An analysis of the use and success of online recruitment methods in the UK
Emma Parry and Shaun Tyson, Cranfield School of Management
Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 18, no 3, 2008, pages 257–274
The use of online recruitment methods is now widespread among UK organisations,but has not dominated the recruitment market in the way that was predicted by thepopular media. This may be because organisations experience mixed success inusing online methods of recruitment. This article reports on the use of a large-scale,longitudinal survey of recruitment activity to investigate the usage and perceivedsuccess of both corporate and commercial web sites by employers. Inaddition, 20interviews with users and providers of online recruitment were conducted in orderto provide a deeper exploration of the factors that may affect the success of these
methods. The results provide valuable insights into the use and success of onlinerecruitment in the UK and have strong implications for practitioners.Contact: Dr Emma Parry, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield,Bedfordshire MK43 0AL. Email: emma.parry@cranfield.ac.uk
INTRODUCTIONThe Internet first emerged as a recruiting tool in the mid-1990s and was
hailed in the popular management press as the driver behind a ‘recruiting
revolution’ because of the benefits it could bring to recruiters (Boydell,
2002). Indeed, some authors suggested that the Internet had ‘revolutionised the
way that people look for work’ (Birchfield, 2002) and brought ‘radical change to
corporate recruiting’ (Cappelli, 2001). There has been little empirical research to
investigate whether these predictions have been realised, despite extensive use of
the methods. We will examine the use of online recruitment and perceptions of its
success in comparison with other methods in the UK by the year 2006 through
our longitudinal data set and interviews. We will then analyse our data to
discover whether the successful use of online recruitment is limited to particular
types of organisations or whether its success is determined by how employers use
online recruitment systems.
THE INTERNET AS A RECRUITMENT METHOD
Recruitment ‘includes those practices and activities carried out by the organisationwith the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees’(Breaugh and Starke, 2000: 405) and has long been regarded as an important part of
HRM as it ‘performs the essential function of drawing an important resource –human capital – into the organisation’ (Barber, 1998: 841). The strategic significance
of recruitment is often reported in the literature (Boxall and Purcell,2003), theemphasis being on the need to attract and retain high-quality people in order to gain
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 18 NO 3, 2008 257
© 2008 The Authors.
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a competitive advantage, as is consistent with the resource-based view (Barney, 1991;Wright and McMahon, 1992; Barney and Wright, 1998).
Labour market shortages and recruitment difficulties have led to a more
competitive recruitment market in the last decade. Lievens et al. (2002) asserted thatthe ‘war for talent’ meant that the emphasis in organisations moved from theselection to the attraction of employees. Indeed, the Chartered Institute of Personneland Developmen
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