In today’s times, technology has dominated its way into all the possible aspects of our life. And recruitment in the field of Human Resources is no exception. But first, let us understand what exactly the term E-Recruitment means.

E-Recruitment, also called Online Recruitment, is a method of using the available web-based technology for attracting, determining, and handling the recruitment of job candidates in a company.

This kind of recruitment also involves the practices carried out by a company using web-based technology to identify and attract potential employees. Technology has made our tasks a lot easier. And hence through e-recruitment employers can save their spending required for reaching a larger number of potential candidates. It is known as online recruitment as internet communication is vital to this process.

But what are the components of this E-Recruitment process?
Firstly, a part that is essentially required is the employer’s website. This imparts the details of job opportunities and collects the data from the user as well. It lists out the job description as well as the job specifications. Secondly, an Applicant tracking system has assumed a vital place today. It helps in monitoring the applicant’s status concerning the jobs applied. Next, an online testing system through which the candidates are asked to give tests in online mode and their evaluation takes place online as well.

Today, with the much increasing popularity of social media, there is an advent of a new term “Social Media Recruitment”. Recruiters also prefer to have a look at the candidate’s social media profiles on Facebook or LinkedIn. This form of recruitment also comes under E-Recruitment.
Everything comes with its pros and cons. While searching for the best method to adopt, a company should weigh both aspects of E-recruitment. So let us now look into the advantages and disadvantages of E-Recruitment:

ADVANTAGES:

1. A Big Time Saver: One best thing that technology has done is to make our work faster. And with e-recruitment, one can send out job postings anytime at a much quicker speed. And as a result, it will save a lot of time for the HR managers.
2. Depreciated Hiring Costs: The labor costs in recruiting are very high in terms of advertising, recruiter fees, etc. The hiring process usually takes up too much cost and it can be effectively reduced by software.
3. Broader reach: The process of e-recruitment is quite versatile. With the aid of these, recruiters can easily reach a large scale amount of candidates locally as well as overseas. And also, with the help of advanced statistical analysis recruiters can easily trace where the applicants have seen the advertisements.
4. Easy and Flexible: With online recruitment, there is no hassle in learning how to use e-recruitment software. Being user-friendly software, it is very easy to use. Also, e-recruitment gives an excellent platform where all the HR managers could track the hiring process.
5. Dynamic Content: E-recruitment helps in creating dynamic content that could build up the company’s branding in a successful way to attract the best expertise and also to promote a good corporate culture.
   
   

DISADVANTAGES:

1. Appears too informal: A lot of companies perceive that posting jobs online could be a little informal and may not look good on the firm’s part. It may happen at those firms that have strong corporate cultures.
2. Brings fraudulent applicants: In e-recruitment, the applications may be entirely fake. The candidates may try to get information about the company or any other hiring officer. It is also quite risky because spammers might use all the data posted on the software for their deceitful purposes.
3. Keyword Issues: This is the greatest drawback of e-recruitment. While this software helps in saving time, a company may end up missing out on excellent candidates. This is because the deserving candidates might be rejected as they did not use that specific keyword to describe their skills.

E-recruitment has quickly grown to a preferred means for a lot of companies worldwide. A lot of companies are now switching to this versatile form of recruitment. This has also happened due to the growing use of Social Media as well as platforms such as LinkedIn. But apart from its popularity and benefits, there are some demerits associated with it as well. And hence it is apt to conclude that it is up to the HR of the company to define specific frameworks to make this practice an asset.