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HEADNOTE

Abstract

The rapid growth of internet change the fabric of many people's everyday lives and business

community wants to be part of this fabric. Therefore, this research was conducted in order toinvestigate internet recruitment in large and small firms in Pakistan. Small and large Pakistani

organizations were taken for study through simple random sampling. Data were collected byadopting telephonic survey. Chi square test was applied to investigate data taken from 65

respondents from different industries and sectors of the economy. Preference was given to smallfirms as compared to large firms in term of using internet recruitment .There was sufficient

evidence to indicate that large percentage of large firms have their own website and using it forrecruitment as compare to small firms. What this article demonstrates is that this new medium is

going to replace the other traditional sources of recruitment because of low cost, time saving,quick response, to check application status, online resume development for both employers and

job seekers.

Key words: Recruitment, Internet, Resume Development, Job seekers

1. Introduction

It is challenging to write down on internet recruitment practices in differentfirms. This topic is new in Pakistan. There was limited time for primaryresearch and literature review. Firm size is an important variable in thesearch of internet recruitment and analysis of its impact on overall firm's

productivity (Hansford & Duncan, 2004). HR literature describe that largefirms are more formal in their HRM Practices as compared to small sizefirms, so that is way large firms are better able to attract and retaincompetent people. The purpose of this study is to investigate and stimulateinternet recruitment across different firm in different sectors of Pakistan.

1.1 Human resource management (HRM) practices

Pakistani organizations are trying to professionalize management practicesin recent years Qureshi (1994) and they also trying to adopt new tools andtechniques of management to improve their HRM practices. Now it is worthy

to see how HRM practices works? and where recruitment phase comes. Firstit starts from HR Planning that is to anticipate the future HR demand of firmwith available supply in labor market and also align it with overallorganizational strategic goals (Peters and Waterman, 1982). Second afterHR planning come job analysis. Purpose of job analysis is to find out jobdescription (tasks, duties, and responsibility), Job Specification (knowledge,skills, abilities, experience and education) and job design (job description,job specification, relationship with other jobs, tools and techniques required

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to perform a particular job). Third hiring process starts once the JA ends,which involves three stages i.Recruitment, ii. Selection,iii.Orientation/Socialization. However a number of writers make a differencebetween socialization and orientation activities for the purpose of conductingany study, orientation activities are considered as a subset of organizational

socialization. (Qureshi, 1994).Rest of HRM practices are the training anddevelopment, performance Management, compensating employees. Seefigure 1.

There are some activities involve in recruitment process, it starts from jobposting. This involves to know the applicants about the job contents andencourage qualified applicants to apply for it and also encourage theunqualified people to select themselves out by seeing job description &specification. It is all about to reduce the fat of the pool of applicantsfor selectionprocess .This process occupies a pivotal position in HRM policiessince it enables an organization to identify and attract the required human

resources in order to generate capabilities to stay competitive (Ulrich,1990).There are two sources of recruitment 1.internal and 2.Externalsources. For external sources. See figure 21.2. Growth of internet

Internet plays a vital role in attracting and recruitment process (Bartram,2000).Computer networks have existed for a long time. The first use ofhyper-linked network by the US military occurred in 1957.Pakistan properlyjoin this network in late 90's.At the start of 80' s Tim Berners Lee proposedthe idea of using a SGB (Standard Graphical Browser) and standard codesfor communication that provide access to users to access any kind ofinformation from WWW (World Wide Web). The first user-friendly wwwexploring software was Mosaic appeared in 1992 .After some period of timeone other software come into being Netscape in 1994,in 1995 Microsoft "sbrowser capture major share of this network. In Pakistan we can look at ondifferent dimensions of widespread use of the computers and Internet, thetime at which it started to become part of the fabric of many people'severyday lives (Bartram, 2004).

1.3. Recruitment on the internet

In the past, the prominence in the recruitment model has been on precisely

and lawfully assessing candidate's qualifications. The emphasis in Internetrecruitment is on attracting candidates. As a result, a marketing orientationhas characterized this field (Lievens& Harris, 2003). Use of the internet letscompanies search for talent without geographic limitations. Internetrecruiting can include online job posting, application and candidate screeningfrom the company's website or the web sites of other companies that are

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specialize in online recruiting, such as brightspyre.com (in the Pakistancontext).

Millions of people on the Internet today are scattered throughout thosepages, looking for jobs, reading the news, playing games, discussing their

projects, learning new skills, working, playing, and collaborating at all hoursof the day. It's a recruiter's dream and a time management nightmare. So,for the foreseeable future, the billions of Web pages, tens of millions ofcandidates, and thousands of Web-based recruiting vendors will remain aswirling soup (Foster, 2005). The promises of the internet recruitment are:

i. It is no longer necessary to retain a professional employment recruiter forspecialized searches to reach the talented candidate. Candidates areadvertising themselves, and employers will find them with an effectivesearch.

ii. Getting started requires very basic computer technology; it's as simple asa fax machine or e-mail.

iii. Employers can sell career opportunities and your company. Include adescription of the corporate strengths in their job ad.iv. Small companies with limited recruiting budgets can now compete withlarge companies in the search for the best job candidates,

v. Employers can now require more from their headhunters, when theydecide to hire them for unique situations.

vi. Select from a wide array of internet recruitment companies to do the

work for employers..

Well, it all starts with a firm understanding of the traditional recruitmentprocess and the new options enabled by the internet. Therefore, theemergence of internet recruitment leads to a large number of researchquestions, many of which have key practical implications (Lievens& Harris2003) in developing countries like Pakistan.

2. Hypotheses

Small and large firms differ on several key aspects of internet recruitment,

namely the existence of company website, use of the website in recruitment,difference across functions and management levels. For that reason, thefollowing hypotheses are proposed:

H1: A greater Percentage of large organizations will have their own websiteversus small organization.

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H2: A greater Percentage of large organizations will use their own websitesfor recruiting than small organizations.

H3: A greater Percentage of large organizations will be more aware ofinternet recruiters than small companies.

H4: A greater Percentage of large organizations will be using Internetrecruiters as headhunters than small companies.

3. Methodology

For correctiveness and eliminating any error a stratified random samplingprocedures was developed and representative number of organizations wereidentified across different sectors in Islamabad, Rawaplindi and Gujarat.

A small number of large and local organizations were included in the study2.The data were collected through questionnaires, survey respondent were

contacted by phone and interviewed. To encourage participation respondentswere explained the benefits of internet recruitment in context of time andcost saving to their organizations.

The focus of this study was only Pakistani organizations having full timeemployees. The primary measure of firm size as supported according to HRliterature on recruitment (Hausorf et al 2004; Barrtram et al1995).Organization were categorized according to definition of Small &Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) Pakistan: small (10 to35 employees), medium (36 to 99employees) and large (100 and above)

4. Results

After analysis of data, results shows that Hypotheses 1 was supported, largeorganization were more likely to have their own web site compare to smallerones. In total, 85 percent of large companies had their website, compare to61 percent small organizations.

Hypotheses: 2 was supported that 68 percent large organizations using theirwebsite for recruitment as compare to small organizations currently26percent using website for recruitment. Likewise, 86 percent of large and60 percent of small organizations who do not currently recruit through

internet intend to use it in future.Hypotheses: 3 was also supported that large organization are more aware ofinternet recruiters, 68 percent large organizations were aware of two ormore internet recruiters compared to small organizations 32 percent.

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Hypotheses :4 also was supported that large organizations 56 percent usinginternet recruiters as compare to small organizations 16 percent had notused internet recruiters prior to surveys.

In addition to these hypotheses respondents were asked to indicate the

activities they perform through internet recruitment. The most popularactivities performed are advertisement of positions, receiving resumeselectronically, providing information about organization and to check thestatus of application. Respondent were also asked which management levelthey advertised. Respondent replay that Internet usage decline asmanagement level increase they mostly use headhunting approach for topmanagement.

5. Discussion

This study has great significance for the effectiveness of internet recruitment

in large organizations and more significantly for small organizations. Thestudy indicates that 74 percent organizations have their website, 48percentare using for recruitment and 36 percent are using internet recruiters. Inaddition, applicants for jobs and job seekers are increasingly expecting tofind work through the internet rather than more traditional means. (Bartram2000).

6. Theoretical/research implications

Entrepreneurship research support the general finding that smallorganizations are more likely to operate in an informal and flexible manner(Uhlaner et al 2001) and the finding of (Hansford et al. 2004) shows thatlarge organizations are more formal in HR practices. They use their websitesto attract the talents but as pursued by small firms across the differentmanagement levels same in Pakistan. The small firm are more formalized byusing internet recruitment mean at lease at their first contact with jobapplicants (Barber et al 1999) because its two way street job applicantsseeking for best place for their career and organization seeking for talents toachieve their strategic objectives in competitive environment.

7. Practical implication for small business

A candidate who wished to apply for a job would need to first locate asuitablejob opportunities, which often involve searching through anewspaper or contacting links. After locating potentially suitable openings,the candidate would typically have to prepare a cover letter, produce a copyof his resume and mail the package with the appropriate postage. (LievensF. & Harris, M.M 2003). By way of comparison, the internet permits acandidate to immediately seek out and search through thousands of jobopenings.

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Internet recruitment can be implemented through organization's ownwebsite or through outsourcing this activity to an internet recruiter forexample brightspyre.com.One of the hindrance is the lack of skills,knowledge and ability to develop and manage website in small business.Now internet recruitment is far less expensive than traditional recruiting

approaches. Although the cost ratio is likely to differ from situation tosituation, a reasonable estimate is that internet recruitment is 1/10th of thecost of traditional recruitment and time may be reduced by 25percent(Lievens et al. 2003)

Today small firms must compete with large organizations for skilled talent.With the use of the internet growing this recruitment channel can providesmall companies with access to labor markets typically monopolized by largeorganizations. However, the costs of access (either through websitedevelopment and maintenance or through internet recruiters) may be alimiting factor. Small organizations make greater use of the services of

internet recruiters and job boards as part of their overall recruitment efforts,recruitment efforts can be targeted at wide range of positions acrossdifferent functions and management levels and the e-mail can be used forinitial communications with job candidates. These changes can be madewithout significant increases in recruitment costs and will generate additionaljob candidates

8. Limitation

There was little time for primary research and literature review. Theresearch covers the little number of sectors and medium size firms were also

ignored .Despite having these limitations and exploration research forinternet recruitment in Pakistan was considered unavoidable to provide aopening point for future research.

9. Suggestion for future research

One of executive interviewed by Forrester so expressively put it, "We haveto sift through lots of rsums, like kissing frogs before you find the prince."(Bartram et al 2000)This is not the end of story. Internet recruitment is anew area of research; there are

multiple issues which can explore in future research. For instance to applythe same hypotheses on medium size organizations, development ofElectronic Recruitment Index (ERI), like Jinnah Employment Index, differentmanagement level and functional level jobs advertised by different sizeorganizations will also have to be made assessable.

10. Conclusion

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It conclude that greater percentage of large firms have had their ownwebsite and using it for recruitment as compare to smaller firms to attractthe best applicants. Internet recruitment has, in certain ways at least,considerably changed the way in which the whole recruitment process isconducted. It provides lot of options to organizations and job seekers to go

through with flexibility from the process of staffing. It is worthy thatresearch into this area must be continue to guide the business communitybecause it has already had a dramatic impact on the way in whichrecruitment is carried out. This new medium is going to replace the othertraditional sources because of low cost, time saving, quick response, toapplication status, online resume development etc for both employers andjob seekers.

FOOTNOTE1 "Employer's Recruiting Guide" prepared by Minnesota Workforce Centre-USA.

FOOTNOTE

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Bailes, A. L. (2002, Spring). Who says it can't be done? Recruiting the next generation of publicSQTvants.Business of Government, 51 5 5, www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/

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AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Muhammad Haroon

Faculty of Management Sciences,

National University of Modern Languages-Islamabad

Muhammad Zia-ur-Rehman

Faculty of Management Sciences,

National University of Modern Languages-Islamabad