How to get your net worth

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Although newspapers still command the biggest share of the job ads market, internet-based recruitment - e-selection, e-resourcing, or e-recruitment, in the jargon - is starting to move big money.

According to statistics gathered by worldwide candidate assessment company Saville and Holdsworth, 1998 global spending on e-recruitment hit $4.5 billion and in 1999, $15 billion. By 2005 it is predicted to have reached $40 billion.

Internet job and candidate-hunting offers four main strands: job vacancies listed on the net (whether on an employer's own site or a third party's), CV posting, which allows access by potential employers, internet-based tools such as on-line job applications, and on-line screening tests.

The four sites with the most clout in New Zealand are nzjobs.co.nz, netcheck.co.nz, seek.co.nz, and myjob.co.nz, on the New Zealand Herald website.

But there is suspicion among executive candidates and recruiters that the net, while good for filling lower-level posts, is not the best way to catch senior people.

"They know they are in demand," says OCG Consulting's chief executive officer, George Brooks.

"And [searching on the net] is an effort - it takes a lot of their time to apply on-line."

Sites like KornFerry's Futurestep warn that filling in the on-line registration form will take 40 to 60 minutes, and it is so aware of the frustration potential that it allows users to store partly completed documents and come back to them.

"We don't expect to find [senior people] on the web at all," says Brooks. "Only if they are overseas wanting to come home."

Much of the suspicion rests with the downside of what is still a fledgling industry. Cowboy companies exist on the net, as anywhere else.

You can never be sure your information is safe, especially once you are told that many free on-line services make part of their money by hocking off database information.

Then there's the risk of falsification ... Is the job for real? Is that candidate telling the truth? And how can you tell that person is who they say they are?

The net is still seen as an impersonal way of doing business, says Brooks, and it can lead to recruiters drowning in poor-quality rubbish.

"It's easy for someone to send out 100 CVs in five minutes," he says. "We respond to every one. Ethically, we need to.

"We've had to resource for volume rather than ignore it."

Adds Pinnacle Recruitment's Ross Turner: "The junk rate is 90 per cent."

Sheffield's Ian Taylor says the "subtle interplay of complex people" at the very top level of corporate search requires human handling only: "It's a trust thing."

Although the company places web ads for other senior and middle-management roles on sites like seek.com, says colleague Christien Winter, the company still finds more than half of its job candidates through newspapers, and another 45 per cent through its database and other networks.

However, the pros of e-selection are too good to ignore.

The net can deal with the front end of the recruitment process, such as initial applications and basic screening tests - especially in skills-based roles such as those in IT - before interviewee and employer meet face to face.

Says Jonny Wyles, a director of major industry player Haines: "The technology gives the chance to put quality human interaction into the process, increasing your chances of hiring the right person."

Says Saville and Holdsworth managing consultant Tracy Stodart: "It's high tech, high touch."

E-recruitment "transcends" time and geography, says Pohlen Kean's Nicola Pohlen. Electronic CVs are easier to forward, and it's a low-cost, high-reach way of working.

Horner and Partners' executive lease expert, Karen Bryce, says the net is a excellent method for catching those in the market for shorter-term contract jobs.

But leading a new trend are well-known corporates and recruitment agencies.

Cognisant of the wariness surrounding net job-hunting, they are banking on their prestige and trustworthy images and setting up recruitment sites on their corporate websites.

Among them are the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Telecom New Zealand.

The latter asks you to define your ideal job and e-mails you when a related position crops up, even directing those desiring privacy to free e-mail services.

However, the biggest challenge for e-recruiters in cyberspace, as with newspapers, is to convert the vast number of those "just having a look" into candidates.

Says Wyles: "The more senior the role, the more likely the person you really want is a passive candidate.

"They've always got an eye out for the next career move."

That's backed by statistics: of the people who visit careers pages on web sites, according to Saville and Holdsworth, 71 per cent are not actively thinking of changing jobs.

Those who are total 15 per cent, and people seriously on the chase for a new position add up to 10 per cent. Just four per cent are unemployed.

Wyles says the golden rules for converting those passives is to position the business as a great place to work - tell surfers why they should want to work there - then drive traffic to the website through advertising in print media and websites where your quarries tend to go.

Respect people's desire for anonymity, and the fact that the average executive is "time-impoverished."

"Use smart technology to match them with opportunities quickly."

So is the net overrated as a way to find top-level hires?

"It is," says OCG's Brooks. "The expectation was that it would replace print, but all we've seen is that it's another way to talk to people and have people talk to us."

Says Seek's Aaron Sowden: "It's definitely not overrated.

"You've got to understand that the market is still so young."

And growing where?

Pohlen predicts that senior people will be more closely targeted in future by the creation of career portals - virtual communities that work something like the on-line version of a trusted private club.

Hoping to revolutionise on-line recruitment is the recently launched ClickAJob, which allows users to scan all job internet job sites in one go.

CVs are available only to the site's job-placement agents, not bosses, and the Scandinavian owners say this will overcome mistrust of e-selection.

Wyles predicts that as tools are refined, higher levels of psychometric and competency testing will be carried out on-line.

However, web tools will never allow accurate assessment of the intangibles of the workplace, such as cultural fit.

Wyles says: "Human judgment is always going to be the ultimate method."

myjob.co.nz