5.3 Recruiting workers  (Page 2/2)

External recruitment focuses resources on looking outside the organization for potential candidates and expanding the available talent pool. The primary goal of external recruitment is to create diversity among potential candidates by attempting to reach a wider range of individuals unavailable through internal recruitment. Although external recruitment methods can be costly to managers in terms of dollars, the addition of a new perspective within the organization can carry many benefits which outweigh the costs. External recruitment can be done in a variety of ways:

• Traditional advertising: This often incorporates one or many forms of advertising, ranging from newspaper classifieds to radio announcements. It is estimated that companies spend USD 2.18 billion annually on these types of ads (Kulik, 2004). Before the emergence of the Internet, this was the most popular form of recruitment for organizations, but the decline of readership of newspapers has made it considerably less effective (Heathfield, Use the Web for Recruiting: Recruiting Online).
• Job fairs and campus visits: Job fairs are designed to bring together a comprehensive set of employers in one location so that they may gather and meet with potential employees. The costs of conducting a job fair are distributed across the various participants, and can offer an extremely diverse set of applicants. Depending on the proximity to a college or university, campus visits help to find candidates that are looking for the opportunity to prove themselves and have minimum qualifications, such as a college education, that a firm seeks.
• Headhunters and recruitment services: These outside services are designed to essentially compile a talent pool for a company; however they can be extremely expensive. Although this service can be extremely efficient in providing qualified applicants for specialized or highly demanded job positions the rate for the services provided by headhunters can range from 20 to 35 per cent of the new recruit’s annual salary if the individual is hired (Heathfield, Recruiting Stars: Top Ten Ideas for Recruiting Great Candidates).
• Online recruitment. The use of the Internet to recruit a talent pool is quickly becoming the preferred way of doing so, due to its ability to reach such a wide array of applicants extremely quickly and cheaply. There are many ways to turn the Internet into a recruitment tool for your company.

First, the use of the company website can allow a business to compile a list of potential applicants which are supremely interested in the company while at the same time allowing them exposure to your company’s values and mission. In order to be successful using this recruitment method, a company must ensure that postings and the process for submitting resumes are as transparent and simple as possible.

Another popular use of online recruiting is through career websites (e.g. Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com). These sites charge employers a set fee for a job posting which can remain on the website for an agreed amount of time. These sites also carry a large database of applicants and allow clients to search their database to find potential employees. Although extremely effective, many companies prefer to use their own websites to eliminate the flood of resumes which may result from these services.

Finally, many professional associations may have websites on which a company may post job openings. For instance, the NCAA allows all of its member schools and conferences to post jobs on their website at a minimal cost, allowing for a more specialized selection of candidates. It may also be in a company’s interest to contact area schools to see if they offer a career services site for their students for posting openings, further expanding the reach of recruitment efforts.

To learn more about the growth of internet job postings:

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To learn how to create an effective online job posting:

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