Using the internet as a recruitment tool

Finding a person with the right skills, qualifications and experience can be both difficult and time-consuming. But with the internet increasingly becoming recognised as an accepted job-hunting resource, employers have found that online recruitment can be very effective.

At the moment, your company probably recruits staff through the traditional avenues such as newspapers, associations, recruiting firms, higher education, jobs fairs or employee referrals.

But if you decide to make use of the internet for recruitment purposes you will find that it has some unique advantages:

• You will be able to reach a very large number of potential candidates over a massive geographical area.
• You will be able to access the less 'active' candidate market - ie. those employees who are not positively looking to change jobs, but who might consider it for the right position and offer.
• You will know that the candidates you are attracting are sufficiently resourceful and confident with technology to have made use of the internet.
• At the same time, you will be able to impress top-quality candidates with your ability to make use of contemporary trends and technology.

There are several options available to you in advertising vacancies on the internet. If you already have a website, you can list vacant positions and provide contact details there.

But to be really effective you might want to use a professional recruiting site. These allow you to browse through the CVs of relevant candidates or to post your own vacancies.

Here are some of the most popular sites:

• Total Jobs - www.totaljobs.com
• Fish4jobs - www.fish4jobs.co.uk
• Monster - www.monster.co.uk
• Top Jobs - www.topjobs.co.uk
• StepStone - www.stepstone.co.uk
• PlanetRecruit - www.planetrecruit.co.uk
• Technojobs - www.technojobs.co.uk