The Internet has dramatically changed the way we recruit. Three years ago, Retail recruiting was conducted at a more leisurely pace and could be done in a much more linear and predictable fashion.
Employers advertised positions in the print media, predominantly on Saturdays and Candidates could take their time reading through the newspaper cutting out or circling those ads that interested them. On Monday mornings, replies to the ad would begin to arrive in the employer’s office, phone screening would generally take place on Monday and Tuesdays. Wednesdays were dedicated to interviewing and short listing candidates. Thursday and Friday saw these candidates second interviewed with offers made and letters of employment sent.
Of course the process was not always quite that simple. The Internet has changed all of this.
For Employers, no longer is there a need to get the ad copy to the newspaper by 4pm on Thursday for the weekend paper. They can now post positions as soon as they become vacant and be receiving replies immediately.
For Candidates – no more of the Saturday morning paper with three cups of coffee, circling, cutting and pasting are skills of a bygone era. They have been replaced by typing, scrolling and clicking. Resumes are stored online and applications are a click away.
What is the effect?
From an employer’s perspective recruiting is now almost as much about processing as it is about selecting. The ability to trawl through endless email applications with attached resumes and process replies to these is now essential to effective recruiting. To have an effective filling and follow up system will eliminate some of the chances of missing the needle in the hay stack.
For Candidates, constant vigilance and speed of application is crucial. Because it is easy to send resumes, employers are struggling to reply to the volumes and if no replies are received candidates send another application. One of the subsequent dangers for candidates is that there are so many versions and copies of their resume out in the marketplace that they do not have control of who has their information and what they will do with it.
With the speed of the Internet candidates must now be forever vigilant. That “dream job” can appear on the Internet late on a Tuesday evening and if the employer is overwhelmed with responses, the job can be pulled off the next day. If you have not seen it, you can miss out.
On the negative side the Internet has made recruiting a much more impersonal process. As a positive, the Internet has significantly sped the recruiting the process up.
The Internet is a science in that it is a medium that facilitates recruiting. Recruiting itself is an art that will never be totally replaced by a tool. Humans are too complex to be effectively assessed in a database. As anyone who has ever recruited will know, humans will always surprise us and it is impossible to pick the surprise with cyber tools.
The Internet is now commonplace in the recruitment process and as it evolves, its place becomes clearer – it is “part” of the recruitment process, not here to “replace” the recruitment process.
Please feel free to contact us at Frontline Retail. with any recruitment requirements - we are here to help.