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t (CIPD) (2007) reported that 84 per cent of organisations
experienced recruitment difficulties, indicating the continuing tight labour marketconditions and the need to choose appropriate ways to access labour markets. Thealready extensive range of recruitment techniques available to organisations hasbeen augmented further with the development of technologies such as Internet
recruitment.
The use of online recruitment has grown rapidly over the past 10 years, and theInternet is now a widely adopted medium by both recruiters and job seekers withinthe UK and across the world. Arthur (2001) found that 96 per cent of US companieswere online, with spending on electronic advertising expected to rise from $48 millionin 2001 to $460 million by 2006. More recently, Cober and Brown (2006) found that 50
per cent of new hires in the USA were from online sources. In the UK, onlinerecruitment has become popular for both organisations and candidates. For instance,the CIPD (2006) found that 64 per cent of UK organisations used e-recruitment,suggesting that the growth of the Internet as a recruitment tool has been considerable.
In the USA, at least, online recruitment has begun to displace other more
traditional recruitment methods. Feldman and Klaas (2002) have described how theInternet is ‘clearly beginning to cut into other types of employment advertisingrevenues’ (p. 2) such as newspaper advertising and headhunters. Boehle(2000) andQuick (1998) suggested that expenditure on newspaper advertising and headhunterretainer fees have dropped 20 per cent in the USA as spending on Internet
recruitment has increased.Despite the reported growth of the use of Internet recruitment, academic researchregarding this topic in the UK is relatively sparse. Bartram (2000) noted that, ‘Thetopic of study is relatively new. As a consequence there has been little time forresearch to have been carried out and found its way into the literature. A search ofPsychLit for papers concerned with the Internet and . . . recruitment found nothing’(p. 261). The situation has changed very little since Bartram’s article, with themajority of academic interest in online recruitment being from the candidate’sperspective rather than the employer’s. Our study will attempt to address this gap.
As previous empirical research in this area is so limited, we will adopt anexploratory approach and will therefore seek to answer broad research questionsrather than to prove hypotheses. Given the absence of longitudinalstudies followingthe organisational use of Internet recruitment, we undertook a longitudinal surveyover a period of six years so that trends in the use of Internet recruitment could be
analysed. We believe these to be critical years, from 1999 to 2006, when the Internetbecame a popular means to communicate and a source of new information.
The first question that this study will explore is:
What trends are there in the use and perceived success of corporate web sitesand commercial jobs boards, and what are the reasons behind these trends?Analysis of online recruitment methods in the UK
258 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 18 NO 3, 2008
© 2008 The Authors.
Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
In order for online recruitment to have the impact on the recruitment process thathas been predicted, it would need to offer considerable advantages over other, more
established, methods of recruitment such as print advertisin