Wired for Jobs

It is the call of the wild, wild web.

In an era when getting wired is the ‘ultimate’, recruiters and job

seekers are also seeing the web as their messiah. Rather than scanning

the newspapers for job advertisements and looking to other traditional

means, job aspirants spend hours in front of a computer, scanning

job sites and posting their résumés.

The past couple of years have seen

a spurt in the number of career sites with India-specific ones alone

numbering more than 30. At the global level there are more than

28,000 sites! Technology portals like CIOL and ITspace have separate

career sections. Infoseek has even rated CIOL as the number one

Indian website for careers. It shows the shift in the mindset of

the recruiters and the job seekers, who now seem more comfortable

with the web and its nuances than the traditional means.

The web’s relevance



But how far is the trend

relevant in a country like India, where the infrastructure is not

on par with international standards. There is a general perception

that unlike the US, net recruitment has not matured. There is still

a dearth of good databases of résumés especially when

one looks at the IT industry. And good candidates are headhunted

by companies themselves.

An interesting aspect that has come

out is that some of the companies have stopped giving street addresses.

Companies like BFL Software and Aditi Technologies just give an

email address where résumés can be posted. Even in

advertisements that are published in newspapers and magazines, recruiters

give an email address; no street addresses, phone or fax numbers.

This forces a candidate to send his résumé through

email. Another perceptible change is that companies now host a site

or provide a link to the career section on its site.

As KR Suresh, Head, HRM, BFL Software,

says, “We provide a link on our website to the career section. We

have received a good response from it. So far we have had no success

from the career sites. But it helps us in maintaining a database

of the prospective candidates.”

The companies and their HR departments

are not averse to looking at the career sites. Though, these sites

have to improve and provide companies with more specific segments

and also have quality résumés in its database. That

is the USP of the career sites too. E Abraham Mathew, President,

CIOL, says, “Unless a site gives value-added services besides hosting

the résumé, there is no scope for it to succeed. There

is always a gap between the laggards and the leaders and that is

where we are going to position ourselves. It will not just be a

site where one can post their résumés, it will be

a portal which will cater to the IT community as a whole.” A clear

change in the outlook over the past two years, when a career site

meant just a site to post one’s résumé.

Résumés

via email



Email has taken precedence over conventional methods for sending
and receiving résumés. And the companies are making

good use of it too. They maintain a database of the relevant résumés

that they receive, which in the long run cuts down a lot of time

and cost. Just like the career sites, most of the résumés

are usually kept only for 30 days.

However, the companies are of the view

that the web has not helped them in cutting either cost or time

in the recruitment process.  The factors cited were that the

usual process of calling a candidate for an interview and conducting

it still consumes time. “The only advantage is that we are able

to expand the database. As far as cost or time benefits are concerned,

it is the same,” says Anurag Shrivastava, Manager, HR, Aditi Technologies.

The other side of the

web



Use of the web to search for jobs is definitely an advantage for
IT professionals. But there have been instances where the management

comes to know of it and pulls up the erring employees. Call it the

lack of retention ability of the company concerned or bad HR principles,

net recruitment has its disadvantages too. IT professionals seldom

include their name or their employer’s name while advertising. They

mention only the years of experience and the skill sets.

Some of the companies have barred their

employees from accessing career sites. As Suresh says, “We have

barred employees from accessing the career sites. It is understandable

if people send one or two personal mails. But searching for jobs

using the facilities provided by the company is not ethical. They

can do it outside the office. We even give loans to buy PCs. So

why do it in the office?” The other side of being wired, one can

call it. However, Shrivastava thinks there is no point in barring

these sites. “We believe in systems and processes to retain people

not by monitoring emails or putting a bar on certain sites,”

 he says. Divergent views coming

from the same industry. While on the one hand it has been looked

upon as a messiah, it plays the devil's role too.

The

future of career sites