Exploiting developments - 12/2000

Over three quarters of companies say they intend to exploit developments in Web technology in their recruitment and assessment processes in the coming year. This is one of the key findings from new research -Shaping the future of e-selection - conducted by Cubiks, the specialist HR consultancy in the PA Consulting Group.

Although the penetration of tools such as on-line personality questionnaires and candidate filtering systems is currently very low, the research reveals that a clear trend is emerging, which indicates that companies will increasingly harness e-selection technologies to facilitate quicker and better recruitment decisions.

Key findings of the research are:

Internet adoption is almost complete -Almost 80% of survey respondents have a corporate Web site and 67% of these sites contain a recruitment/careers section. All companies with such a facility use it to advertise job vacancies, but the sophistication of the sites varies widely; employers already convinced of on-line benefits and envisage using e-selection systems in future -Almost 90% of organisations believe that they could benefit from increased use of the Internet in recruitment and assessment. In addition, 76% of participants state that they intend to exploit developments in Web technology within their sites in the coming year; the future for Internet assessment systems is bright with more than 75% of all survey respondents believing that they would use on-line assessment tools such as e-based personality questionnaires or candidate filtering systems if they reduced the time involved in the recruitment process.

With so many start-up companies entering the marketplace, companies are having to work harder to get the people they want and this makes speed to offer a key issue. At the same time, popular employers are being flooded with thousands of applications, which raises significant financial and resourcing implications. Given that this is the case, it comes as no surprise to see the research indicate that companies will increasingly adopt the powerful new Internet tools that are becoming available. These state-of-the-art Web-based recruiting and selection systems can undoubtedly bring increased efficiency and productivity to the corporate selection process and I expect their use to become much more commonplace in the years ahead. Barry Spence, CEO of Cubiks.