Preparing For Growth: How A New Recruitment System In Recession Can Fuel Business Growth In Recovery.

Online, October 22, 2010 (Newswire.com) - In times of economic woe, recruiters and employers alike encounter huge increases in the number of job applications coming in from candidates. While this can be an unwelcome chore for many, the shrewd recruiter sees opportunity where others see nuisance.

There has been a period of consolidation amongst job boards and social media sites; despite there being more than 300 job boards in the UK, the large generalist job boards have consolidated. This has been demonstrated with the recent purchase of Fish4Jobs by Trinity Mirror. In social media, sites such as LinkedIn have become an industry norm in white collar recruitment.

It is now more important than ever for recruiters to reach unique candidates, a task more difficult when using the same resources as competitors. A well marketed recruitment website, however, can help to cast the net beyond.

The generalist job boards such as Monster, Reed and Fish4jobs still account for the lion's share of recruitment activity online, however greater affiliation and sharing of information online is changing the landscape. Employers (and recruiters) can offer some of the features of a job board to build a recruitment presence unique to their brand; this can help to reach fresh candidates.

Job seekers are now smarter when it comes to the recruitment sites they invest their time on. With surging numbers of applicants in these recessionary times, it has become an unfortunate trend for employers to fail to even acknowledge applications in many cases. This is forcing job seekers to avoid recruitment portals that do not have a clear and identifiable employment brand. With a well designed applicant tracking system (ATS) an employer or recruiter can automate a large part of the candidate communication helping to avoid this digital faux-pas.

A consistent response to the market research conducted by http://www.recsite.co.uk shows that candidates find it unacceptable that, after spending up to 30 minutes filling out an online job application, they do not receive any acknowledgement of their efforts. At the very least a notification of unsuitability should be provided to the candidate so they can move on with their job search.

A robust and well designed recruitment website, or Recsite, can perform the bulk of candidate screening, communication and management that have for so long been a burden on HR staff and recruitment agents alike. By profiling candidates through an automated recruitment site employers enable their HR team with real time data, while also filtering time wasters.

The goal of a well designed e-recruitment system is to ensure that all candidate contact is of the most productive type. Clearly, it's a waste of time and money for a consultant to spend 40 minutes taking personal details, when that time could be spent interviewing.
By automating the candidate registration process, recruiters not only improve productivity but start building a database of talent to which new jobs can be marketed in future, which is particularly crucial at a time of high job applications and low job vacancies.

Recruitment systems, such as those offered at Recsite, offer automated functions like targeted job alerts and job suggestions, to market your vacancies to your registered candidates instantly, and with no time input from your staff. This in turn drives traffic onto your recruitment website, enforcing the employer brand that your business deserves.

Oliver Gibbs is a Senior Project Manager at Recsite Ltd. You can email him at [email protected], or call directly on +44 (0)161 638 0920.

Recsite provide recruitment websites and software for direct employers and recruitment agencies. Full recruitment systems can be leased from £390 per month or developed bespoke.