Hire & Seek. By Ben Fawcett

This article is brought to you by ben.fawcett@sniperhire.com and sources include May 2003 edition of Arabian Computer News and Gartner Group. The article provides an update of eRecruitment solutions being used in the Middle East.

Online recruitment has become a staple source of potential candidates for many companies with the Middle East. However, as more jobseekers post their CVs online, local organisations are having to employ a number of methods to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The impact of job boards on recruitment globally and within the region has been immense. The wealth of data on worldwide sites, like Monster, means that companies are beginning to throw out paper CVs and focus on candidates that have applied online.

ìHaving to open all of these CVs is time consuming and a dispiriting job when so many of them are clearly inappropriate,î explained Fatima Seedat of PwC Middle East. ìUsing an e-recruitment tool ends the need to do this, however, because candidates instead have to type their details into an online form. The application can then quickly sort out the patently unsuitable candidates, thereby allowing the HR staff to concentrate on the applicants that have the right qualifications.î

ìPeople put banking in their CV 500 times, and they get picked up for every single job, but they are not relevant at all,î says Charles Willson, general manager, ITP Consulting.

Industry specific job boards seek to overcome this problem by only listing qualified candidates. These sites work like horizontal job bards, but they are more interested in the quality of the candidates that are registered than the quantity. ìWe are not looking to have a huge database,î says James Thomas, managing director, Oilexec.com. ìIf we get 20,000 revolving professionals, we think that will be sufficient,î he says. Interestingly Oilexec seeks to maintain the quality high by using a peer review scheme.

Industry specific sites can also offer a better quality of candidate, as only professionals in that sector are likely to have heard of them. This was why Taj TV recently advertised for an editor on the film & TV production sites mandy.com and tvz.tv. ìI wanted to reach a specific group and not a generic group. If you put an advert out to a generic web site you get all these responses from people that have no idea,î says Fred Chow, vice president of operations & outside broadcasts, Taj TV.

ìThe internet is an ideal medium for niche markets of whatever sortsÖ. It has low overheads, simplicity and niche targeting,î says John Hoare, editor & founder, Mandy.com.

These factors are also enabling companies to bypass third party job boards and develop their own sites. Gulf Air, for instance, investigated using a third party site, but found the information its gets was not specific enough to meet its needs.

ì(If) you want someone for cabin crew for example, the job board will give you everyone who has been working in cabin crew over a very long time,î comments Fawzi Mubarak, Gulf Airís recruitment & employee development manager. This was one of the reasons why the airline opted to develop its own job site using Sniperhire, a revolutionary applicant tracking system, which seamlessly integrate s with the airlineís own website. The site works like a third party job board in that candidates are asked to fill in an online application. However unlike a third party site, the airline was able to design a form that exactly met its requirements. In particular, it has designed a questionnaire for cabin crew, which includes information about their height and swimming ability. As the airlines must hire people that can swim amongst other minimum criteria, those that fail to meet the grade can be automatically rejected without any human intervention. ìAll the information is there, and then the system allows me to filter all the applicants based on the criteria that is essential to me, its fantastic for pilots,î says Mubarak.

ìWeíre seeing more effort from some of the largest companies to push their own corporate web sites rather than job boardÖ because they have more control over it,î says Diane Morello, vice president & research director, Gartner Group.

Asking people to apply directly with the company is also an advantage in terms of marketing. ìThe company career section builds up the corporate brand,î says Morello. ìIf you can get people coming to your own web site and creating their own resumesÖ then you have got people that are actually interested in your company.î

ìE-recruitment should be part of the marketerís tools, not just the HR departmentís,î agrees Julian Phillips, director, Sniperhire.

Gulf Air has used its website to advertise senior positions, including vice president level. However, its main use has been to streamline the hiring of cabin crew and pilots. This is a massive challenge for the airlines as it needs to find 100s of staff that meet a very strict set of requirements, so it advertises all over the world. The application tracking system has greatly eased this process in a number of ways. For instance, it has enabled the airline to automate contact with its candidates, so that a message can be sent to 11s of people with just a click of the mouse. This speeds up the interviewing process, as well as ensuring that no candidate is inadvertently overlooked. ìThere is a lot of communication with the people so that nobody will complain that there is no response or feedback,î says Mubarak.

Furthermore, because the tool is web based, Mubarak is able to check and update his candidate lists even when he is travelling. ìI donít have to be in my office,î he says. Anywhere in the world I am able to find the latest developments in my recruitment campaigns.î

However, while the tracking system has greatly eased the processing of applicants, Gulf Air has not abandoned recruitment advertising, as this the best way of generating traffic to the site. Sniperhire have recently introduced Gulf Air to Aviationjobsearch.com, and now is looking to integrate their systems to allow auto-posting for its aviation customers such as Gulf Air from within their recruitment systems directly to the job board.

Ben Fawcett
ben.fawcett@sniperhire.com