CorpComms Magazine

In an age where people are increasingly computer-literate and internet-savvy, the first port of call for anyone interested in your business is often your website. While most companies have realised this and now operate very professional-looking sites with all sorts of interactive features to make life easier for their customers and investors, some are also beginning to see the advantages of using the internet to attract new employees.

One group that has invested in building a careers section into its website, complete with online recruitment facility, is BT. The main benefit of this resource is the streamlining effect it has had on the group's recruitment process, says Rob Pearce, corporate website manager.

'It enables us to give prospective employees an in-depth insight into the company - there is so much information there you could never cram into an advert,' he says. 'What's more, it means candidates are far more clued-up about BT in the first place.'

Fierce competition

If a company has its own internet-based recruitment system in place, it can be sure potential employees coming through the door already know they want to work there. When they arrive via a recruitment agency, it is not always certain they even know what the company does.

'We are definitely getting a higher calibre of candidate this way,' says Pearce. 'They are possibly inspired by what they have seen on our site, and they already know we are the company for them.'

Groups that routinely take on graduates will find there is already a great deal of competition when it comes to attracting the best candidates. Today's graduates are members of a generation thoroughly used to communicating online. They will certainly be looking at company websites during their research on job opportunities, so companies cannot afford to miss the boat by failing to include a careers section - and possibly even a recruitment system - on their websites.

Hewitt Associates, a global accountancy firm, has devised a new online graduate recruitment facility. 'We have used our corporate website to recruit graduates in the past, but this year we took the decision to have a stand-alone site for them,' says Julie Hyam, graduate sourcing and study support coordinator at Hewitt. 'It's what all our competitors are doing.'

Andrew Wood, head of production at communications agency Glass, which advised Hewitt, says: 'Online recruitment generally is becoming much more popular, but this sort of dedicated site is where things are heading now. Large employers going after the top of the pyramid of graduates in one particular year are now finding life very competitive.'

Hewitt's website, like BT's, includes information geared toward prospective employees, including videos of current employees talking about their jobs and describing what Hewitt is like to work for as a company.

Glass, which also advised on the creation of a graduate online recruitment system for City law firm Allen & Overy, pushed hard for this approach. 'When we sat down with Allen & Overy to discuss content for the site, it said, This is what we do, these are the countries we operate in,' recalls Wood. 'We said, That's all very well, but graduates want to know where their career will go, what the firm can offer them and what guarantees there are for their future.

'Sites also need to be credible and impartial because university students are sophisticated; they can look at a corporate website and know when they are being sold to. So the approach we took was to include information from the partners and other graduate trainees, getting them to write blogs, for example, and talk about their jobs on video. It is a genuine piece of communication.'

Totally online

As with BT and Hewitt, candidates can complete the whole recruitment process online at Allen & Overy. They can research the job they're interested in, upload an application form and be kept up to date with the process by logging on, as well as receiving email alerts about the next step in the process if they qualify.

Pearce says online recruitment can smooth the process as well as appealing to better candidates. 'Some years we get 2,000 applications from graduates,' he adds. 'If the process is in a manual format, it costs a fortune to get through and is very inefficient.'

Hyam agrees. 'It is so much easier online because you can monitor the traffic through the site,' she explains. 'We actively drive everyone online and discourage anyone from applying by letter or fax - if they do, we reply asking them to go to the website.'

Once the company is in an electronic 'dialogue' with candidates, the process becomes far more efficient, say both Pearce and Hyam. 'We recruit around 40 graduates each year,' says Hyam. 'Last year we received 320 applications between October and mid-December alone; half of those we were able to reject fairly quickly.'

The remaining applicants undergo an initial screening and are sent an online numerical test by email that is overseen by an external test provider. 'We can later verify that candidates completed the test themselves by asking them to do a shorter version when we invite them for interview,' says Hyam. 'The point is that we have tied up a lot of loose ends before we even get them in for interview.'

The whole online process is password protected, with everyone receiving an individual password and user name. Hewitt Associates also uses a pre-screening facility to exclude anyone without the basic requirements for the job; for instance, they must have at least an A-level in mathematics.

On screening

Although BT does not use a pre-screening process to filter out candidates it would not be interested in, it does use mechanisms to help candidates decide whether BT is the right employer for them.

If you don't know which job would suit you, for example, BT provides a 'Where do I fit in?' online questionnaire, which asks candidates to detail their skills and qualifications and then displays jobs that may be appropriate. 'This can also help candidates at the interview stage if they already have an idea of where they want to get to,' Pearce points out.

For all of their online recruitment activities, Hewitt and BT use a secure database to upload candidates' details. BT's system automatically sorts this information and sends it along to the appropriate part of the human resources department.

So far, the systems have worked well. 'Most people who apply to us are pretty internet-savvy,' says Pearce. 'We have not had any feedback about candidates wanting to apply on paper.'

Hyam has a similar view. 'This year, the online recruitment process has worked fantastically well,' she says. 'The graduate website has been so successful that I think we will finish the graduate recruitment process in February. In previous years, it has rolled on to July.

'We have certainly seen a higher calibre of graduate this year,' Hyam continues. 'We always bring eight people at a time into the assessment centre and usually recruit one or two of them, but this time we have made offers to six.'

Hewitt has also been using online recruitment for non-graduate positions for around two years, including applications that arrive via recruitment agencies. The system allows the group to monitor the performance of the recruitment agencies it uses and pinpoint the ones that are sending large numbers of unsuitable applicants without filtering them properly first.

'The system allows us to track which jobs applicants are applying for and gives us more control over who is coming through before we recruit them,' explains Hyam. 'It definitely saves us a lot of time and money. We can send them email alerts, for example, which are a much more efficient way of exchanging information with them and moving the process along.'

Increasing popularity

Web designers also say they are starting to see increased demand for online recruitment systems. 'We quite often design careers pages for clients now,' says Kyle Millard, sales director at website design group KD Web. 'Recruitment agencies are very expensive, and online recruitment is relatively cheap to do. Some clients have content-management facilities on their sites now, so they can update web pages with new jobs regularly.

'We have not yet provided a complete recruitment system for a client that is not a recruitment agency, though. Our more usual kind of work takes the form of a web page containing job advertisements and a link to an email address for applications.'

The way ahead

Online recruitment is certainly the way forward for progressive businesses, say website experts. 'The website is a key marketing tool - a lot more people will visit it than will visit your headquarters,' points out Millard. 'It is often the first port of call, and it doesn't cost much to put extra information onto websites. Sometimes we find we need to persuade clients to spend money on their sites. We say, A hell of a lot more people will be looking at your website than your offices - and you wouldn't get your mate Dave to do up your offices, would you?'

Millard also believes online recruitment is more comfortable for candidates. 'People like looking at websites because it is a non-threatening way to find out more about a company,' he explains. 'You don't have to talk to anyone and no one even knows you have visited.'

Matt Attwell, web master from website design group Pancentric, says, 'Online recruitment pages are definitely becoming quite a powerful tool - if you have them, you have a much quicker turnaround of your recruitment process. The response time is quicker and you get more information; you are in an instant dialogue with the candidate.

'If you have a good brand presence, people will prefer to see your website. You could even get a better level of candidates - after all, you know they have made the effort to visit your website. These sites play a much bigger role in terms of corporate face than they did even a couple of years ago. If your website is shoddy, what does that say about you? It is your shop front. Websites are much more a 'call to action' now and play a huge part in brand awareness.'

The possibilities for an online recruitment system appear endless - you can take the concept to whatever extent you want, says Millard. 'You can have a CV upload facility. If you are a large organisation with a lot of vacancies, you might put jobs into categories with a search facility. You can take applications online and put them directly into a database. You can have a facility that asks for a candidate's qualifications before displaying any suitable jobs. You can use RSS feeds that update as new jobs come in.'

'A careers page can be very simple - just posting details of job openings, for example,' Attwell adds. 'Or you can have an integrated CV uploader on your site and hold CVs in a secure database. It can be very interactive, and is very much bespoke - whatever the client wants. Part of our business involves creating email tools; for example, we can send timed surveys where the reader opens the link, the timer starts and they have a certain amount of time to answer the survey. You could use this to test candidates.'

The cost benefits are obvious: the process is more efficient and cuts out the recruitment agency middleman. However far you want to take your online recruitment system, it appears to be the way forward for groups already investing in human resources.

What is certain is that if the goal is to portray a business as a forward-thinking, vibrant place to work, a lot of corporate branding needs to be aimed at prospective employees. By not including an impressive-looking careers section, many companies are falling short on this front.

Most people use the internet for research purposes these days, so your website should be the place to showcase your business to them. Using an online recruitment facility is just the next step along the way.

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