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