Peter Cappelli

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">The Idea in Brief</h4>
 <div class="ideainbrief-contents">
 The Internet has transformed corporate recruiting—Monster.com alone now boasts 18 million employee resumes (13% of the U.S. labor force). Some 90% of U.S. companies recruit online. Clearly, the labor market has broken wide open.
 On-line recruiting lets firms target many qualified candidates for any job, screen them in seconds, and contact the best ones immediately. It costs one-twentieth of want-ad hiring, and slices 15 days off the usual 43-day hiring cycle.
 But it also lets workers easily learn about and grab jobs—making it harder for you to hire and keep top talent.
 To win the talent war, you have to view on-line hiring through a marketing lens. Approach candidates as you would prospective customers: Carefully target and attract them—then personally close the deal.
 The Idea in Practice
 Use the Internet to attract, sort, and contact candidates quickly and efficiently. This lets you lavish more personal attention on candidates during that crucial final stage: closing the deal.
 Attracting Candidates. Many applicants choose potential employers based on the firms’ image. Keep this in mind as you:
 <ul>
 <li>Build a recognizable brand by using a similar “look” in both recruiting and product ads.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Design your Web page to woo potential recruits: Cite workplace awards you’ve received and highlight links to information about your firm’s perks and values.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Encourage employees to e-mail job ads to friends.</li>
 </ul>
 Sorting Applicants. Inundated by resumes? Sort them quickly—but without losing good candidates:
 <ul>
 <li>Electronically screen applicants with simple questions; e.g., “Are you willing to move?” “When could you start work?”</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Use on-line tests and games to elicit information about applicants’ interests, attitudes, and abilities.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Have applicants fill out on-line questionnaires, scoring them against the ideal candidate. Allstate Insurance does this to find independent agents. If a candidate’s responses meet a standard, he answers a more detailed questionnaire—and then might win a face-to-face interview.</li>
 </ul>
 Making Contact. The first firm to contact a high-potential candidate gains the advantage. Therefore:
 <ul>
 <li>Connect desirable applicants with a “live” person immediately.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Ensure recruiters act like entrepreneurs—fast, flexibly, and creatively. Consider having them report to business development, not HR.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Give line managers more say in hiring.</li>
 </ul>
 Closing the Deal. Use the human touch, not the Internet. To sell desirable candidates on the superiority of your job offer, recruiters should:
 <ul>
 <li>Build personal relationships with candidates.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Ensure candidates know they’re wanted.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Spend only one hour a day on-line—and the rest of their time face-to-face with applicants.</li>
 </ul>
 A Solid Defense. Just as you’re using on-line recruiting strategically, so are your competitors. So:
 <ul>
 <li>Don’t give employees reasons to think about leaving—they can post a resume in minutes and attract recruiters in a day.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Emphasize the economic, social, and other advantages of working at your company.</li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>Build an internal, on-line job network to help employees find hot opportunities within your company.</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief>With a search engine and a couple of simple queries, Ed Melia can find 567 pages of résumés for software engineers with C++ or Java programming skills. That may not sound so remarkable until you consider this: all those engineers are currently employed by IBM, and they’re not looking for new jobs. Their résumés just happen to be available on the Internet—if you know where to look for them. Melia, a Boston-based consultant who teaches on-line recruiting techniques, can locate such “passive” candidates at practically any company. With his help, recruiters can find thousands of résumés by visiting chat rooms, Usenet groups, and other cybercommunities. They can even learn to “flip the URL,” following links in résumés back into company intranets, where there are troves of corporate directories and other information about employees.

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Making the Most of On-Line Recruiting

The war for talent has moved to the Internet. You’d better have a battle plan.

Making the Most of On-Line Recruiting

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