Effectiveness of E-recruitment in Small and Medium Enterprises of It Industry of Lahore (pakistan)

AuthorSIDRA NASREEM, MUSHTAQ HASSAN AND TAYYEB ALI KHAN

Abstract

Usage of technology brings robust improvement in every aspect of human life. Paramount research reveals that Internet is being used in employment sector globally. Recruitment through electronic sources brings phenomenal success in a very short time. This study is an attempt to explore the effectiveness of e-recruitment in small and medium enterprises of IT based companies of Pakistan through descriptive analysis. Effectiveness of e-recruitment is measured through the attributes of advantages and disadvantages.

This study provides an insight of how companies' recruiters perceive the value of online recruitment. Four advantages of e-recruitment, considered in this study, are: (i) quality of applicants, (ii) wider pool of applicants, (iii) time and cost saving, and (iv) brand image development. Major disadvantages of e-recruitment, assessed in this study, are: (i) overloading of irrelevant applicants, (ii) higher numbers of unqualified applicants, (iii) established brand name, (iv) privacy issue of applicants, (v) lack of personal touch, (vi) discrimination between applicants, (vii) not the first choice to apply, (viii) unfriendly user tool, and (ix) extra time and cost subsequently. The study recommends for HR managers of IT SMEs to focus more on online recruitment in Pakistan to get large return on investment in long term perspective.

Keywords: Human resource management, Human resource information system, Information Technology, Electronic human resource management, Electronic recruitment, Virtual human resource management, Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Business to employee

  1. INTRODUCTION

    Increasing usage of Internet in every walk of life serves as a necessity for meeting many personal and most professional tasks. Technology serves for an easy connectivity of the people across the world by making the world as a global village. The Internet technology in Pakistan has been available since early 1990s. Pakistan stands as the second highest growing Internet user in SAARC countries on the basis of population. Pakistan Internet usage growth estimates show that in 2013 the Internet users hit up to 22 million out of which 4.3 million users are using broadband Internet (Attaa, 2009).

    All the facts indicate that the use of technology is growing rapidly in Pakistan. Organizations are searching for the ways to be more flexible, innovative, efficient and strategic to perform functions in an effective manner. Globalization, customer driven culture and specialization moved organizations emphasis from financing to recruiting, sustaining and growing qualified employees. In reality human resources of any organization serve as a driving force or like a "steering in car" that moves the whole organization on the right path.

    According to Armstrong (2010, p. 8), "HRM is concerned with all aspects of how people are employed and managed in organizations." Compton et al. (2009, p. 2) perceive HRM as "Employees are similar to other resources such as finance and technology as it must be managed effectively to ensure the best performance for the entire company." Digital revolution in the field of human resource management is used as a tool to reshape or enhance the human skills that are necessary for the achievement of organizational goals (De Alwis, 2010a).

    Adoption of Internet technology in the human resource functions is named as Human Resource Information System (HRIS), Virtual Human Resource Management (V-HRM) and Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM). DeSanctis (1986, p. 16) considers HRIS as a "Specialized information system within the traditional functional areas of the organization, designed to support the planning, administration, decision-making, and control activities of human resource management."

    V-HRM is considered by Lepak and Snell (1998, p. 216) as a "Network-based structure built on partnerships and mediated by information technologies to help the organization acquire, develop, and deploy intellectual capital." E-HRM is defined by Strohmeier (2007, p. 20) as "The planning, implementation and application of information technology for both networking and supporting at least two individual or collective actors in their shared performing of HR activities." E-HRM is "A way of implementing HRM strategies, policies, and practices in organizations through the conscious and direct support of web-technologies" (Ruel et al., 2004). Information Technology competencies of the organizations lead to HR competencies and efficient job performance (Suen and Yang, 2012, p. 615). Zafar et al. (2010, p. 26) present that the "application of e-HRM sweeps the strategic benefits of HR from the traditional HR role of administration."

    IT specialists have developed a number of softwares that convert HR activities from maintenance function to more strategic function computerized systems and open new avenue called e-HRM (Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003). Bondarouk and Ruel (2009) define e-HRM as "An umbrella term covering all possible integration mechanisms and contents between HRM and information technologies aiming at creating value within and across organizations for targeted employees and management." "E-HRM is a way of implementing HR strategies, policies, and practices in organizations with the full use of web-technology-based channels" (Davoudi and Fartash, 2012, p. 76). E-HRM transforms the role of HR from operational, administrative, and functional oriented towards the role of more reactive, strategic, consultative, business oriented and proactive (Ulrich, 1997). Lepak and Snell (1998, pp. 219-220) describe comprehensively three types of e-HRM:

    • Operational e-HRM mainly represents the administrative tasks of HRM.

    • Relational e-HRM supports the more advanced HRM activities which include recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisals and rewards of employees.

    • Transformational e-HRM is strategic in nature which includes organization change processes, knowledge management and competence management by utilizing web-based tools.

    Breaugh and Starke (2000, p. 407) define recruitment as "Practices and activities carried out by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees." Job hunting and hiring are revolutionized by the adoption of Internet in the recruitment function. Different terms for e-recruitment are used interchangeably including Internet recruiting, cyber recruiting, online recruiting, web-based recruiting and e- recruiting. "E-recruitment is the use of technology to assist recruitment function." (Kapse et al., 2012, p. 82).

    Organizations are facing problems in attracting competent applicants as a major part of the company's survival lies in the hands of their labour force. Research work on the area of electronic recruitment is still lacking in Pakistan. A list of work can be found on traditional ways of recruitment but the research gap on electronically supported recruitment is still there. This study measures the effectiveness of e-recruitment in small and medium enterprises of IT industry of Lahore (Pakistan).

    Research Objectives

    The present study focuses on the attainment of the following objectives:

    • Identify the sources mostly used for e-recruitment by SMEs of IT industry of Pakistan.

    • Identify the level of management positions for which e-recruitment is preferred by IT SMEs of Pakistan.

    • Evaluate the e-recruitment outcomes in terms of advantages mostly enjoyed by IT industry SMEs of Pakistan.

    • Compare the views of male and female recruiters of IT industry SMEs about the e-recruitment outcomes in Pakistan.

    • Compare the difference in the outcomes of different e-recruitment sources in IT industry SMEs of Pakistan.

    • Identify the e-recruitment disadvantages mostly faced by IT industry SMEs of Pakistan.

  2. LITERATURE REVIEW

    Companies realize the fact that human resources moved from a cost factor to a success factor (Biesalski, 2003). People are the key asset that is capable for growth and development of organizations (De Alwis, 2010b). The term e-HR was first used in 1990 when e-commerce was sweeping the business world, and e-HR referred to conducting HR transactions by using Internet (Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003, p. 365). Voermans and van Veldhoven (2007, p. 997) define e-HRM as the administrative support of the HR function in organization by using technology.

    One of the functions of human resource management is recruitment which creates an applicant pool for the organization's vacant positions. This pool can be generated through both the traditional and the electronic ways. The traditional way of recruiting is the posting or attracting of applicants through the newspaper, referral and walk- ins, recruiting agencies and on campus recruiting (Nel et al., 2011). The e- way includes the commercial job boards/portals, corporate websites and emails (Dhamija, 2012). Kapse et al. (2012) say that e-recruitment makes the process two-way for organizations and for job seekers. The endogenous research all around the world assimilates the findings in a contradictory pattern as some researchers present the positive aspects of e-recruitment while others highlight some of its drawbacks.

    Faliagka et al. (2012) say that online recruitment performs the prescreening which comes in interview step in traditional method of recruitment. Cappelli (2001) explores that online recruiting leads to saving cost, wide open market, uncontrolled by individual companies, unconstrained by geographical boundaries, speed up the process of tracking and contacting applicants and creates image of relationship marketing as product marketing. According to Verhoeven and Williams (2008), e-recruitment provides quicker turn-around time, increased number of suitable applicants and it makes recruitment process easy and cost...

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