E-Recruitment: Is It Delivering?: M Kerrin, P Kettley

e-Recruitment:
Is it Delivering?
M Kerrin, P Kettley
IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF

REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS IES
PDF REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS
IES PDF WWW.EMPLOYMENT-STUDIES.CO.UK IES
Report 402
I E S
Other titles from IES:
Measuring Up: Benchmarking Graduate Retention

Tyers C, Perryman S, Barber L
IES Report 401, 2003. ISBN 1 85184 328 0
Your Graduates and You:

Effective Strategies for Graduate Recruitment and Development
Connor H, Hirsh W, Barber L
IES Report 400, 2003. ISBN 1 85184 327 2
eHR: An Introduction
Kettley P, Reilly P
IES Report 398, 2003. ISBN 1 85184 326 4
Kirkpatrick and Beyond: A review of models of training evaluation

Tamkin P, Yarnall J, Kerrin M
IES Report 392, 2002. ISBN 1 85184 321 3
Resourcing the Training and Development Function

Carter A, Hirsh W, Aston J
IES Report 390, 2002. ISBN 1 85184 319 1
Chore to Champions: the making of better people managers

Tamkin P, Hirsh W, Tyers C
IES Report 389, 2003. ISBN 1 85184 318 3
New Directions in Management Development

Hirsh W, Carter A
IES Report 387, 2002. ISBN 1 85184 316 7
Work-Life Balance: Beyond the Rhetoric

Kodz J, Harper H, Dench S
IES Report 384, 2002. ISBN 1 85184 313 2
Partnership Under Pressure: How Does it Survive?

Reilly P
IES Report 383, 2002. ISBN 1 85184 312 4
A catalogue of these and over 100 other titles is available from IES,
or on the IES Website, www.employment-studies.co.uk
the Institute
for Employment
Studies
e-Recruitment:
Is it Delivering?
Máire Kerrin
Polly Kettley
Report 402
Published by:
THE INSTITUTE FOR EMPLOYMENT STUDIES

Mantell Building
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9RF
UK
Tel. + 44 (0) 1273 686751

Fax + 44 (0) 1273 690430
http://www.employment-studies.co.uk
Copyright © 2003 The Institute for Employment Studies
No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic,
electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage or
retrieval systems—without prior permission in writing from the Institute for Employment
Studies.
British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 85184 329 9
Printed in Great Britain

The Institute for Employment Studies
IES is an independent, international and apolitical centre of
research and consultancy in human resource issues. It works
closely with employers in the manufacturing, service and public
sectors, government departments, agencies, and professional and
employee bodies. For over 30 years the Institute has been a focus
of knowledge and practical experience in employment and
training policy, the operation of labour markets and human
resource planning and development. IES is a not-for-profit
organisation which has over 60 multidisciplinary staff and
international associates. IES expertise is available to all
organisations through research, consultancy, publications and
the Internet.
IES aims to help bring about sustainable improvements in

employment policy and human resource management. IES
achieves this by increasing the understanding and improving the
practice of key decision makers in policy bodies and employing
organisations.
The IES Research Networks

This report is the product of a study supported by the IES
Research Networks, through which Members finance, and often
participate in, applied research on employment issues. Full
information on Membership is available from IES on request, or
at www.employment-studies.co.uk/networks/.
v
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank those from the organisations below
who were interviewed, attended events or otherwise contributed
to the IES Research Network Resourcing and Organisation’s
debate during 2001/02 on the subject of e-recruitment. The issues
raised in their ongoing dialogue stimulated this report:
Abbey National HM Customs and Excise

ABN AMRO Infineum International Ltd
Agilent Technologies Inland Revenue
Allen & Overy John Lewis Partnership
Andersen Consulting Legal & General plc
AstraZeneca Lloyds TSB
Bank of England Michelin Tyre plc
Bass Motorola
British Airways Nestle UK
BBC Nissan
BT plc Northern Foods plc
Cabinet Office Ordnance Survey
CAA Peugeot Motor Company
Consignia PriceWaterHouse Coopers
CRU International Ltd Railtrack
David Lloyd Leisure Rolls-Royce
Debenhams Royal Bank of Scotland
DERA Fraser Royal Mail
DESG Central MOD Royal Navy
DfES Sainsburys
Dyson Ltd Siemens
East Midlands Electricity Sodexho
East Sussex County Council Standard Life
Employers’ Forum on Disability Sun Microsystems Ltd
Eurogroup Thames Water
Ford Motor Company The Body Shop International
Foreign & Commonwealth Office The Boots Company Ltd
Freshfields Transco
Guinness UDV Unilever
Halifax plc Vodafone
vi
Contents
Executive Summary ix
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Project aims and objectives 2
1.2 Research methods 2
1.3 Structure of the report 7
2. Trends in e-Recruitment: What do we Know? 9

2.1 What is e-recruitment? 9
2.2 Who is using e-recruitment …? 10
2.3 … and at what level? 12
2.4 Spend on e-recruitment 13
2.5 What are the perceived benefits of e-recruitment? 14
2.6 Limiting factors and implementation challenges 17
2.7 Recruitment as a supply chain 21
2.8 The changing landscape of the recruitment process 22
2.9 Conclusion 25
3. e-Recruitment Methods: Application in Practice 26

3.1 Candidate sourcing/attraction 26
3.2 Selection, assessment and testing online 31
3.3 Managing the recruitment process 38
3.4 e-Recruitment strategies in practice 42
vii
4. Evaluating Impact: Measuring Success 45
4.1 Importance of measurement in e-recruitment 46
4.2 Why supply chain measurement? 47
4.3 e-Recruitment measures in practice: working the chain 50
4.4 Costs 51
4.5 Time to fill 52
4.6 Diversity 53
4.7 Quality-of-hire 56
4.8 Satisfaction 58
4.9 The measurement challenge 62
5. Emerging Challenges: Lessons from the Bleeding Edge 65

5.1 What does the research and practice tell us about
e-recruitment? 65
5.2 Role of the recruiter and cultural change 68
5.3 Media mix 71
5.4 Assessing your organisation’s e-recruitment agenda 72
5.5 Conclusions 75
References 76
Appendix: Individual-level evaluation 81
viii
Executive Summary
This report is aimed at senior managers and HR practitioners

responsible for resourcing and recruitment in their organisations.
It will be of particular interest to those developing strategies for
e-recruitment, but equally so for those already committed to
e-recruitment by reflecting on whether the approach is delivering
the benefits for them.
The IES study — aims of the project

E-recruiting, embracing the term web-based recruiting, can be
described as any recruiting processes that a business organisation
conducts via web-based tools, such as a firm’s public Internet site
or its corporate intranet. We use the terms online recruitment,
Internet recruitment, and e-recruitment interchangeably.
The aim of the e-recruitment project was to carry out evidence-

based research to answer the following questions:
z What are the overall trends in e-recruitment use and practice?

We examine which parts of the system are web-enabled and
what are the related benefits and challenges.
z What is happening in practice? What are the e-recruitment
methods that are being used, and what are the real experiences
from organisations attempting implementation?
z Does it work? How do organisations evaluate the success of
their e-recruitment initiative?
There were four main phases to the project: a literature review, a

survey, an IES Research Network event on e-recruitment, and a
series of case studies. The survey provided the overview of use,
while the case studies illustrated more in-depth analysis of some
of the issues organisations are facing.
ix
Trends in e-recruitment
There is growing evidence that organisations are using Internet
technology, and the World Wide Web, as a platform for recruiting
and testing candidates. The IES survey of 50 organisations using
e-recruitment reported that the primary drivers behind the
decisions to pursue e-recruitment were to:
z improve corporate image and profile

z reduce recruitment costs
z reduce administrative burden
z employ better tools for the recruitment team.
Fifty-five per cent of respondents expected their organisation to

reduce its use of other recruitment methods in the future. The
key limiting factors to e-recruitment that recruiters most
frequently reported were:
z the cultural approach of the organisation towards recruitment

z the lack of knowledge of e-recruitment within the HR community
z Internet usage by target candidates
z the commitment of senior management.
Issues raised as causing concern with e-recruitment included the

quantity and quality of candidates applying using web-based
tools (eg organisations being inundated with CVs attached by
email, many of whom were not suitable for the post), the
relevance of shortlisting criteria (eg the validity and legality of
searching by keywords), confidentiality and data protection, and
ensuring diversity of applicants.
The trends in e-recruitment use suggest a changing landscape

whereby in future, the candidate is connected to the central
system and there is involvement of the line manager in the
process. In addition to the reported benefits such as cost
efficiencies, the role of HR in this model is viewed as more of a
facilitative role, in theory allowing time for recruiters to become
involved in the strategic issues within resourcing.
x
e-Recruitment methods
Advertising job openings, tracking the source of applications and
online enquiry forms, were the most frequently used methods for
attracting candidates. In many cases, web-based technology in
selection and assessment is only being used by the most
selection-sophisticated organisations that can afford the high
start-up and maintenance costs. The IES survey reported that,
out of the 50 organisations surveyed:
z a large proportion were using online application forms (67 per

cent)
z only four per cent were using psychometric tests online.
There was wide variety in the extent to which online applications

were structured, and also in how they were screened, eg
electronically by keywords, or manually. There exists a great
deal of variation and less maturity in this part of the
e-recruitment process in terms of application and use, than in the
application of Internet technology at the attraction stage of the
process.
In terms of applicant tracking and workflow systems, of the 50

organisations surveyed, 78 per cent received CVs and application
forms online, 49 per cent used email response letters, with 39 per
cent using progress-tracking systems. Only nine per cent
provided status reports to hiring managers.
Evaluating impact
The experiences of IES members suggest that the emergence of
fundamentally new e-enabled recruiting processes not only
increases the opportunities, but also the risks associated with the
resourcing process. Hence, evaluation of those risks and benefits
becomes more important. It is claimed that current measures of
impact in this area focus on efficiency (input and output
measures), as opposed to measures of effectiveness and quality
of output. The evidence from the IES survey, which asked
organisations to indicate which evaluation measures they
currently use, suggests that the former is true. Number of
successful applications, cost per hire and Internet/intranet site
traffic analysis, were the most frequently used measures in our
xi
sample; all input-output measures. Measures of quality were less
evident.
Working with a small number of the case study organisations, a

framework was developed and used as a mechanism for
exploring the availability, and validity, of the data each
organisation held on their staffing processes. The intention was
to determine the usefulness of a supply-chain approach to
measurement in making optimal investment decisions in
e-recruitment systems, and in measuring the value of
e-recruitment. The categories of measurement we explored with
the participating companies were:
z cost of recruitment and selection activities

z time taken to fill
z volume/yield
z diversity and legal compliance
z candidate and employer satisfaction
z quality/value of the recruit.
IES case study members shared our conclusion that better

information about the end-to-end process should lead to better
decisions about any investment in e-recruitment. An evaluation
approach linked to the staffing process, as ‘value chain’ we
argue, is the way forward if organisations are going to truly
understand the value of e-recruitment.
Implementation challenges
The findings from the survey indicated that the key
implementation challenges were the cultural approach of the
organisation towards e-recruitment, and the lack of knowledge
within the HR community. This has implications for training
within HR to develop the capability to deliver e-recruitment, and
also elsewhere within the organisation (eg at line-manager level).
Further implications of e-recruitment are that it may allow a
more strategic role for HR. A compelling argument why online
recruitment should be integrated sooner rather than later is that
it will serve to move the recruiter up the value chain, allowing
them to be far more strategic. Finally, cultural and behavioural
change was reported as the significant challenge in ensuring that
e-recruitment delivers.
xii
Assessing your organisation’s e-recruitment
strategy
The experiences of Research Network members reported here,
underline the complexity of considerations and possibilities of
e-recruitment. The final section of the report offers a series of
self-assessment questions, which if answered specific to your
organisation and its HR function, provide the basis for an
e-recruitment agenda.
Conclusions
What are the key messages from our research? In examining the
findings, the key message for recruiters is to acknowledge that
the adoption of e-recruitment is about more than just technology.
It is about the recruitment system being able to attract the right
candidate, the selection process being based on sound and
credible criteria, and the tracking process being able to integrate
with existing systems. Perhaps most significantly, e-recruitment
is about cultural and behavioural change, both within HR and at
line management level. From our evidence, we suggest that for
e-recruitment to deliver, it is about developing the capability of
HR to facilitate the system and to view the staffing process as an
end-to-end process, similar to that of a supply chain.
xiii
xiv
1. Introduction
Effective recruitment policies and practices are recognised as
making a significant contribution to an organisation’s success. It
is not simply about placing suitable candidates into jobs, it is also
about building and developing a flexible and adept workforce to
suit the organisation’s changing and demanding needs
(Plumbley, 1990).
In an attempt to explore pioneering and efficient ways to attract

the interest of suitable candidates at a time when competition for
talented staff is fierce, organisations have been quick to explore
and adopt an ‘e-approach’, and have applied Internet
technologies in the hope of gaining a competitive advantage.
However, many organisations have entered a commitment to
e-recruitment with limited understanding of what benefits and
problems it might bring. This has posed some opportunities and
challenges, which we explore in this report.
The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) has a number of

Research Networks (RN) that deal with emerging issues for HR
and related areas. One research network, Resourcing and
Organisation, offers a focal point for those interested in how
working patterns are changing, the implications for employee
resourcing, the HR function, and for organisational design and
development. The Resourcing and Organisation Research
Network commissioned this project on e-recruitment in order to
understand the associated challenges and opportunities.
e-Recruitment: Is it Delivering? 1
1.1 Project aims and objectives
Feedback from member organisations suggested that they would
like to have an independent overview of the issues in
e-recruitment. Much of their interaction in the field has been with
suppliers or vendors of IT-related equipment that have a vested
interest in promoting the adoption of e-recruitment methods.
What they felt was needed was an overview of what is known
about e-recruitment in terms of trends and practice, but also a
more in-depth analysis of how organisations are implementing
some of the e-recruitment methods in practice. This would
enable a better understanding of how their organisation should
be positioned in responding to this approach.
The aim of the e-recruitment project was to carry out evidence-

based research to answer some of the following questions of
concern for senior managers and HR practitioners:
z What are the overall trends in e-recruitment use and practice?

We examine which parts of the system are web-enabled and
what are the related benefits and challenges.
z What is happening in practice? What are the e-recruitment
methods that are being used, and what are the real experiences
from organisations attempting implementation?
z Does it work? How do organisations evaluate the success of
their e-recruitment initiative?
1.2 Research methods

We were keen not to rely solely on published accounts of
experiences of e-recruitment, as they often portray only the
success stories. We still reviewed the published evidence, but
developed our own survey and case-study approach to gather
our own evidence of practice. The survey provided the overview
of use, while the case studies provided more in-depth analysis of
some of the issues organisations are facing. There were four main
phases to the project.
Literature review
A literature review was carried out to provide the project team

with the most up-to-date information regarding e-recruitment.
2 2003 © Institute for Employment Studies

As with many topics linked to new technology, the advances in
practice often occur at a faster rate than the accompanying
literature, in particular the more academic literature. As such, the
literature review included academic and practitioner journals, as
well as more up-to-date Web-based discussion boards and papers.
Survey
A survey was carried out with the aim of gathering baseline

information regarding:
z the drivers for using e-recruitment

z the use of e-recruitment methods
z the importance of this in relation to traditional methods
z the process of e-recruitment
z how e-recruitment methods are evaluated.
The sample of organisations for the survey was drawn from an

internal mailing list and administered to 300 organisations
between June and August 2002. Follow-up calls were made at the
end of July to encourage those who had yet to return the survey.
Fifty organisations returned the survey, and represented a wide

range of industries, such as:
z banking (six)
z IT/telecoms (five)
z manufacturing (eight)
z HR/recruitment (three)
z public sector (six)
z science/pharmaceutical (eight)
z transport (six)
z others (eg retail) (eight).
Almost one-third of the 50 participants were recruitment

managers, 16 per cent were graduate-recruitment managers, while
18 per cent of all the respondents were engaged in online
recruitment project management.
Research Network event
A Research Network event, in October 2002, presented some of

the preliminary findings to members of the Research Network.
The event provided delegates with an opportunity to discuss and
provide comments on the initial findings, and let us know about
further issues that they would like us to explore. The outputs
from this workshop helped to shape the case study interviews
and visits.
Case studies
The aim of the case studies was to provide an in-depth analysis

of what an e-recruitment process looks like in practice. What are
the key ingredients, and what are the advantages and
disadvantages over other forms of recruitment? The aim was to
provide some detail for the issues raised in the survey, and also
some other themes that we wished to pursue, eg harnessing
human capital, comparisons with traditional methods, and
evaluating success. The case studies were concerned with
providing more focused accounts, and were directed by central
research questions. Organisations were selected on the basis that
they illustrated different strategies for using e-recruitment and
broadly represent different sectors.
Six case studies were used, these included two financial service
organisations, one telecommunications company, one media
organisation, one public sector, and one pharmaceutical
organisation. The case study organisations were visited and
followed up with telephone interviews between June and
September 2002. A brief description of their business context,
involvement in e-recruitment, and whom we visited, is given
below.
Pharmco
Pharmco is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies,

employing over 54,000 people worldwide, of whom some 10,000 are
in the UK. Some 1,700 appointments were made in the 12 months
prior to interview.
Vacancies are posted on the corporate website, a job board, and

several industry-specific sites. The company is currently extending its
attraction techniques to include candidate mining and proactive

searches. Prospective applicants can look for jobs using a ‘Looking for
Opportunities’ section located on the career pages of the corporate
website. They can search for positions by location or category.
Applications can be submitted online by completing the relevant
sections of an application form. Alternatively, applicants can complete
the ‘personal section’ and attach their CV. There is no online
assessment at present, however there are clear statements of the
required job competencies for each position. Applicants are
encouraged to review themselves against these competencies to
ensure the vacancy is a good fit with their skills.
A major review of all HR transactional processes has just been

completed. The development of e-recruitment is an important element
of the wider global transformational change of HR service delivery.
Interviews were conducted with the director of global staffing.
Mediaco
Mediaco’s total UK employment is approximately 35,000. Approximately

5,400 appointments were made in the 12 months prior to interview.
The range of opportunities is wide, and there is no general entry to
Mediaco. Jobs are advertised in the national and regional press, or in
specialist magazines, and online at the corporate website. All advertised
jobs also appear on CEEFAX.
In 2001, a newly created recruitment support centre was created. In

its first year, the centre handled over 110,000 telephone calls at an
average of 500 per day. They received over 45,000 speculative
enquires — 42 per cent of which arrived electronically. A new website
attracts over 45,000 individual users each week.
Applicants can apply online using an HTML-coded form. Applicants

cannot save a copy of the completed form to their local computer,
and are advised to print off and post their application should they
have any concerns about the security of submitting personal
information over the Internet. All applications are manually screened;
however, trials of context-recognition software and other pre-
screening tools are in place or planned. The company expects to
significantly increase its use of online recruitment in the near future,
and is investing in new IT infrastructure.
Interviews were conducted with the head of recruitment, and a

recruitment consultant.
Government Office
This central government department runs four main entry schemes at

set points throughout the year. Traditionally, the department has
relied upon career fairs. However, a drive to improve diversity within
the Civil Service has prompted a review of job posting sources. A
wider range of advertising is now used, across a mix of media. All
adverts refer applicants to the website of a third party for full details
of any current vacancies and/or entry schemes. Here, they can
download a copy of the application form and information pack in PDF
format, or submit a request for a printed copy by post. The
department is looking to move to a continuous entry process running
throughout the year. There are no plans to enable online applications
at present.
An interview was conducted with the head of recruitment services.
Financial Services 1
A company in the financial services sector employing approximately

30,000 people in the UK. It was one of the first UK employers to
adopt an online sifting process for two key customer service roles.
The processes used are innovative because applicants are given a

realistic expectation of the roles using a series of job ‘previews’ on
the site itself. This has been designed to reduce early staff turnover,
and be compatible with the company’s brand value. A measure of ‘fit’
against the core competencies required for the role is collected using
a short online questionnaire. Shortly, the recruitment function hopes
to be able to import the candidate data from the third-party hosting
the recruitment website, into their own HRIS. The effectiveness of
online pre-screening and its suitability for other job roles within the
company, is the subject of a continued review.
Interviews were conducted with a HR strategy consultant, and a

senior recruitment manager.
Financial Services 2
This is a financial services company employing some 60,000 people in

the UK. In the last 12 months, some 6,000 appointments were made
using a wide variety of recruiting methods, including commercial job
websites and the company’s corporate website. The company does
not currently accept applications online for any posts, with the
exception of the graduate entry scheme.

In 2002, the company centralised the work of 13 regional recruitment
teams into a single HR shared services team. The second phase of
this transformational change of HR service delivery is the
development of an online recruitment service. The total recruitment
system, including a job site, external advertising, and applicant
tracking system, has been awarded to a third-party ASP.
Interviews were conducted with the HR consultant project managing

the change, and a senior HR services manager.
Telecomco
This global organisation comprises 23 business units and 500,000

employees. There are some 30,000 employees in the UK, and over
1000 appointments were made in the 12 months prior to interview.
Online recruitment is considered very important, and is used for all
levels of appointment — from senior management to clerical.
In 2002, the company implemented a fully automated, workflow-

based, online recruiting tool, provided by a European ASP software
vendor. They key drivers for doing so were to reduce high ‘agency’
costs and to enable the sharing of a consistent applicant
management process across business units. The system itself is
technologically simple, ie on a PC with standard Internet architecture;
hence no hardware investment has been necessary.
The shift to a new recruitment approach, with an emphasis on

proactive candidate search and employee referral, has demanded a
significant change to the role of the recruiter, and to that of line
management.
Interviews were conducted with the UK personnel manager, and the

online recruitment manager.
In addition, a number of informal discussions were held with

Research Network members and other UK organisations, at IES
events and at a conference hosted by the Internet Recruiters’
Network and Association (IRNA).
1.3 Structure of the report

This report outlines the research findings, and is structured to
achieve the objectives of the project by balancing our report
between an explanatory guide to e-recruitment (which will be of
use to those new to the area) and a more detailed analysis of
some of the technical issues, which more sophisticated users of
e-recruitment will be interested in. We aim to achieve this
balance by clearly explaining the technical aspects throughout,
and we assume a minimal knowledge of the issues and methods
in the first few chapters. This provides a basis for the more
detailed analysis in the final two chapters, and in particular the
challenges that face all adopters of e-recruitment in the future.
The structure of this report is as follows:
Chapter 2: Trends in e-recruitment: What do we know? What

are the benefits and challenges of using e-recruitment? Which
part of the process is web-enabled? What is the evidence from
the IES survey?
Chapter 3: e-Recruitment methods: Application in practice?

What are the experiences from organisations’ use of e-recruitment
methods at each stage of the recruitment process, ie attraction,
selection and assessment, and applicant tracking?
Chapter 4: Evaluating impact: Measuring success. We examine

whether e-recruitment works for organisations. How do
organisations evaluate the success of their e-recruitment
initiative, in order to demonstrate benefit and added value?
Chapter 5: Emerging challenges: Lessons from the bleeding

edge. After reviewing the project findings, we set out a series of
challenges that organisations will face in implementing
e-recruitment in the future. We suggest a series of questions of
practical use for current and future adopters of e-recruitment, in
developing an effective strategy and focusing on issues away
from just the technology and cost.

2. Trends in e-Recruitment: What do
we Know?
2.1 What is e-recruitment?

The relatively recent emergence of online, Internet or
e-recruitment, is suggested to have the potential to bring radical
change to corporate recruiting. E-recruiting, embracing the term
web-based recruiting, can be described as any recruiting processes
that a business organisation conducts via web-based tools, such as
a firm’s public Internet site or its corporate intranet. We use the
terms online recruitment, Internet recruitment, and e-recruitment
interchangeably.
As Lievens and Harris (2003) point out in their review, there are
a number of approaches to Internet recruitment. They outline a
number of common methods, but acknowledge that approaches
are evolving regularly. The approaches they describe include:
z company websites
z job boards
z e-recruiting itself (the recruiter searching online for job
candidates)
z relationship recruiting (developing long-term relationships with
‘passive’ candidates).
Figure 2.1 illustrates the staffing process and talent flows

involved in recruiting staff. E-recruitment can be involved in any
or all of the main processes of attraction (building/recruiting),
selection and assessment (screening and selecting), and
onboarding (offering and closing, induction), as well as supporting
applicant tracking and workflow systems. Organisations will
Figure 2.1: Staffing processes and talent flows
Talent Flows
Potential
Potential Labour
Labour Applicant
Applicant Offer
Offer New
New Productive
Productive
Labour
Labour Candidates
Candidates
Pool
Pool Pool
Pool Candidates
Candidates Hires
Hires Employees
Employees
Pool
Pool
Offering
Building/
Recruiting Screening Selecting and On-boarding
Planning
Closing
Staffing Processes
Source: Boudreau and Ramstad (2001)
differ in the extent to which, or how far down the recruitment

and staffing process, they apply web-based tools. Strategy,
resources, culture, or knowledge of such applications, may
influence this. For example, some may have invested solely at the
planning and recruiting stage by developing a corporate website
advertising vacancies, and allowing candidates to find out more
information (eg job descriptions) and apply online. Others may
have moved further down the process and introduced selection
and assessment online.
In summary, we consider the whole recruitment process in this

report, including any testing and assessment carried out at the
selection stage. This area has specific issues of concerns for
practitioners, for example, in compliance with legal requirements
regarding test taking and best practice. Some of these issues are
discussed in this report, and are currently being explored in
practitioner and academic conferences (eg British Psychological
Society Test Users Conference, June 2003; Society for Industrial
and Organisational Psychology, 2002, 2003).
2.2 Who is using e-recruitment … ?

The reported growth of e-recruitment has been phenomenal over
the last few years. There is a multitude of online employment

services dedicated to job and CV postings. Corporate websites
seem to attract most employees, and are becoming the focus of
Internet recruitment campaigns for most large organisations.
According to a survey conducted by iLogos research (2002), 91
per cent of the Global 500 companies used their corporate
websites for recruitment in 2002, a percentage that has been
growing steadily since 1998. Figure 2.2 demonstrates the tendency
over the last five years to invest in this new recruitment channel.
As such, there is growing evidence that organisations are using

Internet technology and the World Wide Web as a platform for
recruiting and testing (Greenberg, 1999; Harris, 1999, 2000).
Cappelli (2001) notes in the Harvard Business Review, that the use
of the Internet for recruitment and testing has grown rapidly in
recent years. However, as Bartram (2000), Lievens and Harris
(2003), and Anderson (2003) note, usage and adoption of
Internet-based recruitment is mainly restricted to larger multi-
national organisations recruiting large numbers of employees (eg
graduates), or to those with national/international pools. There
is some optimism by these authors that smaller organisations
will follow suit, but it is unclear what the trend will be outside of
this larger sector. Anderson (2003) also notes, in his analysis of
Figure 2.2: Who is using e-recruitment?
100%
29%
80%
60%
60% 79%
88%
57%
40%
31%
20%
21%
14% 9% 12%
0%
1998 1999 2000 2001
No Corporate Website No Corporate Website Recruiting Corporate Website Recruiting
Source: Global 500 Web Site Recruiting 2002 Survey, (2002)
the adoption of new technology in recruitment and selection, that
there is ‘undoubtedly considerable variation between
organisations and HRM departments in their level of technical
sophistication’. This will have an impact on what they view as
being radically innovative in adopting new technology in a
selection context.
Dineen et al. (2002) reported that 90 per cent of large corporations

in the USA use net-based recruitment (Cappelli, 2001; Martin,
1998), and 12 per cent now use online screening methods (Cober
et al., 2000), all of which illustrates the extensive exposure of
applicants (at least in the US) to Internet-based modes of
delivery.
2.3 … and at what level?

Table 2.1 illustrates at what level the respondents to the IES
survey were using e-recruitment. The results reflect previous
surveys on level of use, identifying the graduate market as the
main area where e-recruitment is being used. This is
unsurprising, given that this is the most highly-resourced
recruitment area for many large multinationals, that can justify
the up-front investment in the technology and supporting roles.
2.3.1 The graduate market and e-recruitment

In 2000, the Association of Graduate Recruiters in the UK (AGR,
2000) reported the results of a survey of 65 members that showed
Table 2.1: At what level are companies using e-recruitment?
Level %
Graduates 93
Junior managers 86
Middle managers 70
Clerical staff 67
Senior managers 58
Manual workers 26
Board members 14
Source: IES Survey, 2002

the number of recruiters recruiting online doubled between 1999
and 2000, from one-third to two-thirds of them all. In another
AGR survey of graduates (N=118), they reported that nearly 90
per cent of respondents are now seeking their first jobs on the
Internet, and nearly 50 per cent are applying online (AGR, 2000).
An interesting point made was that employers report that the
quality of applicants who apply online is higher than those who
apply by traditional methods. The objective evidence for this
observation is not evident or reported. IES research on the AGR
report in 2001, asked further questions around the usage and
usefulness of online recruitment techniques. Responses from
graduate recruiters concluded that:
‘… the valuable role that the Internet now plays in the recruitment
process is reflected in the finding that it was the most frequently
used technique and almost all members (95 per cent) used the
Internet to describe/advertise vacancies. Receiving application
forms from the Internet and using the Internet to describe and
advertise vacancies were also voted the second and third most
useful technique. In addition, employers believe that they have
benefited from being able to cast their net in a much wider pool as
they now receive a range of applications via the Internet — from
both within and outside the UK.’ (IES/AGR 2001 Half-Yearly
Review)
2.4 Spend on e-recruitment

The Electronic Recruiting Index (ERI 2000) showed a substantial
increase in spending on e-recruitment in the US in 1999. For 1998,
the total was about $US4.5 billion, while in 1999 it jumped to
over $US15 billion. The ERI forecasts steady growth from around
$US18 billion in 2000 to nearly $US40 billion by 2005. Spending
on website development is expected to level off at $US15 billion
per annum by 2003, with the major source of growth being in job
posting fees (rising from $US1.425 billion in 1999 to $US15 billion
by 2005). Some estimate that while only 14 per cent of
recruitment budgets were spent on online job boards in 1998, the
figure now is likely to have risen past 30 per cent, with
newspaper advertising dropping from 70 per cent to 52 per cent
(Laurence, 1999). In the UK, IPD survey results of 269
organisations found that use of the Internet for recruitment had
risen from 14 per cent in 1997, through 19 per cent in 1998, to 32
per cent in 1999.
A final point worth making here is our lack of understanding of
cross-national differences in the use of these different
technologies by organisations. Most of the existing research has
originated in the USA, which may be well ahead of other
countries in Europe and the rest of the world in terms of
organisational take-up of technologies in this area, in particular
within the selection part of the process (Anderson, 2003). Indeed,
there is a large split between the growth in Internet-based
recruitment usage in recent years in the attraction arena, and the
isolated examples of organisations using the technology for
assessment and evaluation. We examine this further in the
report, and consider some of the reasons why recruiters may be
less willing or able to adapt e-recruitment to the selection and
assessment phase of the process.
2.5 What are the perceived benefits of

e-recruitment?
2.5.1 Drivers in implementing e-recruitment
The IES survey asked organisations to identify the key drivers
for using or introducing e-recruitment. That is, the reasons and
benefits that they felt they would gain from such an approach,
over traditional forms of recruitment. Table 2.2 indicates that the
primary drivers behind the decisions to pursue e-recruitment
were: to improve corporate image and profile (80 per cent), to
reduce recruitment costs (78 per cent), to reduce administrative
burden (62 per cent), and to employ better tools for the
recruitment team (62 per cent).
These reasons reflect other evidence (eg Anderson, 2003;

Reynolds and Sinar, 2001), that shows that Internet-based selection
procedures can have a positive impact on perceptions of the
organisation (ie company image) amongst potential applicants.
The increasing popularity of the Internet as a recruitment channel

can, therefore, be attributed to several key perceived advantages.
Much of the evidence accentuates the time and cost effectiveness
of e-recruiting. The speed at which several steps of the recruitment
process are carried out reportedly leads to a shorter recruitment
cycle (Hogg, 2000). Applications can be processed and delivered
within minutes rather than weeks, saving both companies and
jobseekers valuable time. Additionally, companies can save

Table 2.2: Drivers in implementing e-recruitment
Reason for pursuing e-recruitment (%)

Improve employer profile and corporate image 80
Reduce recruitment costs 78
Reduce administration burden 62
Better tools for recruitment team 62
Shorter recruitment cycle 56
Expectation/preference of candidates 51
Better fit (screening large pool) 33
Pan-European/global recruitment 24
More effective skills deployment internally 18
Recruitment difficulties 11
considerable amounts of money when recruiting online, as it has

been estimated that:
‘… it costs only about one-twentieth as much to hire someone

online as to hire that same person through … other traditional
methods.’ (Cappeli, 2001, p. 139)
However, it should be noted that the cost savings are only

realised if the whole the recruitment process is online for
everyone applying. Where there are parallel traditional processes
occurring, any savings in time-to-hire, for example, are lost, as
recruiters have to wait for the offline applications. A question for
many recruiters is do they go all online or not?
Other benefits include the fact that as there are no severe space
constraints when advertising online, companies can develop
comprehensive adverts with links to job descriptions and person
specifications, and can ‘pass far more information in a much
more dynamic and consistent fashion to candidates than was the
case in the past’ (Lievens & Harris, 2003, p. 4). Through intranet
systems, information can be updated quickly and efficiently in
accordance with a company’s changing recruiting needs (IDS,
2000). Thus, organisations are provided with the opportunity to
promote themselves to potential candidates and improve their
corporate image.
The Internet is also recognised as being able to provide the scope
for local, national and international recruitment, presenting
companies with the unique opportunity to reach a wider
audience (IDS, 2001). Some reports also support the claim that
e-recruitment attracts a higher quality of candidates, better
educated and web-literate, and Internet awareness is a skill that
is appreciated by companies (iLogos research, 1998).
A more detailed example of some of the drivers behind

implementing e-recruitment is illustrated by one of the case
studies. The Online Recruitment Manager outlined the key drivers
behind why the organisation had embraced e-recruitment. These
included:
z a lack of a single recruiting tool across business units

z little sharing of recruitment/applicant information across units
z the complexity of existing manual reporting facilities
z to reduce costs of recruitment
z to make available best practice recruiting techniques to business
units without fixed recruitment assets/personnel
z to help develop cultural shift within the line management/senior
management community to new recruitment thinking.
One key advantage that is often promoted as a benefit in

comparison to traditional approaches, and hence a driver to
adopting e-recruitment, is that future reliance on external agencies
and other recruitment methods will be reduced. The IES survey
reflected this belief:
z fifty five per cent of respondents expected their organisation to

reduce its use of other recruitment methods in the future
z twenty five per cent reported no reduction
z twenty per cent did not know.
This supports other surveys, for example the Cranfield

Recruitment Confidence Indicator (RCI), where 49 per cent of their
respondents (N=200) expected to reduce other recruitment
methods in the next five years.
On the whole, there is some consensus about the perceived

benefits of e-recruitment over traditional methods, but many of
these seem to be taken for granted, based on little evidence that

these benefits are actually realised. As we will see later in this
report, one of the major difficulties in this area is a lack of sound
metrics and processes to assess these suggested benefits. We now
turn to the limiting factors and implementation challenges that
are reported from e-recruitment.
2.6 Limiting factors and implementation challenges

The IES survey asked organisations to identify limiting factors
and implementation challenges that they faced when introducing
e-recruitment. As can be seen from Figure 2.3, the key limiting
factors that recruiters most frequently reported were the cultural
approach of the organisation (39 per cent), the lack of knowledge
within the HR community (39 per cent), Internet usage by target
candidates (33 per cent), commitment of senior management (26
per cent), and inadequate software solutions (26 per cent).
Security concerns, no site at the time/being constructed, lack of

suitable application service providers (ASPs), and compliance
with legislation were less frequently reported factors, possibly due
to the focus of use at the attraction rather than the selection stage.
Figure 2.3: Limiting factors in implementing e-recruitment
Cultural approach
Lack of knowledge
Internet usage
Senior manager commitment
Inadequate software
Security
No site/under construction
Lack of ASPs
Legislation
Non-developed internal systems
Availability across non-graduate recruiters
Lack of time
Candidates use agencies
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Figure 2.4: Implementation challenges
Limited access
Wrong technology
No process review
Line resistance
HR capability
3rd-party
-100% -80% -60% -40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
It is useful to highlight here some of the perceived barriers

reportedly limiting the application of e-recruitment. Recruiters
were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed with
statements relating to implementation challenges. The results
presented in Figure 2.4, illustrate that on the whole, they felt that
candidates had reasonable access to web technology, but
approximately half of the recruiters felt that there were some
problems in the investment in the technology. There was also a
mixed response to whether resistance from the line to having
more responsibility for recruitment was an implementation
challenge. While some had felt some resistance, in our
interviews, this was an area where recruiters expected future
resistance as the new processes were embedded within the
organisation, and line managers began to realise the impact on
their work roles and responsibilities.
Quality of information
A reported downside stemming from the Internet’s global

dimension, is the reception of an abundance of applications from
unqualified candidates. Nonetheless, Internet technologies and
new HR software aim to enable HR professionals to deal with
huge volumes of applications, by screening candidates’ CVs and
applications automatically. The deployment of these new tools
for streamlining the application system and the recruitment
administration overall, is suggested to lead to a reduced
administrative burden for recruitment teams. However, the jury

is out as to whether this is realised. As Bartram (2000) reports, for
many organisations receiving CVs online means they have to
‘kiss even more frogs before finding the princes’! Even where
screening tools are used, it is often on purely demographic
criteria and checks on relevant experience, much of which is
open to faking.
Relevance of shortlisting criteria
Of concern here are the chosen criteria upon which CVs are
screened, and whether these are valid and related to job
performance and specifications. Where it is keywords, for
example, are they valid? As Bartram rightly identifies:
‘… the future lies in developing structured assessment that can be

completed online by job seekers and that can be shown to be job
relevant.’
Without doing this, organisations are faced with dealing with an

abundance of irrelevant applications, or worse, in danger of
applying unfair and biased screening methods to reduce the
shortlists. This is particularly crucial to avoid, given the impact it
might also have in the recruitment of diverse and innovative
employees. We explore this further in the next chapter, when we
discuss in more detail methods used for e-selection and
assessment.
Confidentiality and data protection challenges
Recruiting through the Internet may be fraught with difficulties,

and has raised a number of issues, including security and
confidentiality, particularly with testing and selection online. A
great proportion of the people looking at jobsites are passive
jobseekers, not actively looking for a job. Confidentiality of the
information they provide is essential in order to ensure that they
are not exposed to their current employers. Most of the
employment sites display privacy statements detailing how they
store and use information. However, security is a major concern
for many organisations. The phenomenon of ‘scraping’
(Coleman, 2001) describes the practice of copying listed
vacancies from a site and posting them somewhere else.
The Data Protection Act (1998) came into force on 1 March 2000.
It regulates the use of personal data, and gives effect in UK law
to the European Directive on data protection (95/46/EC). In
March 2002, the Information Commissioner issued a new code
on recruitment. The codes are intended to assist employers in
complying with the Act, and to establish good practice
benchmarks for handling personal data in the workplace. It is not
legally binding, but will be taken into account by tribunals and
courts.
There are concerns amongst the e-recruitment industry about the

future legality of their websites. The scale of the problem was
recently highlighted in a survey of 200 websites, which found
that less than one per cent of recruitment websites met the
guidelines. Most websites failed to meet the guidelines in at least
two separate areas and, in the majority of cases, many more
(IRNA, Autumn Newsletter, 2002). IES corporate member
companies are unlikely to use recruitment agencies that do not
meet the guidelines.
The Act gives individuals certain rights in respect of processing

of personal data that takes place during the recruitment process.
For example, the benchmarks given of relevance to e-recruitment
include:
z Consistency in the way personal data are used in the process of

shortlisting candidates for a particular position. If an online pre-
screening tool is used for online applications, an appropriate
alternative will have to be used for applications received
through traditional means.
z Similarly, there is a recommendation to inform all applicants if
an automated shortlisting system will be used as the sole basis
for making a decision. Provisions should be made to consider
representations from applicants about this, and to take these
into account before making a final decision. All of this requires
careful wording on the relevant web pages.
z More organisations are looking to maintain a ‘talent database’ of
prospective future employees. Under the code, they are required
to advise all unsuccessful applicants that there is an intention to
keep their names on file for future vacancies (if appropriate),
and give them the opportunity to have their details removed
from the file. For those with the systems to do it, the
implications appear straightforward. For those without, it
potentially represents an unwanted administrative burden.

‘We’ll program the applicant tracking system to email past candidates
with a request to keep their details on file every six months. This is
the same procedure we’re going to have to follow for all our
employees anyway — if we truly consider them prospective
candidates for future roles and want them in the talent datapool.’
Online Recruitment Manager, Telecomco
Diversity
Hogler et al. (1998) noted that ‘technology … may have a disparate

impact on certain groups of workers’ (p. 149). e-Recruitment has
been criticised for its limited demographic scope and for posing a
threat to equal opportunities, especially for disabled candidates
and those without Internet access. Furthermore, it has been
recommended to use the Internet in combination with more
traditional sources, to avoid any legal implications (Flynn, 2000).
However, there are also opportunities with e-recruitment whereby

it opens up jobs to a broader field. This ‘two-sided coin’ to the
impact on diversity issues is further discussed in Chapter 4,
when we examine how the threats and opportunities of
e-recruitment are evaluated.
2.7 Recruitment as a supply chain

The implementation of e-recruitment and the ability of the
technology to integrate the process, has prompted organisations
to look at the end-to-end staffing process as a ‘supply’ and ‘value
chain’ linked to the talent flows (see Figure 2.1). This perspective
of recruitment as analogous to a supply chain, can help us to
understand the adoption of e-recruitment methods.
2.7.1 e-Recruitment and the supply chain

A supply chain is the set of links between the individual steps, in
an overall end-to-end business process. In manufacturing, the
supply chain encompasses the business steps from order to
delivery. Supply chain management oversees the flow of
materials, information and money between the various steps on
the chain (Kerrin and Icasati-Johanson, 2003). The goal is to
improve the performance of a supply chain while deploying the
same or fewer assets. The role of information technology in
supply chain management is to co-ordinate all players, by
instantaneously propagating information concerning levels of
supply and demand up and down the supply chain.
Traditionally, hiring managers, recruiters and candidates, as well

as the processes of posting the vacancies, data gathering, reference
checking etc., all operate independently. With the application of
e-recruitment, the recruiting process can bring better
connections, enabling a direct link between the candidate and the
recruiter/hiring manager. This can significantly reduce the cost
of a staffing agency, and reduce advertising costs. The status of
requisition and candidate can be tracked, and the gap between
supply (candidate) and demand (recruiter) can be closed.
In bridging supply with demand, supply chain management

always starts with demand, and seeks to drive supply to match
it. Matching supply with demand in staffing requires a common
platform on which to define job requirements and talent in terms
of skills and competencies. Starting with demand means that the
information necessary to access a match with the job
requirements can be pulled from candidates as required.
Another key aim of supply chains in the retail or high-tech

sectors is the reduction of cycle times and inventory
obsolescence. Here too, there are important parallels for
recruitment. Qualified candidates are not available for long, and
the likelihood of availability of a qualified candidate diminishes
with time. Each new candidate has an associated sourcing cost.
Being able to react quickly to establish contact with the candidate
and conduct real-time assessment, increases the return on
recruitment spend.
2.8 The changing landscape of the recruitment

process
The traditional landscape of the recruitment process positions
HR as the pivotal role between agencies and the line manager.
Figure 2.5 illustrates this, and also shows the candidate on the
periphery of the activity, often communicating through an
agency or third party. The figure also identifies some of the
inefficiencies in the system that have been a source of frustration
for recruitment and HR managers, such as duplication, heavy
HR workload, and poor candidate communication. These

Figure 2.5: Previous landscape of e-recruitment
Source: IES, 2002
inefficiencies, advances in technology, combined with changes in

how the relationship with the candidate is now perceived, have
all contributed to the changing recruitment landscape. It is worth
considering the role of candidate relationship management
(CRM) in this change.
Candidate relationship management
The application of technology within other HR services, such as

e-HR (Kettley and Reilly, 2003) has also expected an increase in
improved internal customer relationship management. In terms
of recruitment practices, the focus has been on a shift towards
improving candidate relationship management (CRM) with the
applicant. Organisations focusing on the development and
improvement of CRM are seeking to do this through the
decentralisation of many HR operations, with responsibilities for
many aspects of the recruitment process being given to staff at
business unit, departmental, or line management level. Where
this shift in responsibility for recruitment has been given to the
line management, it has seen a changing role for HR practitioners
towards a facilitator role. In these cases, HR practitioners are no
longer the highly trained specialists brought in to control the
recruitment process. Instead, much of this process is devolved to
line managers, with the HR function facilitating it and providing
the support to make it work effectively. One of the reported
benefits is that e-recruitment enables better relationship
management of employees from attraction, through recruitment,
to onboarding, and facilitates this decentralisation process.
A new landscape for e-recruitment?
Therefore, a shift has occurred, with a desire to involve line

management in the process. As with other HR processes (eg
online learning and development), it was not long before the
potential of the Internet within recruitment was realised, in
particular as a way of involving line managers and integrating
and streamlining the recruitment process. Figure 2.6 illustrates
this changing relationship and landscape with the introduction
of e-recruitment processes. As can be seen from the figure, the
candidate is now connected to the central system, and there is
involvement of the line manager in the process. In addition to
this are benefits such as cost efficiencies, reduced HR workload,
and others detailed above from the IES survey.
Figure 2.6: Landscape of e-recruitment
Line
Manager
Candidate
System Phone/email
Interface
Candidate records
& tracking
HR
Agency Phone/email
Source: IES, 2002

Broadly, this forms the strategic and tactical interface that many
organisations implementing e-recruitment want to reproduce. As
we will see in the next chapter, we argue that achieving this
involves more than the adoption of technology and software
applications.
2.9 Conclusion
Our evidence from the literature and practice suggests that there
is a growing trend towards adopting e-recruitment, even though
its application within organisations has focused on the graduate
labour market. There is some consensus over the perceived
benefits amongst those organisations implementing e-recruitment,
and also over the limitations and implementation challenges.
One of the major attractions in comparison to traditional
approaches is that e-recruitment is well placed to facilitate
candidate relationship management, and that e-recruitment is
contributing to changing the landscape of the recruitment
process.
Our survey and research has provided an overview of the trends

in the field, but this is not where we wanted to finish the
research. We felt that reporting survey results on the methods
used would not provide us with the whole picture of what
adopting e-recruitment was like in practice. In fact, the survey
and our research network event raised more questions for us, in
particular about the use of e-recruitment methods in practice and
how the impact is evaluated. We therefore set out to achieve two
more things with the research in our case studies:
1. to explore the use of e-recruitment methods in practice at each

stage of the recruitment process (attraction, selection and
workflow)
2. to examine if e-recruitment works, and how our organisations
know its value.
The next two chapters deal with these questions.
3. e-Recruitment Methods:
Application in Practice
In the IES survey, we were interested in establishing for which

aspect of the recruitment process our sample were using
e-recruitment. We asked participants to indicate whether they
used the Internet for posting job vacancies and attracting
applications, for streamlining recruitment administration, and/or
for the selection process. The results show that:
z ninety-eight per cent of the sample used e-recruitment processes

for posting job vacancies.
z forty-seven per cent of the sample used e-recruitment for
streamlining recruitment and administration.
z thirty-seven per cent of the sample used e-recruitment for the
selection process.
In this chapter, we draw upon the experiences of IES Research

Network members and our case study organisations, and consider
the reality of the impact of web technology at these various
stages. Does e-recruitment really enable the transformation of the
resourcing process and position it further up the value chain?
Can we see examples in the choices employers are making? What
does it mean for the HR function and the role of the recruiter?
3.1 Candidate sourcing/attraction

IES Research Network members are using e-recruitment
technologies to attract and source potential candidates. The
survey findings outline the extent of use of certain methods, and
are illustrated in Table 3.1. Advertising job openings, tracking

Table 3.1: Use of e-recruitment methods for candidate attraction
Candidate Attraction (%)

Advertising job openings 96
Tracking the sources of applications 53
Online enquiry forms 47
Establishing candidate profile 40
Re-use of candidate information for multiple job applications 31
Candidate search, ie cyber-hunting 16
the source of applications and online enquiry forms, were the

most frequently used methods.
Below, we outline some of the key themes emerging from using

these methods, which have been gathered from research with the
case study organisations.
3.1.1 Internet advertising

Specific efforts to attract qualified candidates were evident, such
as posting vacancies on Internet job boards and the use of
Internet advertising, eg banner adverts. IES members are using a
variety of job boards, with a marked trend towards using more
specialist, niche sites.
‘It is part of our overall strategy to reduce the amount of money, time
and effort we spend on traditional forms of recruitment and to
become one of the best online recruiters. At least 50 per cent of all
vacancies are advertised online. We currently have an e-recruitment
team of nine people specialised in Internet recruitment. In addition to
our own corporate website we use a combination of generalist and
niche sites. We will post our own branded vacancies with them, and
in addition, search their databases. All vacancies, ie scientific, head
office, IT and graduate, are posted on the multi-sector recruitment
sites TotalJobs and Monster. But we’ll also use specialist recruitment
sites like Pharmajobs for our medical sales vacancies and
NewScientistJobs.com for science roles. We’ve found the search
facility to be easy to use and the quantity and quality of responses
has been fair.’
Director of Global Staffing, Pharmco
Banner adverts appear far less popular. Several members
commented that they would only use them as part of a broader
campaign to establish a presence in the market. The key to
success, it seems, is targeting the websites that your potential
candidates visit, and placing them there. If successful, they can
offer a highly cost-effective solution. One IES Network member
had recently recruited two corporate lawyers — a role for which
they would normally pay head-hunter fees — as a result of a
£600 spend on a banner advertisement in the online version of
The Lawyer magazine.
3.1.2 Corporate website

Traditional advertising routes, eg in print media, are being used
to ‘drive traffic’ to the career pages of corporate websites. The
adoption by Fortune 500 companies of a dedicated careers
website devoted to meeting corporate staffing goals, reached 92
per cent in 2002 — up from 89 per cent in both 2000 and 2001
(iLogos, 2002). Amongst the IES Research Network members,
there were at least three who have won industry awards for the
design and functionality of their websites. Their experience
would suggest that the key features of corporate websites
indicative of good practice, and likely to grow in popularity,
include the following.
z Employers are expanding the amount of information given on

the company’s culture and values, eg policy on diversity,
benefits etc. to increase the likelihood of best fit in the self-
selection stage (see also Dineen et al., 2002).
z More employers are keen to ensure that they make the online
recruitment experience as positive as possible, and increasingly
have the facility for the candidate to offer feedback, or to email
the site or vacancy details to a friend.
z Indicative of the move to establish a relationship with
prospective candidates is the growth in websites that save the
candidate’s profile for future reference in a database. Candidates
are invited to register to receive further information on future
vacancies. Subsequently, there is also an increase in the
provision of statements regarding the organisation’s privacy
policy and data protection.
z Features that make it easier for the candidate to navigate around
the site, such as a link from the corporate website’s homepage, a

single click to apply, a searchable database of job positions by
function and location etc., are also beneficial.
3.1.3 Employer branding

e-Recruitment also increasingly encompasses less direct
activities, such as promoting the employer brand in such a way
as to attract candidates, and modifying the corporate website to
induce passive or future job seekers to ‘stay in touch’.
‘Recruitment isn’t just a process to get people on board; it’s how we

manage our reputation as an employer. With a global employer brand
just launched, the technology allows us to communicate a single
employer proposition. We’ve had a programme in place for some time
to promote ourselves as an employer of choice, and this has led to a
number of changes from the encouragement and recognition of
creative ideas, to our diversity training and our introduction of a
flexible benefit scheme. e-Recruitment will help us pull what all this
means together. Employer branding is not just a marketing exercise
— it’s the beginning of an employment relationship.’
3.1.4 Candidate searches

A small but growing minority of employers also use the Internet
for proactive candidate searches. Several of those member
companies who did not possess the in-house capability
themselves to search the Internet in this way, were increasingly
being offered the service by their advertising agencies.
There are a variety of strategies and technologies available. Most,

according to the Corporate Leadership Council, involve the
following basic steps:
z use search engines and keywords to identify potentially related

sites (eg an industry site correlating to the position)
z identify a contact that may lead you to a group of potential
applicants (eg someone involved in an industry chat group)
z actively recruit individuals identified as qualified candidates;
this may involve going ‘behind the firewall’ of other companies.
‘Being cost conscious but ignoring quality means we are likely to only
attract the easy-to-attract, active candidates. In our industry it’s the
‘in demand’ folk who are always working that we want. In the past
we’ve paid any price necessary to the head-hunters to find them, and
in reality we’ll probably still do that. But the Internet gives us other
options for proactively seeking them out and building a relationship
over time. We now know the online communities they are in, and we
make sure we have a presence there.’
UK Personnel Manager, Telecomco
3.1.5 Internal vacancy filling

Finally, the internal vacancy filling process can be web-enabled.
Previous research by IES (Hirsh, Pollard and Tamkin, 2000)
highlighted the stark realities of many internal vacancy
arrangements. Managers are used to choosing people and
putting them where they want, based on who they know and
what they know about them. This is a real power that open
internal advertising of jobs takes away from them.
Posting vacancies on an intranet is now commonplace. Many IES

members know the careers pages of their corporate websites to
be amongst the most visited by existing employees. Key issues
raised included the consistency with which vacancies are
presented across the whole organisation, and their accessibility
by all employees. Surprisingly few employers currently have
provision for internal candidates to apply online.
‘Currently, internal vacancies are promoted by functions (eg Finance,

Operations, IS) and by country or site. This is attractive for two main
reasons: it is faithful to the concept of a local intranet site being the
place to find information, and employees are only presented with the
vacancies most relevant to their current function/location. However,
several issues have been raised with the existing system:
• it is more difficult to find opportunities beyond the immediate

function or location
• there is a lot of rework required to post vacancies on different

sites, and a risk of inconsistencies in vacancy details
• there is no consistent branding.

The plan is to move to a central recruitment component for use on
local intranet sites, which allows vacancy posting and displays local
vacancies, as well as allowing all vacancies to be viewed. Vacancy

details are to have a clearly identified owner who is responsible for
content, and will not be duplicated in different formats. They will be
removed as soon as they are closed.’
Interestingly, when the survey asked which methods

organisations perceived to be the most successful, the highest
responses were for the corporate website, followed by internal
recruitment, closely followed by commercial job boards. All of
these methods relate to the attraction phase, but what are the
practical lessons regarding selection and assessment online?
3.2 Selection, assessment and testing online

With their promise of immediate cost savings, better candidates,
and measurable results, screening and assessment tools —
particularly online tools — are looking to many like the quickest
path to the best candidates, at the lowest cost possible. But
assessing and implementing new candidate online screening and
assessment tools is a difficult process. The potential cost savings
are certainly enticing, but the potential pitfalls are daunting.
Questions still abound: What kind of screening tools are right for
your company? Which tools make sense for large companies and
which for small? How does a company even begin to implement
these tools online? Are they legally defensible? Most
importantly, do they even work and how will you know?
The use of new technology in selection and assessment is not

new. In the area of selection, computer-based testing (CBT),
telephone-based assessment procedures (eg interviews), computer-
based realistic job previews and multimedia simulation tests, are
all examples of uses of new technology in selection over the last
decade or so. Computer-based testing has a long history of
administering and scoring assessment for selection, a point
which Bartram (2000) and Anderson (2003) make strongly. They
are keen for recruiters and researchers not to lose sight of what
we know from the research on CBT. The benefits reported with
CBT in selection are also reported within Internet testing, and
include test administration and scoring efficiencies (McBride,
1998).
3.2.1 Options for selection and assessment
online
So, what are the current options for recruiters in providing
assessment and selection online? Figure 3.1 maps the various
options available, from pre-application self-assessment, sifting and
screening (eg online structured application forms), psychometric
tests (eg ability and personality tests), interviews and simulated
assessment centres. We consider each of them here.
Pre-application self-assessment
Organisations using online tools for self-assessment in the pre-

application phase, are doing so for two main reasons. First, in
order to increase the likelihood of a better ‘organisational culture
fit’, and second, to decrease numbers likely to apply, based on
candidates ‘knowledgeable self-selection out of the system’
(Bywater, 2002). Realistic job previews can be carried out where
candidates complete an assessment and are provided feedback,
all online. This is not part of the selection process, but many
organisations hope that candidates will take notice of the
Figure 3.1: Options for selection and assessment online
online online
pre- online e-basket
reasoning personality
application sifting e-basket
tests questionnaire
e-interview
etc.
realistic job
preview bespoke off the
shelf
do I really will they fit are they will they fit how will
want to the job, worth the job/ they handle
apply? overall? bringing to team/ multi-
assessment context at a tasking in a
are they
centre? detailed managerial
qualified?
level? setting?
Source: adapted from Bywater (2002)

feedback as an indicator of how well they would perform in the
job. Examples of these are evident on the career pages of
organisations such as KPMG (www.kpmg.co.uk/careers) and
Abbey National (www.yourfinancialcareer.com), and have been
reported elsewhere (IRS 2002). While these forms of self-
assessment may also exist with traditional approaches, the ability
to have them on the corporate website means that they are
instantly accessible to candidates, and the feedback can be
automated.
However, it is unclear what types of candidates are dropping out

of the selection process at this stage, and for what reasons, as
there is little evidence of follow up. The danger here is that you
may lose applicants for other reasons, although it appears to be
an increasingly popular approach to reducing the number of
unsuitable candidates applying (Dineen et al., 2002). This point
was highlighted by one of our case study organisations.
‘A really nice-to-have measure would be to see how many people

drop off after the realistic job preview questions online. We have a
feeling that it’s working in terms of improving the ‘fit’ of candidates —
retention at 12 months is improving and requests from managers to
extend probation periods have fallen too. We’ve asked our ASP to
create a tenure predictor for applicants to give us an indication of
how long they expect to be in the job. It’s looking promising, but we
can’t really do all the social desirability stuff (the extent to which
candidates responses are due to how they wish to be seen, rather
than how they actually are) because it would be so hard to reproduce
the equivalent for paper-based applications — some 30 per cent of
the total.’
Recruitment Consultant, Financial Services 1
Online sifting
If or when application forms are structured and designed

appropriately, and linked to job requirements, sifting and
screening online can allow the collection of information that is
really needed and related to the job, rather than the ‘padding’
that is often found in CV applications. Advantages include
automating the process through the technology being able to sift
thousands of applicants based on pre-defined criteria. The
dangers here involve the choice of criteria for the automated sift.
Where this is based on certain words or phrases, organisations
have had some concerns in this area as to what the screening is
picking up. However, there is more reported success for criteria
such as education levels, qualifications and visa requirements,
for example.
‘One top twenty accountancy firm recruits 15 graduates each year in

a competitive recruitment market. Since introducing e-recruitment,
overall graduate recruitment costs had been reduced by 67 per cent
and the recruitment time had been dramatically cut from 11 months
to four months. This had primarily been achieved by moving the
traditional proven selection criteria and sifting process, which
consisted of manually screening and processing candidates in a two-
stage group testing model, to an online system. The system collected
biographical and screening data, as well as having an online
‘organisational fit’ questionnaire and numerical reasoning test. The
head of HR said ‘screening determines unsuitability as much as
suitability — therefore applicants lacking minimum criteria should be
rejected as soon as possible. Interviewing unsuitable applicants is a
waste of valuable resources. Of 600 applicants for 15 positions in
2001, 54 per cent were screened out on basic criteria, eg a UK work
permit, 22 UCCA points.’
Speaker, IRNA Conference 2002
This example highlights the importance of using validated or

‘proven selection criteria’ in any sifting process. Just because
technology enables you to sift by any keyword, it is important
not to lose sight of proven criteria.
As identified by Bartram (2000), the best approach to sifting and

screening online are those that measure core competencies, are
consistent, job relevant and easy to score. The importance of the
design of the application form becomes paramount with this
approach, particularly given the legal implications of defending
the criteria in such a sifting process. This is an area where many
organisations are focusing their research and development to
ensure that they have the appropriate application form which
elicits the best quality information from the candidate, so they
can screen effectively. The technology that online applications
bring is redundant unless there is an appropriate design to the
application form.
However, there are still concerns over the validity of the

screening process. That is, the extent to which the process is
doing what it was developed to achieve, fairly and effectively.
Questions are being raised regarding the appropriateness and
relevance of the sifting criteria being used, and recruiters’

confidence in the results they are producing was at times low.
Where organisations have tracked the effectiveness of the
criteria, via ‘validation studies’, there have been mixed
experiences. Even where criteria are accurate (ie in being able to
differentiate between good and poor performers on the job),
there are question marks over the extent to which they will save
costs by eliminating traditional approaches at this stage (eg
Milk Round, Open events, etc.).
‘A recent validation [of the screening measure] has highlighted some

alarming issues with different recruitment markets (eg North and
South) yielding different perceptions of the scores. We went to the
hiring managers at three points after hire — ie at one, three and six
months, to understand this further, and we did a brief interview with
some of those candidates we had rejected. There wasn’t a correlation
between the higher scores on the pre-screen and performance in the
job. The result of all this is I don’t think we can trust the automatically
generated scores — we’re telephone interviewing everyone who
scores 4 and above now. The return on our investment in pre-
screening is likely to remain under scrutiny for some time. To be
honest, I think the quality of the candidate experience is becoming so
important in one or two of our recruitment markets that even if we
get the assessment right we are still going to increase spend on open
evenings and promotional interviews.’
Online testing
Along with the design of appropriate and valid application

forms and sifting criteria, the use of psychometric testing online
has created the most amount of debate and uncertainty for many
HR practitioners and line managers. The debate centres around
concerns over the security of the test score key and system
security, such as:
z ‘How do I know the tests are secure?’

z ‘How do I know each candidate is completing the same level of test?’
There are various methods evolving to overcome these concerns,

with test publishers developing tests from large item banks that
mean that each candidate receives a unique combination of
questions, and so prevents the problem of candidates passing on
tests to others. However, there is little published evidence of the
equivalence of these item banks, and organisations need to be
more demanding of publishers to demonstrate equivalence in
item banks.
The candidate identity is also a concern here:
z ‘How do I know they have not got someone else to complete it for
them?’
With candidate identity, most organisations provide security

codes for candidates to input as they take the test, but most
realise that this will not prevent someone else taking the test.
Most organisations that we spoke to emphasised the ‘honesty
contract’ as part of the selection process — ie that the tests reflect
the job, that they will struggle in the role if they perform poorly in
the tests, and the real deterrent that they will be given a second
part of the test at a later stage under supervision (either all
candidates or a selection). This approach is felt to deter a large
proportion, but is obviously still open to abuse from candidates.
Finally, there are questions around the candidate reactions:
z ‘How did the candidate feel about the process?’
This question is particularly important given the virtual nature of

the process and the different relationship with the recruiter. With
candidate reactions, organisations have developed online
feedback forms for those who wish to provide feedback on any
stage of the process, but many are sceptical about the honesty of
the feedback here, given that people are providing it within a
selection process. The only real way around this is to conduct
independent reviews with those who drop out of the system (if
you can track them) or those who are rejected (who may have a
biased opinion), or do regular internal audits of those coming
through on the system.
‘The company operates a ‘red, amber, green’ categorisation for scores

on the online tests. All applicants are informed that if they proceed to
the next stage, they may be re-tested in supervised conditions. Item
banking [a large bank of question items that are the same level of
difficulty] helps to eliminate cheating. The tests are timed and a
browser compatibility test within the system ensures that applicants
are not able to reset the timer. Borderline applicants are telephoned
to evaluate further.’
HR Strategy Consultant, Financial Services 1

Interviews and simulated assessments
Interviews and simulated assessment centres are also being used

where exercises, traditionally used at assessment centres, have
been adapted to an online environment. Personality measures
are also administered at this point prior to the assessment centre,
to save time and to allow better use of the information. However,
the uptake in this area is limited, as organisations are still
bringing shortlisted candidates to an assessment centre.
Legal issues and IT infrastructure capacity are key concerns that

our members have fed back to us in choosing online selection
and assessment tools. Some of this we have already discussed in
Chapter 2. For example, what is the impact on data protection,
where is the data held and which law applies, particularly with
international organisations? What level of network security does
the organisation need? There are some excellent guidelines being
developed by the International Testing Commission (ITC) and
the British Psychological Society (BPS), through the recently
launched Psychological Testing Centre. However, there is an
inevitable delay between the discussion of these key issues from
the ITC and the BPS Test Users Conference, and best practice
reaching a wider audience.
3.2.2 Extent of use

In many cases, adoption of web-based technology in selection
and assessment is only being used by the most selection-
sophisticated organisations that can afford the high start-up and
maintenance costs. The IES survey reported that out of the 50
organisations surveyed:
z a large proportion were using online applications (67 per cent)

z only four per cent were using psychometric tests online.
There was wide variety in the extent to which online applications

were structured, and also in how they were screened, eg
electronically by keywords, or manually. There exists a great
deal of variation and less maturity in this part of the
e-recruitment process in terms of application and use, than in the
application of Internet technology at the attraction stage of the
process. Anderson (2003) highlights that in the selection and
assessment area, where it is being used, the popularity of using
the technology in practice appears to have outstripped the pace
of developments in the research base. That is, there is little
published evidence of whether these online selection and
assessment methods are fairly selecting a similar or better quality
of candidate. While many organisations are conducting such
evaluation and research, little of it is accessible to the wider
community. Until independent research in this area is carried out
and published, we are reliant on case study examples.
3.2.3 Future issues for online assessment and

selection
The focus of the IES research, and of this report, is not solely
around Internet assessment and selection. However, progress in
this area will have a significant impact as to whether web-based
applications are involved at all stages of the recruitment and
staffing process. The four major areas of concern — particularly
in relation to testing on the Web — surround applicant reactions
to tests online, equivalence of tests, adverse impact of Internet
testing, and general concerns regarding legal implications and
security. An approach towards, or at least some attempt at,
evaluation of the impact in these areas is required before we can
consider the added value of online selection and assessment over
traditional approaches.
3.3 Managing the recruitment process

3.3.1 State of your back-end
Researcher: ‘Do you recruit online?’
Recruiter: ‘Yes, we have a website.’
For many organisations, the move to e-recruitment has ended

with the above scenario, some describing it as ‘a bit of a horseless
carriage’. A corporate website might have eliminated a mailing
address and printed application forms from recruitment
advertisements, but many have replaced this with a very busy
fax machine and a permanently in-use scanner. Incorporating the
technology required in e-recruitment with other existing systems
has proved challenging.

‘The biggest cost we just didn’t take into account when putting the
business case together is the failure to interact seamlessly with our
HRIS. Having a vacancy number or some other unique profile for an
individual in our system is the key for us to be able to proactively
source candidates. With a recruitment site hosted by our advertising
agency, an online application process hosted elsewhere, and our own
corporate career pages, there are too many stools to fall between.
We have to come up with intermediary steps such as the request we
now post on the recruitment site asking people if they’d like us to
register their details in case of future opportunities. We ran a manual
review of the 75 individuals who had done that, and 40 per cent
resulted in a hire.’
This highlights the potential of e-recruitment for automating the

application process. There are a variety of other decisions
employers looking to streamline the recruitment process have to
take regarding the end-to-end process. The holy grail for
e-recruiters is a fully integrated, end-to-end solution. This means
that the solution links the front end (candidate experience of
applying) with the back end (the applicant management
capabilities). If achieved, this would mean a position posted on
the career pages of the corporate website would be instantly
available for internal and external candidates to apply to.
Major considerations include the choice of staffing management

solution (often called an Applicant Tracking System), and
integration with the core Human Resource Information System
(HRIS).
3.3.2 Applicant tracking/workflow systems

The applicant tracking systems currently available to employers
each share a range of similar features. They typically enable the
recruiter to:
z store information on candidates, and on each vacancy, in a

searchable database
z forward documents to colleagues. Examples include the
forwarding of applicants CVs to the hiring manager, and the
acknowledgement to applicants that their application has been
received.
Table 3.2: e-Recruitment methods for applicant tracking
Applicant Tracking (%)

Reception of CVs/application forms 78
Emailed response letters 49
Progress tracking 36
Interview scheduling 22
Automatic status report to hiring manager 9
Reference checks 2
z plan and schedule interviews for the candidate and the hiring
manager. This may include automatic reminders or an in-built
escalation if, for example, a return date is missed.
z post new vacancies and archive old ones
z analyse and report.
Table 3.2 illustrates the methods used for applicant tracking,

from the IES survey. The findings from our case studies also
demonstrate how organisations recognised the importance of the
back end of the online recruitment process.
‘We realised that we needed to move to a real-time, continuous

process for recruitment if we were going to stand a chance of winning
the talent our competitors want. We’ve done away with batch-type
processes when we’d collect in a stack of applications and then move
them to the next stage. This isn’t simply tracking in the sense that we
date stamp applicants as they move through the process — this is
real workflow.’ There are prompts to move recruiters and the line
along. The system is supporting the recruiter in determining how to
manage a candidate’s application. The system will have flagged the
vacancies’ cost-centre code and builds up, over time, a profile of
which hiring managers should interview for those given positions. The
preferred selection method is available on screen, eg first and second
interview plus X test. The system enables the recruiter to
automatically forward applications and test results to the specified
hiring manager for review.’

3.3.3 Candidate relationship management
As discussed in Chapter 2, candidate relationship management
(CRM) refers to the way the organisation handles candidates via
the online recruitment process. It is similar to the notion of
customer relationship management in that it helps to stress the
importance of seeing the candidate as a customer, for example in
terms of employer branding. Online CRM techniques can create a
personalised experience which provides a level of service that
makes candidates think that they are not just a number.
‘We’ve learnt from the mistakes made in our US operations. In the

excitement of what the technology could do, they just forgot what
was sensible. Candidates applying online would receive an email
notification of their result minutes after applying. We can at least look
as if we’ve given their application some consideration and leave it a
couple of days — even of it is pre-screened out.’
IES Research Network event
Some of our Network members told us of their facility to keep in

touch with potential candidates in their ‘talent pool’ by:
z sending invitations to candidates to apply for jobs as they

become available, which is known as a ‘job agent’
z inviting candidates to a seminar or open day relevant to their
background
z simply contacting candidates who haven’t visited the corporate
website in a while, encourage them to update their profile or
CV.
Candidate relationship management parallels with consumers

purchasing a product.
‘We have found that it is important to tailor the whole experience of

applying online to the target group. We make it as easy as possible
for the highly-skilled applicants to pursue an opportunity with us. If
an agency doesn’t refer them, they can send a CV, request a
hardcopy application form, or apply online if they wish. Similarly, we’ll
accept applications from any route for our low-skilled, high-turnover
roles. It’s in the middle, where we have high volumes of vacancies for
call-centre operatives and customer service staff, that online
applications have the real potential.’
Recruitment Services Manager, UK Transport Company, IES Research
Network event
3.3.4 Importance of candidate profiling
The challenge to making all this work, it seems, is largely down
to whether or not the system is profile-based. This means that
each candidate has one unique file in the system to which all of
his or her job-specific applications and history are attached. In a
non-profile based system, each time a candidate applies, a new
record is created, so that over time there might be multiple
records for each candidate. The kind of CRM communications
mentioned earlier, and searching the talent database for
candidate profiles, would obviously become a nonsense with
such duplication. For example, candidates would end up being
sent a correspondence for each time they were recorded in the
system, something which would make the organisations look
very unprofessional, and not portray the right image.
3.4 e-Recruitment strategies in practice

In Bartram’s (2000) review of the trends and practices in Internet
recruitment and testing, he summarises the cycle of events
involved in the recruitment and selection process. These are:
z drawing applicants into a large pool

z filtering the number down by selecting out the applicants who
fail to meet the basic requirements
z selecting-in those candidates with the best potential for success
in the job, with the use of various assessments.
In the evidence available, the methods organisations are using in

the Internet recruitment and selection process has been mainly in
the first two activities: attraction and recruitment.
As Figure 3.2 illustrates, in practice, the application of web

technology to the e-recruitment process enables:
z new methods of candidate sourcing/attraction

z online selection and assessment
z process management and automated administration.

Figure 3.2: e-recruitment
Recruitment plan: proposition + marketing
Applicant
Candidate Screening and tracking and
attraction assessment workflow
systems
Robust back office
Skilled resourcing team

(internal, external, interim)
However, there are other important considerations in any

e-recruitment strategy, including:
z recruitment planning, which might include the definition of an

employers brand, ie a clear, concise message it wishes to give
about itself and the differentiated propositions it offers target
groups of candidates
z the robustness of the ‘back-office’ which manages the processing
of applications by any combination of manual, photocopy, fax,
email and integrated links with the core Human Resource
Information System (HRIS)
z the capability of the resourcing team — be they internal,
external, or interim staff.
Our case study evidence illustrates some of the issues that have
emerged for organisations using various e-recruitment methods.
At the attraction phase, organisations have gone through the
process of working out which media best suits their needs for the
jobs they are advertising. For many, this has meant having a
better understanding of what the job boards, corporate website,
and candidate searches offer them in achieving their objectives.
With online selection and assessment, there are fewer adopters,
although the opportunities are available to transfer much of the
selection process online. The lack of adoption by recruiters in this
area may be influenced by many factors, both internal and external
to the organisation. Finally, the experiences of the case study
organisations in integrating a system that supports the attraction
and selection and assessment stage, has been challenging.
So, is it all worth it? What is the value and realised benefit of
adopting such methods? Will those who have been slower to
adopt actually lose out in the ‘war for talent’, or have they saved
themselves money in sticking with the traditional tried and
tested approaches? The next chapter addresses the value of
e-recruitment and how organisations know what this is, before
the final chapter concludes with some future challenges and
practical insights.

4. Evaluating Impact: Measuring
Success
Despite the dramatic growth of e-recruitment and the perceived

benefits associated with the Internet as a recruitment channel,
little systematic evidence is available to evaluate the impact across
the whole of the recruitment process. The limited evaluation in
this area has primarily concentrated on immediate applicants’
perceptions and reactions to the Internet. This individual
perspective concerning applicant reactions, equivalence to
traditional forms and adverse impact is reviewed in the Appendix.
However, an organisational perspective of impact analysis of
e-recruitment has been largely ignored in practice and in the
published literature.
We set out to review some of the key approaches to the

evaluation of e-recruitment at the organisational level. We
consider the metrics organisations might need to consider
collecting if they are to make informed judgements about the
value of their e-recruitment process to the business. The
argument we put forward here is that traditional approaches to
organisational-level analysis of impact on the recruitment
process (eg time-to-hire etc.) are insufficient. With such heavy
investment in technology, the opportunities are increased, but so
are the risks associated with the management of the staffing
process. Therefore, a frank approach and look at evaluation
processes is required. The first question we addressed however,
was why bother measuring impact?
4.1 Importance of measurement in e-recruitment
Demonstrating the value of any HR intervention is increasingly
important in organisations. In recent years, the HR function has
come under renewed calls to prove its contribution to the bottom
line and to corporate performance. Likewise, HR professionals
aware of the pressures on their budgets have been keen to
understand the relative ‘fruits of their labour’, and are measuring
more and more.
The experiences of IES members suggests that the emergence of

fundamentally new e-enabled recruiting processes not only
increases the opportunities, but also the risks associated with the
resourcing process. Hence, evaluation of those risks and benefits
becomes more important. There are several factors that
determine an organisation’s commitment to the measurement of
its e-recruitment efforts. These include:
z Human capital — More organisations are recognising the

contribution of intangible, human assets to their future
capability and market value. The identification and acquisition
of talent is seen as a key element of the talent or human capital
management process. Research by Watson Wyatt, for example,
found a positive correlation between a company’s Human
Capital Index (HCI) score and its financial results: the better an
organisation manages its human capital, the higher its
shareholder value. The same research identifies excellence in
recruitment and retention associated with a 7.9 per cent increase
in market value.
z Return on investment — Few organisations would be willing to
support the necessary investment in the enabling IT
infrastructure and software for e-recruitment without a firm
business case. In order to compile one, recruiters are required to
illustrate proposed cost savings and process efficiencies as a
return on investment (ROI).
z Third-party management — The majority of organisations’
e-recruitment initiatives (large hightechs such as Cisco, IBM,
Oracle being the exceptions) are largely dependent upon a range
of third party suppliers, eg Internet job boards, software
suppliers, ASPs etc. Who they choose to use, and for how long,
will be determined by the confidence the organisation has in the
solution offered and in the performance measures achieved.

z Automatic reporting —We reviewed earlier the potential for
software (applicant tracking systems) to automate large
elements of the recruitment process. More recruiters will be
involved in the collation and analysis of performance measures
simply because they can.
z Repositioning of HR — In addition, thinking of staffing as a
supply chain, as discussed in Chapter 2, has for some moved its
resourcing activity to a more strategic model. The expectations
of senior management of evidence of impact are consequently
higher. Senior HR professionals increasingly see the use of
metrics as a critical tool that can help staffing attain the level of
business partner, and help to align the recruitment function
with business objectives.
To what extent do existing staffing measures and metrics provide

organisations and HR departments with the information
required to feed into decisions on the above factors? The next
section examines issues with existing measures, and suggests an
alternative approach (supply chain measurement) to be used
with e-recruitment. The final section considers the evidence from
practice taken from the case study organisations.
4.2 Why supply chain measurement?

4.2.1 Traditional staffing measures
The vast majority of today’s HR measures focus on efficiency,
such as training hours per employee, benefit costs per employee,
HR functional costs per total costs, etc. (Corporate Leadership
Council, 2001). This is understandable because of the dominance
of accounting-based measures. But relying solely on such input-
output measures risks the danger of striving only for the lowest-
cost or fastest delivery of HR programs. ‘Effectiveness’ and
‘quality of impact’ are not readily captured by cost-based
measures, so without a point of view that clearly articulates all
three elements, efficiency will get the attention and action.
Previous research (Boudreau and Ramstad, 2001) argues that

existing staffing process measurement systems typically fail to
provide the information necessary to understand, evaluate and
make rational decisions about investments in the staffing system,
and fail to support decisions about staffing HR professionals, line
managers, applicants and employees. As a result, organisations
often base decisions about their staffing systems solely on
information about the volume of applicants or new hires, or the
costs and time involved in staffing activities.
4.2.2 Impact and evaluation measures

How accurate is the claim that current measures of impact in this
area focus on efficiency (input and output measures), as opposed
to measures of effectiveness and quality of output? Figure 4.1
illustrates the evidence from the IES survey, which asked
organisations to indicate which evaluation measures they
currently use. The findings suggest that the former is true.
Number of successful applications, cost per hire, and Internet/
intranet site traffic analysis, were the most frequently used
measures in our sample; all input-output measures. Measures of
Figure 4.1: Evaluation measures used
No. of successful
applications
Cost per hire
Internet/intranet site
traffic analysis
HR/recruitment team
satisfaction
Feedback from business
line managers
Time to offer
Assessment centre hit-

rate
Percent of applications
received on time
Compliance/completeness
of applications
Employee retention
Educational level of
applicants
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

quality were less evident. Some of the reasons for this are
explored below.
4.2.3 Peeling back the onion

As discussed in Chapter 2, the implementation of e-recruitment
is prompting many organisations to look at the end-to end
staffing processes as a ‘supply’ or ‘value’ chain. ‘Hard to fill’
positions may justify high cost, for example. But what if the
hiring managers are rejecting too many suitable candidates on
inappropriate criteria, or the job specification to the recruiter is
not right? These are issues with the effectiveness of the internal
process, disguised as spending issues. Similarly, users of new
sources of recruitment advertising, eg the Internet, may well
generate more applicants of high enough quality to justify
receiving offers. But a large number of offers does not necessarily
guarantee the same or better acceptance rates. The ROI on online
recruitment might look pretty poor if only cost per hire metrics
were used. But looking more carefully at the root cause of fewer
hires than with the traditional recruiting methods, pinpoints
problems with the ‘offers’ themselves, or potentially the ability of
the hiring managers to ‘land’ talent.
What is needed, therefore, is a framework that provides an

overview of the measures required at each stage of the staffing
process. We review such an approach here.
4.2.4 Staffing supply-chain measurement grid

The staffing supply-chain measurement grid illustrated in Figure
4.2 (adapted from Boudreau and Ramstad, 2001) plots the
staffing process presented in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.1) against a
variety of metrics (eg cost per hire, time to fill, quality of hire).
The grid provides a supply-chain measurement framework for
evaluating where staffing measures are sufficient, and where
they may be lacking, at each stage of the recruitment and
selection process.
Working with a small number of case study organisations, IES

used the framework as a mechanism for exploring the
availability, and validity, of the data each organisation held on
their staffing processes. The intention was to determine the
usefulness of a supply-chain approach to measurement in
Figure 4.2: Staffing supply-chain measurement grid
Cost Time Volume Diversity Satisfaction Quality Value

Planning
Recruiting
Screening
Selecting
Offering/
closing
Induction
Source: IES, 2003, adapted from Boudreau and Ramstad, 2001
making optimal investment decisions in e-recruitment systems.

This was a first attempt to present an approach to measuring the
value of e-recruitment, applying the supply-chain analogy to the
staffing process via the grid presented in Figure 4.2.
The following section of the report summarises the outcome of

this exercise.
4.3 e-Recruitment measures in practice: working

the chain
The categories of measurement we explored with the participating
companies were as follows:
z cost of recruitment and selection activities: ie all those measures

that assign pounds to the resources used in the recruitment
process
z time: ie the time taken to fill vacancies and the elapsed time
between stages (eg the time from interview to offer acceptance)
z volume/yield: ie the number of job applicants passing through
the staffing process, distinguished by whether they were on or
offline. Data on retention rates were included where available.
z diversity and legal compliance: includes measures relating to
the volume of candidates at each stage according to their ethnic
origin, age, gender, disability etc.
z candidate and employer satisfaction: includes judgements about
the effectiveness of the process from the perspective of the

candidates, the line managers, recruiters, and any market
perspective of the employer brand
z quality/value of the recruit: includes any measures relating to
the predictive quality of the candidate (eg performance in
assessment tests) and concurrently new recruits’ performance
on the job etc.
The question we asked our case study organisations was how

completely did their current measures cover the grid, and what
were the priority measures for them? This was an exploratory
exercise to gain initial feedback on how usable the grid might be
for organisations, rather than requiring each of them to fill it in.
Any future research in this area would aim to take a smaller
group of organisations and ask them to fill in the grid and report
back in some detail. At this stage, the aim was to explore the
application of such a grid to the evaluation process.
4.4 Costs
4.4.1 Cost per hire
Cost per hire is the critical measure used by most organisations
to determine the effectiveness of their recruitment spend. At least
two of our member organisations were using the Saratoga
Institute measure of cost per hire in order to benchmark their
costs relative to others.
The Saratoga Institute measure includes six basic elements to

calculate cost per hire: advertising; agency and search firm fees;
referral bonus paid to employees; travel costs incurred by both
recruiters and applicants; relocation costs, and the recruiter’s salary
costs (pro rata according to proportion of time spent).
A more typical measure of cost per hire amongst IES members

appeared to be advertising, agency fees and direct costs
associated with recruitment fairs. Interestingly, it was those
organisations that had had to complete a cost-benefit analysis as
part of the business case for the purchase of applicant tracking or
other major system changes, that had the most complete data on
the true costs.
An average across all hires doesn’t enable recruiters to

determine, for example, which positions are costing the most to
fill and why. To do this, a better measure is the cost per hire for a
group of like positions (eg sales managers, lawyers). A higher
cost may be justified in the harder to fill positions, with skill
requirements that are harder to find.
4.4.2 Cost per advertising medium

With the exponential growth of job boards on the Internet,
recruiters want to know where to spend their money most
effectively.
In the past, the amount of traffic to a job site (page impressions

or otherwise) has been used as a proxy for its effectiveness. A
more popular performance measure is applications per job
posting. This is the number of candidate responses for each time
a specific job is posted to a specific job site. There are providers,
such as HP Portal, who offer analysis of job sites using this
measure. The data are held at a low level, meaning that it can
analyse job site performance by specific job title, level of
experience, salary and geography.
A high volume of applications per posting is no guarantee of

success in recruiting quality candidates. Hence, a preferred
performance measure of a job board by one of our RN members
is the cost per qualified candidate. Measuring the number of
actual hires over a given period from a job board is dependent
upon too many other factors in the process, eg the speed with
which the employer responds to an application. A better
indicator of comparative job-board effectiveness would be
whether or not they are consistently referring a flow of
candidates who the employer would wish to pursue further, etc.
4.5 Time to fill

It is not in any way unusual for organisations to measure the
total length of the cycle time from requisition to job offer. Many
recruitment departments have had service-level agreements with
explicit targets, and many in turn establish them with external
agencies.
The adopters of e-recruitment methodologies typically expect to

see reductions in time to fill, and had made their business case
for investment on that basis.

‘The time an important post is left unfilled within the company has a
greater impact on our business units’ performance than anything else.
We’ll continue to spend what we need to in order to get key posts
filled quickly with the right people. An important part of the business
case for e-recruitment was that by reaching a wider pool of possibles
and processing their applications more efficiently, we’d have a
positive impact on business performance. We only had to include
some preliminary figures on the potential loss of sales without a
regional sales director to win that argument.’
One member reported the benefits of having time-to-fill metrics

for each stage of the process as a means of emphasising the
shared accountability between the recruiter in HR and the line
manager.
‘We’ve had in the past, line managers who will hold onto CVs for
weeks at a time and then complain about how long it takes
‘personnel’ to come up with the goods. Now we can show them just
where the hold-ups are.’
Others were placing more emphasis on reducing the amount of

time it took them to respond to applications.
‘Our own research with our graduate intake tells us that if people
apply online they expect a fast response. We can use the system to
generate a response immediately if we choose, but the value for us is
in improving the quality of the relationship we’ve got with anyone
who applies.’
4.6 Diversity
4.6.1 Importance of diversity measures
There are many reasons why the measurement of diversity data
is important. It may be a case of simply seeking to ensure the
organisation is meeting its record-keeping requirements with
regard to equal opportunities legislation. Organisations with a
presence in the US, for example, have to comply with an agreed
percentage of identified demographic groups compared to their
representation in the population. Through the public sector in
the UK, many organisations have become very good at this
particular aspect of staffing measurement, and have sound data
on the numbers of protected groups at virtually every stage of
the recruitment and selection process.
There are other, more strategic business drivers for

systematically diagnosing which aspects of the staffing process
contribute positively or negatively to the representation of key
groups. A diverse organisation is well placed to develop its
reputation as a socially responsible employer. An employer
needs to work hard to attract and retain talent and, as
competition for the best increases, businesses that do not have a
good reputation as an employer will find themselves at a
disadvantage. Being an employer of choice in an environment
with an increasingly diverse and ageing population, means
ensuring that employment policies and practices are attractive to
all groups.
It is not unusual for organisations to be taking positive action

within their traditional recruitment strategies to encourage
diversity. Initiatives undertaken by IES members included:
z targeted advertising to increase applications from black and

minority ethnic groups, women and those with disabilities
z recruitment fairs and events in local communities, universities
and colleges
z roundtable events with black and minority ethnic professional
associations
z the use of diversity advisers in the shortlisting process, and the
provision of recruitment training.
But what impact is the move to e-recruitment having? The

experiences of Research Network members suggests there are
both opportunities and threats that are influencing what they
measure. We review some of these below.
4.6.2 Online opportunities …

The positive opportunities enabled by e-recruitment technologies
include:
z targeted advertising via the proliferation of niche job boards

catering for, or promoted by, minority, ethnic, voluntary and
community organisations

z the use of the corporate website to convey the organisations
policy on diversity and to visually demonstrate, via photographs
and job profiles, the value placed on a diverse workforce.
‘Our website, for example, includes a section entitled ‘Getting to know

us’ in which a young black woman is featured as saying ‘two years
ago I became a mum and found it difficult to work full time. I was
lucky enough to have the option of job-share which I have now been
doing for the past eighteen months.’
Head of Recruitment, Mediaco
z The Internet has opened up a greater variety of candidate

sources. Complying with legal obligations doesn’t mean
ignoring the need to proactively source and locate the best
potential applicants. What it does mean is that you want to
make sure you are reaching candidates from a variety of places.
Capturing the candidate source, aids employers in that effort.
z Good practice amongst those using online applications is to
enable candidates the opportunity to self-identify online.
Capturing equal opportunities online is generally favoured
because the chances of obtaining that data is increased.
z The theoretical possibility is that, with an applicant tracking
system, recruiters can more easily capture the progress of
candidates and applicants through the recruitment and selection
process automatically, by simply moving a candidate through
the workflow and documenting reasons when not selected. This
automates the candidate flow log, complies with record-keeping
requirements, and can provide extremely useful information in
any equal opportunities audit, etc. However, none of our
participating organisations had yet put this to the test.
4.6.3 … and threats

There are concerns however, that employers that rely heavily on
the Internet to create applicant flow could open themselves up to
disparate impact and/or discrimination claims. The key areas in
which organisations share a growing concern with their ability to
evaluate practice include:
z Digital divide: Research evidence suggests that not all sections

of society have equality of access to the Internet (Lievens and
Harris, 2003; Anderson, 2003). For some, this concern has led to
a clear decision not to limit applicant response methods to the
Internet for any position, and to always use other media for
advertising and other options for applying. As discussed in
Chapter 2, this has had an impact on cost savings on time-to-
hire efficiencies for any e-recruitment application. Others have
adopted a piecemeal approach where, for example, for positions
where the ability to use the Internet (such as webmaster), is a
necessary job function, the use of exclusively online advertising
and application is appropriate.
z Automatic screening: As discussed in the previous chapter, the
technology is being used to screen applications on set criteria.
As highlighted, there are dangers in this approach if it is poorly
designed. For example, few organisations actually measure the
accuracy of their screening process — even though there can be
serious legal consequences if you can’t prove the job relatedness
and lack of adverse impact. When the screening is moved
online, it is not clear whether the risks are reduced or increased,
as highlighted by some of our members. The only way to avoid
this is to have better designed application forms, and ensure
that sifting criteria are soundly linked to job performance.
4.7 Quality of hire

One might imagine that the primary measure of hiring success
should be the quality or performance of the successful recruit or
hire. After all, not all new recruits will perform the same, and an
effective recruitment process will want to ensure it is recruiting
those who are the most productive.
In practice, very few organisations regularly and systematically

measure the quality of their recruits, for example in assessing
later performance on the job. In some organisations, quality-of-
hire evaluations are restricted to all but the most senior
appointments. After all, these are the most expensive recruits,
and poor quality hires or terminations at the top will have an
immediate impact on market value. In others, quality-of-hire
evaluations are made for high-volume recruitment campaigns
(for example, for customer service operators in call centres).
In a traditional recruitment environment, measures of the quality

of hire would be used to identify, for example:
z from where the highest performers come

z whether there are factors in the selection process that predict
success (eg scores in assessment tests)

z possibly the hiring managers or recruiter responsible for
recruiting high quality hires, so that they can be rewarded/
used again.
4.7.1 Quality of an online hire

The quality of the successfully hired applicant is of particular
importance to any evaluation of e-recruitment.
An early criticism of the Internet was that it opens the floodgates

to high volumes of unsuitable and poorly qualified applicants
(Bartram, 2000). In response, as discussed in Chapter 3, an
increasing number of organisations are investing in automatic
pre-sifting tools and online assessment methods to lower the
volume and increase the number of higher quality candidates.
The return on this investment should be a smaller, more
manageable volume of higher quality candidates. As we saw in a
previous chapter, e-recruitment has enabled more use of tools to
assess fit earlier on in the recruitment process.
‘We used to aim for the largest and most-qualified pool of graduate
applicants we could. We know now how costly that was. Putting them
all through the process was just one set of expenses. It’s the cost of
losing them straight after qualifying that really hurts. We’re striving
for ‘optimum’ numbers and quality now. e-Recruitment is helping us
to bring down the numbers of applicants in the pool with our online
selection tests before we have to spend anything. It’s the first class
honours maths graduates that are falling at the first hurdle. We’re
confident we’ll get a better ‘fit’ — they won’t necessarily be the most
qualified on paper but we can give them the early year’s development
they need and they’ll stay longer.’
HR Director, Professional Services Company, IRNA 2002
With so many more possible means of attracting applicants, and

squeezes on advertising and agency costs, organisations cannot
hope to adequately select among them if they don’t assess the
quality and performance of the recruits their systems produce.
Similarly, the adoption of e-recruitment methods has, for many

organisations, corresponded with devolving greater responsibility
for resourcing to the line manager. Metrics provides another way
of reinforcing the line’s responsibility for assessing the quality of
applicants.
In theory, there are a variety of approaches to measuring the
quality-of-hires (Sullivan, 2002). The main categories of
measurement used in practice by IES Research Network
members are:
z individual performance metrics, eg performance appraisal

scores, on-the-job performance as seen in sales volume,
performance in training and development programmes, number
of weeks before reaching the preset minimal acceptable level of
productivity, and higher percentage salary increases (as a
percentage of salary, where salary is related to performance)
z retention rates of new hires, ie the percentage of new hires that are
still with the organisation after a given period
z line manager’s satisfaction with the quality of a recruit, ie a
subjective judgement normally collected via survey at a set
point following recruitment, eg six months.
4.8 Satisfaction
4.8.1 Candidate feedback
Every organisation will have lost excellent candidates as a result
of a bad interview or an offer that didn’t meet their expectations.
A valuable source of data for improving any recruitment process
is getting feedback from the candidates themselves.
In the e-recruitment environments of IES case study organisations,

the need for candidate feedback has largely been driven by two
factors:
z making the careers pages on the corporate website attractive

and easy to use
z improving the quality of service, or ‘candidate relationship’.
Gathering candidate feedback can help identify basic problems

and issues, or it can help quantify what candidates actually think
about the careers site. These are two distinct functions, calling for
two different approaches. On the one hand, it is a relatively
simple matter to allow those candidates who have experienced a
problem on your site to let you know about it. However, if you
would like answers to questions concerning candidates’ likes and
dislikes about the careers site, their informational needs, or
related topics, a more careful approach using good survey design

and sampling methods is required (Snell, 2003). Most
organisations implementing an online application process had
commissioned some form of usability testing under laboratory
conditions, to check factors like ease of navigation.
The simplest form of ‘real’ candidate feedback mechanism is to

implement an email link. Although simple, it is not a preferred
option for recruiters, as analysing and quantifying feedback
received by email is laboriously slow, since each email must be
read and classified according to the type of feedback. Some
organisations are reluctant to include an email address because
of the risk of candidates using it to attach their CVs or to make
general enquiries regarding an application.
‘Initially we just monitored the traffic flow patterns to the careers

pages and that was OK. But the candidates are the most important
users of our website. By asking them for feedback we’ve uncovered
unforeseen technical problems, instructions that just aren’t clear, and
missing information people want.’
Several of our Members were experimenting with a simple

‘suggestion-box’ web form with a preset list of feedback issues,
as a way of labelling or summarising comments. Guiding
candidates to limit their feedback to one of a list of predefined
topics helps to make the intentions of the feedback mechanism
clear, and is easier for recruiters to analyse.
A more sophisticated feedback mechanism, used by one Research

Network member, includes a survey-type mechanism in which
the topics and possible responses are largely predetermined. It
includes a small number of closed-ended questions with multiple-
choice or yes/no responses, and answers on a numerical scale (eg
1 = not at all important; 5 = extremely important). In addition
there is an ‘open-ended’ question giving candidates the
opportunity to add any additional feedback they might have
about the application process or the website in general. The latter
is not mandatory. There are concerns about the reluctance of
candidates to put the required amount of time and effort into a
feedback section, and scepticism that an eager candidate would
give anything other than a glowing account of their experience.
One participating organisation had extended their candidate

feedback beyond the use of the website.
‘It became clear after a few months of using the system, that having
put the majority of applications online we were having to answer a
number of phone calls and emails from candidates wanting to know
whether we’d received their form. We decided to do something about
this ‘black hole’ syndrome. Now we measure the volume of
complaints and follow-up calls from candidates and our time to
acknowledge (with a personalised response). If they are called in for
interview, we distribute a short feedback questionnaire for them to
complete at that time.’
4.8.2 Brand image

The corporate website is being used as a shop window in which
to present the organisation as an employer of choice. By
automating some or all aspects of the recruitment process, the
brand is put to the test. As soon as a candidate applies for a job
with the company it is critical how they are treated — if they
have a bad experience it will have a negative impact on the
employer brand.
Understandably, there is growing interest in how to measure

employer of choice brand. Advertising agencies have been doing
this for years, and have models for doing so (Sullivan, 2002).
Typically, the dimensions of employment brand measured are:
z awareness: ie the degree to which those potential applicants

who you want to know you realise you exist. Awareness
measures are helpful to recruiters because they help determine
whether or not employment communications are reaching the
target audience.
z differentiation: ie the degree to which those you want to attract
to the organisation make positive distinctions between you and
their other employer options. For example, a typical
differentiation measure might be whether or not this
organisation is one that the candidate would trust.
z perceived quality and popularity: ie the degree to which your
organisation is recognised for growth and reputation.
Companies report that e-recruitment has had a positive effect on

how it is perceived as an employer. Interestingly, in many
organisations the evidence is owned by the employee
communications function, and not necessarily HR, which has

implications for the role of HR in understanding and integrating
this information into the recruitment process. For some
organisations, the connection may never be made.
‘The website provided a very straightforward and clear process from

initial application to acknowledgement, invitation for interview and
regular updates on the progress of an application. The design of the
online application process gives our applicants a real sense of what
we value and how we use cutting edge technology for their benefit
and not just to automate processes.’
Internal Communications Manager, Financial Services 2
4.8.3 Line manager satisfaction

Changes to HR services has meant that line managers are the
major customers, and there is more of an need to understand
whether they are satisfied with the service HR provides and how
it can be improved. The case study organisations that we spoke
to reported that the feedback from line managers was poor as to
the value that they were getting from the introduction of
e-recruitment. Many of the line managers were reportedly
resistant to change towards new e-recruitment systems,
preferring instead to rely on the relationship that they had built
up with recruitment agencies. While the feedback was not
positive and adoption amongst line managers remained limited,
many of the recruiters felt that this was down to a lack of
knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment systems and
what they could do for them. One case study organisation had
poured resources into this by allocating an e-recruitment
manager to help line managers identify how they could best use
the new system. While they may be successful in getting the line
manager to use the system while they were in support, once the
e-recruitment manager returned to central office, the line
manager resorted back to using recruitment agencies.
Much of the feedback had come through formal reviews of the

e-recruitment system, or through visits to line managers to
gather feedback during the recruitment process, or directly after.
There was limited evidence of a systematic approach to
obtaining information on line manager satisfaction.
4.9 The measurement challenge
IES detects a growing sense of unease among e-recruitment users
about the divide between increased functionality on the
application front, and reporting capabilities. The preceding pages
have attempted to summarise the measurement practice of just a
small sample of organisations who have implemented
e-recruitment. None of them would claim to have adopted a
systematic supply-chain or process-led approach to their
evaluation. What then are the main inhibitors or enablers to a
more strategic approach to evaluating an organisation’s
resourcing efforts?
4.9.1 Identifying source

As we have seen, the adoption of a fully online approach to
candidate attraction, application, assessment, selection and
relationship management, is rarely done in a single giant leap.
Most organisations are evolving their e-recruitment strategy
from online advertising, through the development of their
corporate website to applicant tracking and integration with the
back-end systems. With the process in such a constant state of
change, and with a complicated mix of media and approaches in
use for different posts in different business units, it is
understandably hard to evaluate impact.
One of the more fundamental difficulties in comparing the

effectiveness of off and online recruitment is that of getting a true
measure of where a candidate originated, ie candidate source.
The question remains, which Internet source leads to better or
more qualified candidates?
‘We won’t be attempting that rigorous an evaluation because we

simply don’t know for sure where our candidates come from. When
asked, most candidates do not remember where they saw the ad on
the Internet, only that they saw it on the Internet. If a candidate
responds directly from a job board, then the name of the job board
will be in the response. If, however, candidates send an email directly
to us they often won’t include the name of the board. Even if you
specify in the job ad that they should respond with a specific job
identifier which indicates a code for the job board, not all will do so.
Sometimes the candidate sees the opportunity on a job board, goes
to our corporate website to find out more, and then submits an
application directly on our site. We’ll just be driving more and more

‘traffic’ to our careers pages and tracking them from the point they
apply online.’
Senior HR Services Manager, Financial Services 2
4.9.2 Multi-source integration
‘Our problem is not a lack of measures. We have statistics coming out

of our ears on advertising spend and time to fill. We spend a lot of
time and energy on compiling records for individual candidate’s
performance in selection tests and during early training. We have a
culture that emphasises the importance of good performance
appraisal, and we do our exit interviews. But all this information is
held by different parts of the HR team that are responsible for that
activity. We don’t have a way to bring it all together easily and track
it through.’
HR Director, Director of Global Staffing, Pharmco
The inability of an organisation’s recruitment database to talk to

the core HRIS is a source of some considerable frustration for
recruiters wishing to use the data available in a strategic way. A
two-way interface between recruitment and HRM systems
would enable them to extract data on previous hires and the
workforce, as well as import data on the new ones.
‘All we’d like to be able to do is call up the details of our top

performers and find out where their applications originated. We’d like
to make a start by linking our information from recruitment with the
information we hold on individual employees. The employee’s record
would tell us how they first heard about the job, their recruitment
source, their selection ratings etc. Even if we could make this link on
the system, we’re not sure if we can legally — would we be in breach
of data protection?’
HR Consultant, Financial Services 2
This approach would also rely heavily on the accuracy of the

data and validity of doing this without the supporting rigorous
research. In one case, the absence of an integrated back-end HRIS
with any online pre-screening has seriously compromised the
potential benefits.
‘We have had to duplicate a lot of the effort, re-entering a new

recruit’s data onto the system once the application process is
complete. Even then we don’t have the data teams in the HRIS that
we’d like. When we needed to review the effectiveness of our very
expensive online pre-screening tool, we had to run a manual exercise
of matching ‘performance of recruit by assessment score’ and
‘retention by assessment score’. It would be so much easier if that
was on the employee’s record in the first place.’
HR Strategy Consultant, Financial Services 1
4.9.3 Worth the effort?

Recruiters obviously have to keep things in perspective —
metrics are guidelines, not answers. There are genuinely good
reasons for avoiding measuring everything and falling into a
state of ‘paralysis by analysis’.
However, the best measurement system creates measures that

can have the greatest impact on decisions, and are not cost
prohibitive (Boudreau and Ramstad, 2001). Although not yet
there, IES members share our conclusion that better information
about the end-to-end process should lead to better decisions
about any investment in e-recruitment. Meaningful data that can
support key business decisions is the ultimate goal, and the
measurement grid presented in this report is one way to
structure this. An evaluation approach linked to the staffing
process as ‘value chain’, we argue, is the way forward if
organisations are truly going to understand the value of
e-recruitment.

5. Emerging Challenges: Lessons
from the Bleeding Edge
This final chapter summarises the main findings from the IES
research into e-recruitment. We then go on to consider the
implications of these findings for the role of the recruiter. In
doing this we raise challenges in developing a strategy for
e-recruitment, as well examining the capabilities needed within
the HR function to deliver an effective e-recruitment process. We
finish the chapter by suggesting a number of questions that
organisations can ask prior to, or during adoption of
e-recruitment, that can act as a practical checklist for HR
professionals.
5.1 What does the research and practice tell us

about e-recruitment?
5.1.1 Trends
A review of the published evidence to date, the IES survey, and
the data from the case study organisations, all point to a shifting
landscape within recruitment, whereby the focus is on
developing the relationship with the candidate, and the
involvement with the line manager. e-Recruitment can help to
facilitate this, and brings with it other suggested benefits (eg
improved employer profile, reduced recruitment costs) that
make it an attractive proposition for many organisations.
However, it is unclear how these benefits are realised, and there
are without doubt reported challenges in implementation,
including the cultural approach of the organisation towards
e-recruitment and the lack of knowledge within the HR
community. The question also remains, to what extent such an
approach will extend outside large multinational organisations.
The differences in resources and level of technical sophistication
between organisations will have an impact on the extent to
which they adopt e-recruitment in the staffing process.
5.1.2 e-Recruitment methods

Evidence from our survey and case studies suggests that the
predominant methods used with e-recruitment have been
focused on the front end of the process, in the attraction phase (eg
posting of adverts), and less on the selection and assessment
area, or in developing the supporting systems. The concentration
of activity also continues to be in the graduate market, although
there is a steady use of e-recruitment in junior to middle
managers.
Even though there are many options available for online selection
and assessment, including self-assessments, online screening,
psychometric testing online, and online interviews and
simulated assessment centres, the uptake of these methods has
been low. The advantages of online testing are standardisation,
easy scoring and reporting, the possibility of using various tools
(eg video, text, auditory questions) together, and integration with
applicant tracking systems and Internet recruitment techniques.
Potential disadvantages include test security concerns,
equivalency of forms, technology driving the tests, and the
impact on diversity. Guidelines for when to use Internet testing
are being developed and disseminated (BPS Test Users
Conference, 2003), but it may be some time before there is a clear
understanding in the HR community about the transfer of some
of these selection processes.
Recruiters’ adoption of technology for selection and

assessment
The willingness of recruiters to consider adopting emergent

technological solutions for staff selection, will be a key factor in
the progress of the e-recruitment cycle. The IES findings in the
area of selection and assessment reflect concerns regarding a split
in take-up of e-recruitment in all aspects of the process other
than selection and assessment. Some of the influencing factors
that may have an impact on recruiters’ take-up of such

technology in selection have been identified by Anderson (2003)
and include:
z ‘organisational-level’ variables
z ‘individual-level’ variables associated with the recruiter and
their job role
z ‘moderator’ variables, which will influence final decisions as to
whether to adopt new technology in the selection process. These
might include, for example, labour market conditions, applicant
characteristics.
The model being proposed is a general heuristic to explain and

account for recruiters reactions to, and adoption of, technological
innovations in staff selection. It can be used to help recruiters ask
the following questions:
z What are the reasons as to why they might adopt new

technology in selection?
z What are the factors that influence willingness to adopt and
adapt to new workplace practices?
As part of a strategy for e-recruitment, organisations will need to

begin to identify factors that may have an impact on whether
they adopt e-recruitment and selection. For example, if the
performance of the existing recruitment system is faltering and
they are seeking new ways of managing recruitment and
selection, but their organisational culture and climate for
technological innovation is low, it is unlikely that they will turn
to e-recruitment as a solution. Alternatively, if the expectations
from candidates (eg graduates) is that there should be a facility to
apply online, then this is likely to have a significant impact on
willingness and HR strategy. Other agencies, such as job boards
and newspapers, can also use this framework to help understand
which part of their market is likely to adopt the technological
approach. Viewing the uptake of technology within selection and
assessment in this way helps to understand recruiter adoption
decisions, and may be useful for both practitioners and
researchers to consider when addressing barriers to adaptation.
Finally, challenges were also identified in the evidence from the

case studies in effectively developing the back end of the
e-recruitment process. Workflow systems, candidate relationship
management, and the importance of profiling, were all identified
as significant issues in this area.
5.1.3 Evaluating e-recruitment as a supply
chain
Evidence from the research and practice of impact at the
organisational level, tended to focus on traditional measures of
time to hire and cost per fill. Given the increased risks and
investment in e-recruitment, it was suggested that a more
complete approach towards a measure of the value of
e-recruitment was required. In particular, one which measures
the quality, diversity and satisfaction of the e-recruitment
process, based on a staffing supply-chain process. This approach
was piloted in a small number of case study organisation, and
helped to illustrate which parts of the process they were not
assessing, and on which they would like to have more
information.
In summary, the findings illustrate some considerable variation

in use and practice in e-recruitment, and with a particular
emphasis on one end of the process, with only very sophisticated
organisations having adopted online selection. Similarly, most
have adapted evaluation from traditional recruitment to their
online process, although our proposed approach has offered a
fresh framework for this.
A number of wider issues are worth considering, which have

emerged as a result of the research.
5.2 Role of the recruiter and cultural change

5.2.1 A more strategic role?
A compelling argument why online recruitment should be
integrated sooner rather than later, is that it will serve to move
the recruiter up the value chain, allowing them to be far more
strategic. When we queried IES Research Network members
about what a more strategic role for recruiters would mean in
practice, they frequently mentioned the freeing up of
administrative time, enabling more time to be spent on, for
example:
z face-to-face interviewing and assessment of potential candidates

z getting to know the needs of the hiring manager, and together
building more effective job descriptions

z uncovering alternative, effective sourcing channels by trialing
niche job boards, selling the role internally, and generating
employee referrals etc.
z developing potential candidate relationships
z evaluation and continuous improvement.
‘Traditionally, recruitment activity was agency driven. Recruiters were

given short lead times from line manager communities and they were
judged on their ability to respond speedily — pretty much all costs
were acceptable. Going to an agency was an easy option for
recruiters. Now, faced with a more challenging economic climate,
business units across the organisation are more aware of frugal
recruitment techniques such as web mining, free to advertise
websites, online CV databases. Before they advertise externally, we
now expect recruiters to post the vacancy details internally (12 per
cent of posts are filled via employee referrals) and to proactively
search out a talent pool from the database of speculative and
previous applicants. The HR recruiters have not been used to
combining different recruitment activities and managing them as a
pipeline. There is some resistance to using the ‘new’ techniques, and
closer management has become necessary in order to ensure they
are given the appropriate time to reap rewards.’
This latter point made by the e-recruitment manager relates to

many of the emerging questions surrounding cultural change.
5.2.2 Cultural change

One of the significant findings to emerge from the survey and the
case studies, was the impact of the change to e-recruitment on
job roles, in particular, on those within the HR department. The
findings from the survey indicated that a key implementation
challenge was the cultural approach of the organisation towards
e-recruitment, and the lack of knowledge within the HR
community. Many discussed this in terms of seeing e-recruitment
as part of a ‘change programme’, both in terms of a shifting
external view of what the organisation offered, but also in terms
of the roles and tasks that are now required of HR staff. In the
same way that the role of the recruiter is changing as described
above, there was an increasing need for a shift in the culture of
recruitment, both in terms of how things are done by recruiters,
and the relationship to line managers. For many, this meant
changing recruiters and line management behaviours to move
away from relying on agencies, while at the same time
developing new skills to be able to build and search databases,
and develop new relationships with line managers.
While many recruiters were willing and able to do this, where

there was a lack of support to move to the e-recruitment system,
a dual system often operated, and many found they had increased
workloads rather than freeing up time. For generalist HR staff,
this was a particular issue, where only a small portion of their job
was recruitment. In these cases, they found themselves having to
spend a disproportional amount of time learning the new system.
For them, time could be saved by going straight to the agency.
Where these challenges emerged, they were often overcome by
providing extra support and ensuring that the e-recruitment
system delivered, in order to encourage its use in the future.
‘Quick wins’ and ‘easy hires’, through the use of the technology,
was how many organisations were selling it internally.
In future, addressing these cultural change issues for HR staff

and line managers may become more significant than the
technology. For the moment, the focus is on the technology and
the implementation of the system. However, long-term behaviour
change in those that work the system will be more important if
e-recruitment is to sustain itself and bring the benefits that are so
often discussed.
5.2.3 Implications for training and development

Aligned with any introduction of new technology and culture
change, is the requirement for new skill development. Training
to build and search databases, and to become more aware of
what the system can offer, was a priority for many case study
organisations. In addition to this ‘technology-related’ training,
courses or development as part of culture change, (eg induction
for new staff members to include e-recruitment practices) are
needed. As with any change programme, attitudinal and
behavioural change to recruitment practices can effectively be
brought about through training and development. While the
focus has been on the technology training, our evidence suggests
that the next stage for training and development will concentrate
on the ‘softer’ issues of attitudinal and behavioural change.

5.2.4 Service delivery models
Even more dramatic a shift in the role and position of the
recruiter is evident amongst those organisations for whom the
implementation of e-recruitment is just one element of a change to
the HR service delivery model. The introduction of employee self-
service and e-HR is enabling more organisations to adopt any
combination of call centres, shared-service centres, and
outsourcing (Reilly 2003; Kettley, 2003).
A pharmaceutical company is currently adopting a four-tier aligned

staffing model for recruitment:
Self-service: a hiring manager is able, through their desktop, to track

the status of applications and to schedule interviews. Candidates can
apply online, register for email alert of opportunities etc.
Assisted service: a first-level recruitment specialist is available by

phone or email as a first point of call to the candidate. He or she will
scan and process paper applications, conduct an manual screening
and check references, organise medicals etc. They are responsible for
monitoring the status of a vacancy, chasing actions and gathering
candidate feedback on the recruitment experience.
Specialist service: a second-level recruitment specialist is

accountable for the ownership, design and evaluation of the
recruitment process. He or she will review and benchmark recruitment
performance metrics, select vendors and manage contracts, develop
the recruitment teams specialist capability and provide expert advice
and consultancy.
Business partnering: a third-level recruitment specialist will act as

the business partner to business units. Their responsibilities will
include: determining the BU’s demand for recruitment services,
planning strategic manpower needs, managing recruitment budgets
and ensuring alignment with global and local HR strategy.
5.3 Media mix

As people become more sophisticated with the Internet, and
technological expertise increases, expectations for ‘smarter tools’
like e-recruitment increases. However, many want to know to
what extent will it replace traditional recruitment methods?
What is the right balance and media mix to use? In most cases,
the Internet complements conventional recruiting, but what is
the optimum balance, either for cost savings or time to hire?
Companies that have adopted an e-approach still use additional
recruitment media, such as newspapers, professional magazines
and selection consultants, but there is no prescription as to what
the right balance is. Much will depend on the recruitment
strategy, the target audience, and the volume of hires. However,
for many organisations the link may be more to do with
candidate relationship management, and using the technology to
better target the candidate market. For many, the recruitment
process has not changed, but there is just more choice and a
cleverer mix of the media to get the message across to the target
audience.
5.4 Assessing your organisation’s e-recruitment

agenda
There is no one right way to implement e-recruitment.
Organisations are culture, process and operationally unique —
with different ambitions, resources and circumstances. There is
an enormous range of technological options or solutions, which
are advancing rapidly and shifting from the generic to the
customised. Perhaps most importantly of all, the workforce and
the prospective workforce of your organisation are unique, with
their own people-management policies and practices.
The experiences of Research Network members reported here

underline the complexity of considerations and possibilities of
e-recruitment. This final section offers a series of self-assessment
questions, which if answered specific to your organisation and
its HR function, provide the basis for an e-recruitment agenda.
They are grouped around five basic themes:
1. How does resourcing strategy connect to business priorities, and

how are service expectations of internal and external stakeholders
changing?
2. What could HR do better in terms of the recruitment and
resourcing process, policies, services and practices?
3. What contribution can web, voice and other technologies make
to these questions?
4. Does HR have the capabilities to respond to current and future
challenges, and how will the function’s relationships change
internally and with third parties?

5. How will the organisation know if changes to the recruitment
process are effective? What are the key performance indicators or
targets to be used?
5.4.1 Alignment of resourcing strategy and

business priorities
z Is there a clearly defined HR strategy with explicit strategic aims
for resourcing?
z Why should potential talent want to work for your organisation
in comparison with industry competitors? How effectively is the
employer brand communicated via your recruitment process?
z What should the impact of e-recruitment efforts and the
delivery of resourcing services be upon talent management and
the employment relationship?
z What are recruiters’ reasons for adoption?
z To what extent does HR nurture future talent already employed,
and how can e-recruitment innovations contribute in this respect?
z To what extent is HR leadership open minded about wider
e-HR developments, and able to describe their potential to the
business?
z How does the e-recruitment content fit with the employer
proposition and building the employee relationship? What is
the message the organisation wishes to give about itself and the
differentiated propositions it offers target groups of candidates?
5.4.2 Reviewing the e-recruitment process

z How are recruitment and resourcing activities in your
organisation currently delivered — from a unit/functional
structure, or through a process arrangement?
z How is technology currently used to handle the administrative
and transactional elements of resourcing? Are there any
shortcomings with the system or process?
z What feedback mechanisms are used to understand the views of
end users, recruiting managers and candidates, of the
effectiveness of the resourcing services offered?
z Has HR conducted a review of the core/support recruitment
processes? With which stakeholders and other experts? Do the
findings suggest incremental process improvement or more
radical redesign?
z Considering line management expectations, what does the HR
function want to achieve in the short to medium term? Which
process performance standards or benchmarks are being used as
guidelines?
z Which function would own the e-recruitment technology (eg
HR, IT, marketing)?
z Who is the process aimed at? Who will it not target?
5.4.3 What is the role of the new technology?

z How might web technologies improve the way attracting,
recruiting and selecting talent is provided and managed? Which
other related tools will be useful?
z How will technologies be procured?
z Is the recruitment process going all online? What will the mix of
media be?
z What technology is already there and can be used?
z What is the functionality required from the technology, eg can
the selection and assessment tools be supported by the
technology?
5.4.4 HR capability
z Is there recognition that outsourcing can be an essential aspect
of e-recruitment in addition to the deployment of new web
technologies?
z What types of external support are required if HR needs to meet
its e-recruitment goals and objectives? Basic products/services,
customised solutions, wider consultancy?
z How does/will HR manage current third-party arrangements in
resourcing? In what ways? Are formal service reviews conducted
with suppliers themselves? How are shortcomings resolved?
z How will HR manage its future third-party relationships
responsible for e-recruitment? What resource issues have to be
taken into account? How many relationships can be
simultaneously managed effectively?
5.4.5 Measuring success

z Is the organisation seeing improvements in tackling its top
resourcing priorities?

z Which metrics are adopted for which key issues?
z How are the indicators or measures used for e-recruitment
aligned with the organisation’s business performance
measurement?
z What is the ROI? How is it calculated?
z What measures are important to evaluate, eg quality, time to fill,
etc.
z Are the e-recruitment tools in selection and assessment clearly
linked to measuring performance on the job, eg competency-
based application forms? If not, are they worth using?
z Do the selection tools work? How do you know?
z Is there a feedback facility (for HR and candidates)?
5.5 Conclusions
What is the key message from our research? In examining the
findings, the key message for recruiters is to acknowledge that the
adoption of e-recruitment is about more than just the technology.
It is about the recruitment system being able to attract the right
candidate, the selection being based on sound and credible criteria,
and the tracking process being able to integrate with existing
systems. As you would expect with traditional approaches, the
selection processes are grounded in the future performance on
the job rather than what the technology can allow you to do.
Perhaps most significantly, e-recruitment is about cultural and
behavioural change, both within HR and at line management
level. It is about developing the capability of HR to deliver and
facilitate the system and in viewing the staffing process as an
end-to-end process, similar to that of a supply chain. In summary:
z e-Recruitment is more than the technology.

z e-Recruitment is about winning buy-in, and behavioural and
cultural change.
z e-Recruitment means developing the capability of HR and line
managers.
z The strength of the business case is in the potential to transform
the end-to-end value chain.
References
Anderson N (2003), ‘Applicant and Recruiter Reactions to New

Technology in Selection: A Critical Review and Agenda for
Future Research’, International Journal of Selection and
Assessment, Vol. 11(2), pp. 121-136
Association of Graduate Recruiters (2000), ‘Going to work on the
web: Web-based graduate recruitment.’ AGR Briefing No. 11,
July, Association of Graduate Recruiters
Baron H, Austin J (2000), ‘Measuring ability via the Internet:
Opportunities and issues’, paper presented at the Annual
Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, New Orleans
Bartram D (1994), ‘Computer-based assessment’, in Cooper C L
and Robertson I T (eds.), International Review of Industrial and
Organizational Psychology, pp. 31-69, John Wiley and Sons
Bartram D (2000), ‘Internet Recruitment and Selection: Kissing
Frogs to Find Princes’, International Journal of Selection and
Assessment, Vol. 8(4), pp. 261-274
Boudreau J, Ramstad P (2001), Beyond Cost per Hire and Time to
Fill: Supply—Chain Measurement for Staffing, Working Paper
01-16, Centre for Advanced Human Resource Studies,
Cornell University, www.ilr.cornell.edu/CAHRS
Breaugh J, Starke M (2000), ‘Research on employee recruitment:
So many studies, so many remaining questions’, Journal of
Management, Vol. 26(3), pp. 405-434
British Psychological Society (2003), Test Users Conference, Oxford
Bywater J (2002), ‘Internet Recruitment and Selection Systems’,
E-recruitment: Is it delivering?, Presentation at the IES
Research Network Conference, November

Cappeli P (2001), ‘Making the Most of Online Recruiting’,
Harvard Business Review, Vol. 70(3), pp. 139-148
Cober R T, Brown D J, Blumental A J, Doverspike D, Levy P
(2000), ‘The quest for the qualified job surfer: It’s time the
public sector catches the wave’, Public Personnel Management,
Vol. 29(4), pp. 479-494
Coleman A (2001), ‘The web gets personnel’, Director, Vol. 54(8),
pp. 70-74
Corsini S (2001), ‘Wired to hire’, Training, Vol. 36(6), pp. 50-54
Dervous E (2003), ‘Applicant reactions towards recruitment and
selection’, Symposium at the European Association of Work and
Organizational Psychology Conference, Lisbon, June
Dineen B R, Ash S R, Noe R A (2002), ‘A Web of Applicant
Attraction: Person-Organization Fit in the Context of Web-
based Recruitment’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87(4),
pp. 723-734
Electronic Recruiting Index (ERI) (2000), ‘Performance and the
emergence of the middle market’, Executive Summary,
http://www.interbiznet.com/2000ERI
Flynn G (2000), ‘Internet recruitment limits demographic scope’,
Workforce, Vol. 79(4), pp. 85-88
Greenberg C I (1999), ‘Technological innovations and advance-
ment for psychologists working within organisations’, The
Psychologist-Manager Journal, Vol. 3(2), pp. 181-190
Harris M M (1999), ‘Practice network: I-O psychology.com — the
Internet and I-O psychology’, The Industrial-Organizational
Psychologist, Vol. 36(4), pp. 89-93
Harris M M (2000), ‘The Internet and industrial-organizational
psychology: practice and research perspectives’, Journal of e-
Commerce and Psychology, Vol. 1, pp. 4-23
Harris M M, Paajanen G, Blunt M (2003), ‘Internet recruitment:
How does it compare to other sources?’, Symposium to the
Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology, April
Hirsh W, Pollard E, Tamkin P (2000), Free, Fair and Efficient?:
Open internal job advertising, IES Report 371
Hogg C (2000), Internet and E-mail Use and Abuse, London:
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Hogler L R, Henle C, Bemus C (1998), ‘Internet Recruiting and
Employment Discrimination: a legal perspective’, Human
Resource Management Review, Vol. 8(2), p. 149
IDS Study Plus (2000), Online Recruitment, London, Incomes Data
Services
iLogos Research (1998), ‘Achieving Results with Internet,
Recruiting’, Recruitsoft.com/iLogos Research, Accessed August
2002: www.ilogos.com/iLogosReport1998/secure/medias/
InternetRecruiting_1998.pdf
iLogos Research (2002), Global Web Site Recruiting, 2002 Survey,
accessed August 2002: www.ilogos.com/iLogosReport2002/
secure/medias/Global500_2002Survey.pdf
Kerrin M, Icasati-Johanson B (2003), ‘Supply-Chain Partnering’
Holman D, Wall T D, Clegg C W, Sparrow P, Howard A,
(eds.), The New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of
Modern Working Practices, John Wiley & Sons
Kettley P, Reilly P (2003), eHR: An Introduction, IES Report 398
Kuhlen A (2001), ‘E-recruiting: European Fortune Global 500
Corporate Recruiting Website Analysis’, Erecruitix Research,
Accessed August 2002, from: www.erecruitix.com/
Andreas.kuhlen/EF500.htm
Laurence S (1999), ‘Employment sites’, Iconocast, 10 June 1999,
www.iconocast.com
Lievens F, Harris M M (2003), ‘Research on Internet Recruiting
and Testing: Current Status and Future Directions’, in
Cooper C L, Robertson I T (eds.), International Review of
Industrial and Organisational Psychology, Vol. 18, John Wiley &
Sons
Lievens F, van Dam K, Anderson N (2002), ‘Recent trends and
challenges in personnel selection’, Personnel Review, Vol.
31(5), pp. 580-601
Martin J (1998), ‘Changing jobs? Try the net’, Fortune, Vol. 137(4),
pp. 205-208

McBride J R (1998), ‘Innovations in computer-based ability testing:
Promise, problems and perils’, in Hakel M D (ed.), Beyond
Multiple Choice, pp. 113-129, Lawrence Erlbaum
Mead A D (2001), ‘How well does Web-based testing work?
Results of a survey of users of NetAssess’, Oswald F L
(Chair), Computers=good? How test-user and test-taker perceptions
affect technology-based employment testing, Symposium
presented at the 16th Annual Conference of the Society for
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Diego
Plumbley P (1990), Recruitment and Selection, Institute of Personnel
Management
Reynolds D H, Sinar E (2001), ‘Applicant reactions to Internet-
based selection techniques’, Oswald F L (Chair) Computers=
good? How test-user and test-taker perceptions affect technology-
based employment testing, Symposium presented at the 16th
Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology, San Diego
Reynolds D H, Sinar E, McClough A (2000), ‘Evaluation of a
Internet-based selection procedure’, Mondragon N J (Chair),
Beyond the demo: The empirical nature of technology-based
assessments, Symposium presented at the 15th Annual
Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, New Orleans
Rozelle A, Landis R (2002), ‘An examination of the relationship
between use of the Internet as a recruitment source and
student attitudes’, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 18(5),
pp. 593-604
Silvester J, Anderson N, Haddleton E, Cunningham-Snell N,
Gibb A (2000), ‘A cross-modal comparison of telephone and
face-to-face interviews in graduate recruitment’, International
Journal of Selection and Assessment, Vol. 8(1), pp. 16-21
Snell A (2003), ‘Methods of Career Site Feedback’, Recruiting
News, Vol. 5, Issue 3, January, Association for Internet
Recruiting
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference
(2001/2002)
Stanton J, Rogelberg S (1999), Challenges and obstacles I
conducting employment testing via the Internet, Oswald F L
(Chair), Computers=good? How test-user and test-taker perceptions
affect technology-based employment testing, Symposium
presented at the 16th Annual Conference of the Society for
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Diego
Sullivan J (2002), ‘Measuring your Employer Brand’, Electronic
Recruiting Exchange, www.erexchange.com, October
Sullivan J (2002), ‘Quality-of-hire: What to measure and when to
measure it’, Electronic Recruiting Exchange,
www.erexchange.com, April
Taylor C (2001), ‘Windows of Opportunity’, People Management,
Vol. 7(5), pp. 32-36
Weiss E, Barbeite G (2001), Internet as a job source and job site
preference, Paper presented at the 16th Annual Conference of
the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
San Diego
Zottoli M A, Wanous J P (2000), Recruitment Source Research:
Current Status and Future Directions, Human Resource
Management Review, Vol. 10(4), pp. 353-383
Zusman R, Landis R (2002) Applicant preferences for Web-based
versus traditional job postings, Computers in Human
Behaviour, Vol.18(3), pp. 285-296

Appendix: Individual-level evaluation
Applicant reactions
There is a significant and growing amount of research on
applicant reactions to various e-recruitment approaches, eg job
sites, corporate websites (Weiss and Barbeite, 2001), and also
growing understanding of applicant reactions to various stages
in the e-recruitment process.
Applicants’ reactions to the recruitment phase have been studied

by Zusman and Landis (2002), who compared potential
applicants’ preferences for Web-based postings versus traditional
job postings, and did not confirm a preference for Web-based job
information. Rozelle and Landis (2002) compared reactions of
undergraduate students to the Internet as a recruitment source
and more traditional sources (ie personal referral, college visit,
brochure, video and magazine), and found that the Internet was
seen as more realistic than the other sources. They also reported
that the Internet recruitment sources were seen as less formal
than brochures. Anderson (2003) suggests that students, as
younger applicants, are more likely to be more favourable to
Internet media than older, less computer literate applicants, and
suggests that care should be taken in generalising these findings
to recruitment for permanent jobs in industry (Lievens, van Dam
and Anderson, 2002).
Applicants’ reactions to Internet-based testing have gained a lot

of understanding from previous knowledge of computer-based
testing (eg Alkhadher et al., 1994; Bartram, 1994). The use of the
Internet has promised much in the area of testing, but it is
recognised that research is struggling to keep pace with the
speed with which the Internet is being adopted by organisations
(Lievens and Harris, 2003; Anderson, 2003). Research that exists
suggests positive applicant reactions to Internet testing (eg Baron
and Austin, 2000; Harris et al., 2003; Dervous, 2003), but this is
mainly at the reaction level. There is a need to move away from
the assessment of reaction levels to testing, toward better
indicators of the impact on behaviour, eg remaining in the
selection process, intention to take up the post, etc. (Anderson,
2003; Lievens and Harris, 2003). Mead (2001), and Reynolds,
Sinar and McClough (2000), also found positive candidate
reactions to Internet-based personality tests when compared to
traditional pen and paper forms of administration. Studies have
also found that Internet-based selection procedures can have a
positive impact on perceptions of the organisation (eg company
image) amongst potential applicants (Reynolds and Sinar, 2001).
Equivalence
There is a shortage of research comparing the equivalence of
traditional forms of sourcing applications against the Internet
forms. Questions that need to be answered here include: does the
use of new technology produce the same quality and quantity of
applicants? Does the technology impact upon applicant’s
decisions to self-select out in any different way to more
traditional forms of recruitment. What is the potential adverse
impact associated with this? (Breaugh and Starke, 2000; Dineen,
Ash and Noe, 2002). A review by Anderson (2003) failed to find
any published papers as to whether predictive validities or
adverse impact ratios in selection differ between paper and pen
and Internet-based tests of cognitive ability or personality
inventories. If test publishers are carrying them out internally, it
is suggested that it is important for these to be published to
inform practitioners with a better understanding of the impact of
tests. It is more likely that these studies have not been carried out,
and are perhaps unlikely to be, given the difficulties of executing
them in practice and the current focus on the technology (Test
Users Conference, 2003).
Adverse impact
It has been recognised that e-recruitment has the potential for
bimodal outcomes, in that the use of the Internet can on the one
hand exacerbate adverse impact against minority groups, while
on the other hand it has the potential to remove bias against

minorities in this area. In recruitment, the latter effect stems from
the potential for minority groups to being able to easily access
the Internet via personal computers in the home or elsewhere.
Indeed, research findings on selection methods administered by
new technology have found that they can reduce or even negate
minority-majority group differences (Silvester et al., 2000). At the
same time, there is serious potential for legal challenges against
organisations who, in using e-recruitment, may be ‘unwittingly
operating an anti-diversity policy through differential access to
the Internet’ (Anderson, 2003), which is also suggested to have
an impact on promoting workforce diversity (Stanton and
Rogelberg, 1999). The imperative is now with organisations to
ensure that sufficient proportions of minorities obtain access to
their corporate recruitment websites in the first place.
Some of the points raised here reflect wider issues regarding the
emergence of a ‘digital divide’, and concern around who it is that
is becoming proficient in the use of computers. That is, some
groups (females and older people) are thought to be
disadvantaged by Internet applications. Concerns are paramount
in the selection and assessment aspect of e-recruitment, and the
challenge for practitioners consists of implementing tests that
produce administrative and cost efficiencies, and at the same
time ensuring fairness (Leivens and Harris, 2003; Stanton and
Rogelberg, 1999). There are implications for the procedure and
organisational testing policies within an Internet environment, in
particular in relation to legislation and the administration of
tests. These issues were reviewed in the BPS Test Users
Conference in June 2003.
Summary
In summary, some researchers such as Anderson (2003) are
critical of the current research in the area of individual
evaluation of the impact of e-recruitment. He suggests a need to
move away from reaction-level research and reliance on students
as samples, to include other candidate groups. Lievens and
Harris (2003) and Anderson (2003) criticise the lack of theory in
this area, with the focus of research addressing descriptive-level
questions. They draw an analogy with the training evaluation
research, where the focus at the individual level is on immediate
reactions rather than the longer-term learning outcomes. With
e-recruitment, it is suggested that any future work on applicant
reactions needs to assess how reactions impact upon applicants’
intentions to remain in the selection procedure, organisational
commitment or applicant decision making as a result of exposure
to methods.

E-Recruitment: Is It Delivering?: M Kerrin, P Kettley

Uploaded by

Document Informationclick to expand document information

Document Informationclick to expand document information

Copyright:

Available Formats

E-Recruitment: Is It Delivering?: M Kerrin, P Kettley

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

E-Recruitment: Is It Delivering?: M Kerrin, P Kettley

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

e-Recruitment:

IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF REPORTS IES PDF

Measuring Up: Benchmarking Graduate Retention

Your Graduates and You:

Kirkpatrick and Beyond: A review of models of training evaluation

Resourcing the Training and Development Function

Chore to Champions: the making of better people managers

New Directions in Management Development

Work-Life Balance: Beyond the Rhetoric

Partnership Under Pressure: How Does it Survive?

THE INSTITUTE FOR EMPLOYMENT STUDIES

Tel. + 44 (0) 1273 686751

Copyright © 2003 The Institute for Employment Studies

British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN 1 85184 329 9

Printed in Great Britain

IES aims to help bring about sustainable improvements in

The IES Research Networks

Abbey National HM Customs and Excise

2. Trends in e-Recruitment: What do we Know? 9

3. e-Recruitment Methods: Application in Practice 26

5. Emerging Challenges: Lessons from the Bleeding Edge 65

Appendix: Individual-level evaluation 81

This report is aimed at senior managers and HR practitioners

The IES study — aims of the project

The aim of the e-recruitment project was to carry out evidence-

z What are the overall trends in e-recruitment use and practice?

There were four main phases to the project: a literature review, a

z improve corporate image and profile

Fifty-five per cent of respondents expected their organisation to

z the cultural approach of the organisation towards recruitment

Issues raised as causing concern with e-recruitment included the

The trends in e-recruitment use suggest a changing landscape

z a large proportion were using online application forms (67 per

There was wide variety in the extent to which online applications

In terms of applicant tracking and workflow systems, of the 50

Working with a small number of the case study organisations, a

z cost of recruitment and selection activities

IES case study members shared our conclusion that better

In an attempt to explore pioneering and efficient ways to attract

The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) has a number of

The aim of the e-recruitment project was to carry out evidence-

z What are the overall trends in e-recruitment use and practice?

1.2 Research methods

A literature review was carried out to provide the project team

2 2003 © Institute for Employment Studies

A survey was carried out with the aim of gathering baseline

z the drivers for using e-recruitment

The sample of organisations for the survey was drawn from an

Fifty organisations returned the survey, and represented a wide

Almost one-third of the 50 participants were recruitment

A Research Network event, in October 2002, presented some of

The aim of the case studies was to provide an in-depth analysis

Pharmco is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies,

Vacancies are posted on the corporate website, a job board, and

4 2003 © Institute for Employment Studies

A major review of all HR transactional processes has just been