is an interactive online environment that encourages a conversation and builds a relationship.

I believe a morphed company career showcase that is not just a sterile career site is an important venue for engaging potential job seekers. Every transaction in the relationship building cannot be done 1:1 or offline. The online venue has to become a step in the relationship building and filtering process. Passive job seekers are looking for snapshots not sterile job boards to get a taste of a company’s values and their work environments.

Here are some similar posts on this subject …

Recruit Against the Tide

Recruitment Marketing: National Job Sites are not Cost Effective, Part 4

Facebook for Recruiting… What’s working

Employment Recruitment Marketing, Showcasing Your Company - Part 2

Building a Powerful Employer Brand in Recruitment Marketing

Tags: career site, company showcase, Employer Brand, Interactive Recruitment, job boards, Recruitment Marketing, recruitment strategy, Social Network

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