Building an E-Cruitment strategy
Often recruitment initiatives impact on brand perception and vice versa. For example: in what way would being an employer of choice impact on brand equity and will it give the business an advantage over the opposition?
If you consider the core, but not specialist, skills in your business, are they easily available and are they likely to remain freely available over the next five years and beyond? Consequently, do you need to look at building new recruitment channels?
Are the demographics of your work force likely to change and how do they want to engage with you as an employer? Considering that South Africa had 4.8 million Facebook users in December 2011, 7% of Internet users were rural, the prevalence and growth in cell-phone internet usage and the fact that SA has the second-fastest growing usage of Twitter in Africa - do you think that your business will benefit from self-service in the recruitment sphere?
Using a bit of blue-sky thinking and without being constrained by current financial considerations, market conditions or management bias, consider and document your thoughts about recruitment challenges over the next five years.
Building a plan
- Consider the table below and identify the pain points or areas of opportunity. Prioritise these according to their seriousness, urgency and growth - consider what happens if you do nothing.
- In all of these areas there are multiple E-Cruitment tools that can be considered. There are often other remedies and you should not be bullied into or out of thinking that one system fits all and everything in HR.
- Settle on one or two areas and look for at least 3 - 5 vendors with offerings - either get free trials or ask for demos of their solutions. P.S. Don’t involve the IT guys in any of this, there is time for that later.
- Look for areas where you can get some quick wins.
Make a business case
If you want to be taken seriously, make a business case for each initiative and show how this aligns to your strategic goals. Your business case should have a clear set of objectives and a timeline. You should address the areas where changes to the system necessitate changes to the structure or business process. Costs should be clearly defined and, ideally, there should not be contractual commitments during the pilot phases. Work out your ROI (Return on Investment) taking into account actual cost savings, manpower savings, incremental revenue generation and business efficiencies.
Most importantly, have some informal discussions with key stakeholders in the business and make sure you have an internal sponsor (ideally a C-level leader) who will support your plan.
