The rapid strides in IT have significantly changed the ways business is conducted and this growing tendency of using technology is noticeably demonstrated by the number of firms and peoples, who utilise the Internet and e-mails. The impact of technology on business activities is further reflected by the continued success of IT applications in firms operations.
Moreover, the positive effects of new technological development and implementation on the efficiency of business, including the impact on HR practices, ensure the organisations, success in terms of better product quality and increase in market share and revenue. Here it is safe to say that the acceptance of the web, as a medium of communication and commerce, by organisations has been faster than any other medium in history.
In terms of HRM, the internet has radically changed the recruitment function from the organisational and job seekers' perspective. Conventional methods of recruitment processes are readily acknowledged as being time-consuming with high costs and limited geographic reach. However, recruitment through World Wide Web (WWW) provides global coverage and easiness. Likewise, the speedy integration of the internet into recruitment processes is primarily recognised due to the internet's unrivalled communications capabilities, which enable recruiters for written communications through e-mails, blogs and job portals.
With great acceptance, the head hunters and job seekers access web-sites and job portals at the click of a mouse and exchange the employment and services, to be conducted in an instant. This communication is quick, easy and cheap and its reach is on a local, national and international scale. Many authentic job portals provide these facilities at par.
According to an anonymous research, 75% HR professionals use the internet as a tool for recruitment within developed countries, in combination with the more traditional recruitment methods, such as newspaper advertisement and employee referrals. Though, it is not the case of Pakistan, a developing country, but considerable measures may be taken to strategize the e-recruitment function in the long-term perspective.
E-recruitment is a key for organisations to maintain competitive efficiency level and high productivity. However in a country like Pakistan there are many constraints and the largest constraint seems the 'cultural constraint', says Dr Asma Hyder, a professor of human resource at NUST and Fullbright Post-Doc Scholar at University of Pennsylvania.
"Today in the modern age of technology and globalisation e-HRM became part and parcel of multinationals, SMEs and internationally competitive organisations for knowledge management and 'information and organisation' of intellectual and social capital," she added.
The popularity of online recruitment has been noticed in Pakistan since 2005, when different job portals emerged as a medium of free exchange of employment and services. These job portals get success to build their image as an online job market and substitute the traditional newspaper-based job market at large. In the start, these job portals allow employers, to post their vacant positions and job seekers to apply for a job, by open means. However, there is a need to take pre measures and develop a legal framework for online job activities to avoid job scams. Further government agencies should equip themselves to closely monitor the open job portals, before they are misused and build a protection filter in the best interests of the citizens.
Currently, most of the leading companies operating in Pakistan have either built their own job portals or are using the services of job portal service providers. Likewise, job seekers' enthusiastically visit job websites and sign-up to increase their chances of better employment opportunities.
This shift of pace creates a dilemma for those organisations who are still reluctant to adopt technological changes. This swing in recruitment gradually closes the doors of talent hunting which is competitive in the current dynamic business environment, where firms are facing cutthroat competition. And of course without manpower, firms cannot win this battle. As a result of the paradigm shift being introduced by the age of micro-electronics, Professor Dr Muhammad Ali Siddiqui, a renowned scholar and Dean at BIZTEK, has called it a move towards a paperless economy.
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