Tuesday, 20 March 2012

HIRING IN THE INTERNET AGE


Journey Of A Thousand Sites Begins With A Single Click !



Darryl Ohrt, the founder of VIA and the chief contributor to BrandFlakesForBreakfast.com says, " We just completed a new hire at our firm, and we haven't even met the new employee yet. "

There's a lot of press out there about the dangers of the internet as it relates to employees. "What if your employer finds your Facebook profile / MySpace page?" But what about the employer side? As it turns out, using new internet tools for hiring employees can be amazingly productive. Surveys show that employers have increasingly turned to sites such as Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and other sources to take a peek at candidates “under the hood” before making a hiring decision.

The potential employee pool is now International. As a small business owner, it's a great feeling to get a resume from different countries. By placing an ad online, you'll increase your potential market a thousand fold. In the old days, the local classifieds were your only tool. Maybe you'd spring for a more expensive ad in a bigger paper, like The Economic Times. With ads online, you're reaching a worldwide audience in one fell swoop. 

Results are immediate. In the old days, resumes (on paper) would begin to roll into the mailbox about five days after the first ad hit. Today, resumes begin hitting the inbox seconds after the ad is published. This has cut the timeline for screening potential candidates dramatically. With the Internet age here, for a position, hundreds of resumes are received from across the globe within no time.  

Interviews are not just for the boardroom anymore. The interview area is not only restricted to the office boardroom or building. Darryl Ohrt, the founder of VIA and the chief contributor to BrandFlakesForBreakfast.com just completed a new hire for their firm. Darryl states, " The candidate was sitting at home in front of his computer, and I in front of my laptop. We used the popular iChat feature now standard on the new Mac products. Our first interview was done through a video chat window. When the candidate became a finalist for the position, we interviewed him again, this time with a larger group of people on our side. With an iChat camera, the candidate was interviewed twice at our firm, and never left his house. I've even heard of firms using Second Life in the same way - but you lose the non-verbal part of the interview, which of course, is extremely important to the process. "

Learn more. With the help of internet, one can gather a lot of information about their candidate through social sites. The photo collections can also be a fantastic way to learn more about a potential employee, or for the employee to learn about the company. Candidates gets the idea of what life is like being a member of the company's team. You learn a lot about a person (or a company) when looking through their photos. Certainly, this isn't something that every employee would be comfortable with. There are instances where people know their co-workers better than some of their family members.

Save the details for email. When it is time to make an offer, you can lay out all of the details in an email. No potential mis-understandings. Everything in black and white. Both parties know exactly what was on the table. Email is awesome for detailing the basic specifications of money, benefits, and company policies. 

The use of the Internet and social networking sites for recruitng and background checks can be a ticking time bomb for employers. The way to defuse the potential for future lawsuits is to have in place a well-considered Internet use policy and procedures that are implemented and followed to ensure that hiring practices do not invade privacy or produce a discriminatory impact. 

Source: smartbiz.com

2 comments:

  1. Well written, blog, Priyanka.
    Staffing is one of the more imporatnt HR aspects these days & needs all the attention it gets.
    The internet has made the recruitment process faster but not necessarily better.
    While recruiting for high impact roles it is inperative that effectiveness in recruiting is ensured.

    ReplyDelete