Internet Recruitment – Can It Replace Headhunters?

It seems that the Internet has finally begun to affect the executive search industry.

“In the early days those involved in the online recruitment industry faced challenges in convincing recruiters that the internet was a worthwhile medium for advertising jobs and finding candidates. Even today many corporate organizations are still unaware of the benefits of internet recruitment and the need to understand and implement internal processes to deal with recruiting online. Along side these early experiences executives themselves had concerns regarding placing their personal and career details onto an online database.

Today recruiters view advertising "online" as part of their recruitment process and now believe a wider "pool" of candidates can be found through the internet. The use of online job boards in many cases has replaced the role of researchers. Recruitment companies now pay for the service and take up by corporate companies is forecasted to rise substantially in the coming years” (Read more)

However, before you are convinced that Internet recruitment can finally replaces the human touch in filling your jobs, be mindful of some of the characteristics of these mediums. Internet recruitment advertising is another variation of newspaper advertising. Both appeal to the same type of audience – the active job seekers.

Highly qualified candidates happily employed by other companies in the same industry – possibly your competitors – is what we called “passive candidates”. Traditional methods used by the good old corporate recruiters or search firms include networking, cold-calling and headhunting. Candidates unearthed using these methods are often better suited to your needs compared to active job seekers applied to online job ads.

The increasing use of Internet in recruitment also leads to the creation of a new breed of professionals, simply called as “researchers”. These are experts in using various online tools to manipulate the Internet in searching for passive candidates. However, Internet researchers can only dig out leads for promising candidates. They still have to rely on recruiters to cold-call, network and present job opportunities to these candidates and convince them to work for their clients.

Instead of being seen as replacing headhunters, Internet should be seen as an enhancement in the recruitment landscape. It is a powerful tool for recruiters. Move ahead and get to know how to use the Internet to your hiring advantage.

Note: This article will appear in EnergySkills' newsletter for November 2004