Computer Recruiters - 09/2000

Internet recruitment is rapidly becoming the primary way of recruiting new staff and for most recruitment companies, it is overtaking paper-based recruitment. IT recruitment consultancies in particular, have led the way in recruiting over the Internet and the vast majority of IT recruitment consultancies now use Internet recruitment as the key way of finding staff. Other markets are following close behind.

At IT Executive, the Internet is used for virtually all our recruitment purposes with 95% of our candidates recruited over the Internet. Paper advertisements are only used for specific assignments. We use a variety of different job boards to recruit candidates, both to advertise specific vacancies and to download targeted CVs from the database. We also trawl the web for candidatesí CVs placed on personal websites. All of our consultants have access to the Internet for recruiting purposes and all positions, from entry level candidates to senior management are recruited over the Internet.

At IT Executive, we estimate the cost of recruiting a permanent candidate over the Internet to be around 95% less than through paper-based recruitment. For contract staff, the cost is even less, working out to around 25p per candidate. In addition, because most CVs are received electronically, the backoffice workload is dramatically reduced, making them instantly suitable for inputting into the database. This makes eRecruitment very quick and cost effective.

Of course, in order to leverage this advantage, it is essential to have the right tools. IT Executive uses Personicís software, including IntellAGENT, to capture CVs from the Internet. The software also allows us to download the CVs into the database and post jobs automatically to job boards and CVs to clients. This enables us to establish a highly comprehensive database with very few administrative staff. At IT Executive we have built up a database of over 75,000 IT candidates within 18 months at a relatively low cost. Without the tools we are using and the Internet itself, this would have taken years and a great deal of expense to achieve.

It is clear that the Internet is now a vital tool for all recruitment consultancies, and ultimately, those who do not exploit its power will not survive.