EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON RECRUITMENT

Effects of Technology on Recruitment



EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON RECRUITMENT

Introduction

Organizational staffing is concerned with having the right people at the right place and time to achieve organizational outcomes. Staffing is a complex, multifaceted process that affects all areas of the organization but is particularly important with regard to organizational effectiveness. As such, the organization strives to attract, motivate, and retain a workforce with the appropriate characteristics to achieve the organization's mission, strategy, goals, and objectives. Viewing staffing as a continuous process rather than a discrete event (e.g., hiring a particular individual) is an essential component of virtually all contemporary staffing models and conceptualizations. Staffing includes recruitment, selection, employment, and retention and is strongly affected by numerous laws and external conditions that bear directly on organizational employment processes.

Staffing strategy flows from the organization's mission, strategic plan, goals, and objectives that, in turn, influence human resource planning efforts. Human resource plans are developed for the organization as a whole and, in larger organizations, for each business unit. From the staffing perspective, the human resource plan examines an organization's demand for labor and the current labor supply to determine whether any gaps exist. Plans are devised to address the gaps and achieve the desired staffing levels. At the department level, such action plans identify the number of hires and the positions that will be filled within a specific timeframe. Plans must also address economic conditions, the labor market, and skill and technology changes as part of ongoing environmental scanning. Finally, the plan should address issues of diversity and affirmative action. (Stone, 2006)

There are a number of strategic choices that organizations make regarding the recruitment process. Does the company want to develop employees by promoting from within, or are needed employees brought in from outside of the company (i.e., internal vs. external recruiting)? Does the human resources department handle recruitment activities, or is an outside recruitment agency retained for this purpose? What role does technology play? How much discretion do business units and managers have in recruiting employees? How is the recruitment budget developed? Is the recruitment budget administered in a centralized or decentralized fashion? How does the company incorporate diversity issues in the recruitment process? Who is responsible for the success of recruitment activities?

In order to appreciate its potential and its dangers, it is important to understand what the Internet is and how it works. The Internet is, literally, an interconnected set of computer networks (hence, inter-net). These various networks are able to communicate with each other through the use of a common shared protocol (TCP/IP). (Williams, 2004)

The Internet has been with us since the 1950s. In its early days, the Internet, as a means of communication, was difficult to use. Use of the Net was confined largely to academics and the military, and its main use was for email and file transfer. The advance that led to the Internet becoming part of our everyday life was the development of the World Wide Web in ...