Online Recruiting Is a Powerful Tool

NJBIZ, Feb 19, 2007 by Hurley-Schubert, Victoria

Employer-set criteria bring the best candidates to the top of the list

ONLINE JOB BOARDS have become an essential part of the hiring process at companies big and small. Postings on services such as CareeerBuilder.com, Monster.com or hotjobs.com work fast, says Julie Hancock, corporate director of retention and recruitment at the Kennedy Health System in Cherry Hill. "[Webmasters] usually have them up within the hour, and you can start getting applicants that quickly," she says.

The ability of users to sort applicants by specified criteria is one of the attractions for human resource managers, says Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. "You can put in whatever specifications you want," he says. This allows managers "to do a lot of screening of candidates very inexpensively. That's the most valuable service.

"This doesn't change the supply," of job candidates, he adds. It's just a mechanism for tapping into that supply."

Monster.com screening features allow employers to identify factors such as the languages a candidate speaks and the occupation for which he or she may be best suited.

Monster, which is based in Maynard, Mass., says single job postings range in price from $225 for the smallest markets to $475 for the New York/New Jersey and Los Angeles metro areas.

CareerBuilder.com lets employers enter criteria that bring the best-qualified candidates to the top of the list. The company also has a résumé-matching function that brings together employers and job candidates.

At Chicago-based CareerBuilder, a 30-day job posting costs $419 before volume discounts, says spokeswoman Jennifer Sullivan. The site posts more than 1.5 million jobs each month, according to New York City-based Corzen, a firm that tracks market conditions affecting various industries.

James Hamilton Jr., manager of recruitment at Princeton-based ETS, says he finds that résumés generated from Web postings are more likely to be on-target for the advertised positions than those he used to receive. "In the days when you might advertise more in the newspaper, you got a lot of applicants that just wanted to work for your company, so they weren't necessarily applying for the position that may have been advertised. They wanted to get their background seen and their foot in the door," he says.

The educational testing giant fills about 500 jobs per year, both internally and externally.

It takes an average of 57 days and $3,000 to $5,000 in the search and recruitment process to fill a position at ETS, Hamilton says.

He says ETS has a contract with CareerBuilder that is in the "six figures," and recruits through other online job boards, journals and print publications. "We try and do a mixture," says Hamilton, who has 25 years of experience in the field. "We do know that in some cases there are some professions where individuals may not look to a newspaper, but they do look to a trade journal or at least a periodical that deals with their area of expertise," he says.

Recruiters using online sites are following the crowd. Last December CareerBuilder had 13.9 million unique visitors, a 14 percent increase from 12.2 million in December 2005. That's according to comScore Media Metrix, a Reston, Va.-based service that measures Internet usage.

According to the service, traffic at Monster.com rose to 12.7 million unique visitors last December, a 22 percent increase from 10.4 million for December 2005.

While online services make it easier for companies to find workers, they also make it easier for other firms to poach them. After securing a job, some people keep fishing the boards to keep up with what else is out there, says Hancock.

The sites make this easy by allowing job hunters to set up search agents that fire off emails any time a posting comes up that fits their specifications, she says.

"They're not necessarily unhappy at their jobs," she says of workers who keep looking, "but they're willing to entertain other offers if it's for more money, or to be closer to home or [have] more responsibility. I think they are much quicker to apply than they used to be."

At the same time, the services enable employers to survey the marketplace to be sure they have hired the best candidates. "It helps them value their internal labor market," says Van Horn. "It's a way of finding out if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Because if you've got people internally working for you, you may say 'Are they really the best people? Is this the best we can do?'"

E-mail to victoriah@njbiz.com