Recruitment

Recruitment is a vital part of any organisation, as the selection of strong candidates is required to ensure that the organisation can operate with the best possible success. As illustrated by Mullins (2010), organisations require methods of recruitment with the widest range in order to obtain the best suited candidates. Primarily, there are many methods of recruitment available to employers, an extremely popular one being through internet job-site advertisements.

One such site is Monster.co.uk. The site appears to have been designed to target all ranges of job-seekers, with a design scheme centring the colour purple, which is inoffensive to either gender or any particular age-group. In turn, the homepage, as the screenshot details, is simple and to-the-point, with users immediately able to type their preferred job type and location immediately to begin searching. This simplicity illustrates that the site has been designed to target job-seekers from all walks of life, as anyone would be able to navigate the site quickly and easily.

However, although the site homepage itself features bold colours and headings to catch the user’s eye, the results pages for available jobs are not.

As shown in the screen-shot, although the job titled is highlighted in green, the small text and pale colour does little to catch the eye and encourage the user on it’s own to find out more about the job. However, the inclusion of the annual salary in the job heading effectively draws the user’s eye and persuades them to select the job link.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a bold, purple bar  highlighted ‘Apply’ within the job pages not only catches the user’s eye, but portrays the idea of the accessibility of getting the job, and would be effective in stimulating action by showing applicants how to apply for the job role.

Overall, the recruitment site is effective with a simple but eye catching design which allows for easy accessibility and efficient usage, due to the quick and easy process of searching for jobs. In turn, although, the poor aesthetic design of the job results page does little to draw the user’s eye, the inclusion of motivating information within job titles, such as salary information, is a strong way to attract potential candidates.

A recruitment campaign that I personally felt was interesting was a campaign run by the British Army recruiting more female applicants. One marketing method, where the job was advertised as a magazine article, was particularly intriguing as the notion that women were just as capable as men within the army was summarised in the title ‘Leading 1000 men - heaven or hell?.’ The light-hearted heading in the form of a question not only draws in the reader but, in my opinion, effectively conveyed the idea of the possibility of woman leaders in the army. In turn, a further marketing initiative I encountered was through army representatives visiting my secondary school to hold a physical workshop aimed specifically at girls, where they were allowed to try out a series of outdoors ‘army training courses,’ to provide them with an idea of whether they would like to go down a similar career route. This, due to being a novelty experience, was a good way to, not only attract interest from potential recruits, as the students enjoyed themselves, but change misconceptions they might have had about the army being male-centred.

Alternatively, when it comes to online recruitment, there are many advantages to an employer:

-          Primarily, due to the internet having a large user-base, the organisation is able to target a larger number of people and, as such, is provided with more options as to securing the best possible candidate.

-          Recruiting through the internet is relatively cheaper than a mass-marketing campaign via other means, such as television adverts, meaning the organisation is able to save on costs incurred.

-          Due to the accessibility of the internet, it is not only quick and easy for a company to post a job advertisement to the web, but also quick to receive a response from applicants, due to the increase ease of communication

-          Automated technology means that it is also much easier to receive and process documentation, such as CVs, with a large amount of the recruitment process being able to be completed online, saving on time, effort and resources on the company’s behalf.

-          It is also easier to target the organisation’s preferred type of applicants by advertising on sites most likely to be used by the preferred candidates, which means that employers are more likely to receive applications from likely employees, reducing admin costs of processing unlikely applicants.

However, there are also many disadvantages of recruiting online:

-          Firstly, the technology and equipment required to maintain an online system for recruitment, e.g. the processing of applications, CVs etc. is often costly.

-          In turn, staff may not have the required technical skills to operate the technology, in which training will have to be invested in or a dedicated IT specialist employed.

-          Also, the internet is mostly by specific age demographics, with users tending to be younger rather than older. As such, utilising online recruitment may mean that employers limit their potential pool of applicants, with older but experienced candidates perhaps being bypassed.

-          Due to the internet being global, organisations may receive applications from people who would never actually be able to take up the job e.g. applicants from other countries. The waste of processing such unlikely applicants would be costly for the organisation in time and effort.

Conclusively, recruitment is proven to be a key part of any organisation, with many marketing and communication methods available to employers, the most popular of which being online recruitment, which, however, has been proven to have many disadvantages as well as advantages.

References

Monster.co.uk [n.d] Monster: Find Jobs, Build a better career [online]. Available from: www.monster.co.uk [Accessed 08 May]

Mullins, L J. (2010) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 9th ed. Essex: Pearson.