Traditional vs Online Staffing Methods - Time, Cost, Quality, and Retention - Research Paper Example

 Internet Staffing Methods Compared to Traditional Staffing Methods: Time, Cost, Quality, and Retention Staffing from the internet traditional staffing techniques are two prime methods of staffing in an organization. While both have equal advantages and disadvantages, most of the global organizations rely on the mixture of both methods for their staffing to get a well-balanced result oriented number of employees to run the organization. Relying only on one method, gives raise to many legal and cost issues that can even make an organization suffer heavy losses. While internet staffing can be fast and time efficient traditional staffing methods give HR staffing experts more opportunities to personally judge the candidate and sort out the best from the rest. Nevertheless, for better results, a balanced blend to tradition and technology produces the best result. Before creating a mixture of both staffing techniques It becomes vitally important to have a closer look at both the methods to identify the elements that need to extracted. These extracted elements than can be used to make a perfect staffing method that is most beneficial for the organization. Staffing is an important function performed by all the organizations around the world to sustain their status and to explore growth opportunities and grow as well. Human resources are the most fundamental asset of an organization. Having an efficient and productive workforce is what gives the organization its competitive advantage over other companies. In most of the cases, an effective work force can over come the shortage of material resources and take the organization towards progress. In today’s competitive market economy, it is of prime importance to find the best available people for the organization, train them to be more productive and retain them for better future prospects. (Carol T. Kulik, 2004). However with widened communication dimensions and varied methods of staffing it is becoming more difficult to find the right candidates. Moreover, with growing competition in businesses retaining efficient and experienced staff that gives the competitive advantage over other companies even harder. This leads to the staffing process being an ongoing process in all organizations. As any process, staffing also costs to the organization. If in case the right candidate is not selected the costs go even higher along with time spent and work hours lost during finding the right candidate adds additional cost to the organization, which also, if the right employee is not found, can lead to losses. With growing dependence or organizations on information technology and with the purpose to reduce costs, internet seems to be the best possible method to staff the organization. With reduction in costs, it also leads to efficiency over time. Internet has become prime source for selecting employees for many organizations around the globe. Especially those organizations that rely on freelancers and telecommuters for human resource input rely on this method. With the rise in inflation, downsizing in various organizations and millions of jobs lost do to economic impact there is a huge pool of people who are looking for jobs. Every job opened receives a large number of job applications which makes it difficult to go through all the resumes and find the right candidate out of all the applicants. Through internet and employing information technology in the staffing process, candidate can be shortlisted according to the requirements of the organization more efficiently. In addition, as with rise in social media it has become easy to do background checking on the potential candidates. This has also given rise to various professional link building websites like linkedin.com, ecademy.com and plaxo.com HR staffing professionals can easily communicate with other professionals and find experienced professionals for the organization through self-searching or referencing. This not only provides organization’s direct access to professional and potential candidates but also leads to other associated advantages to the organization including lesser time consumed in finding the right candidates and lesser cost (Janet Nagle, 2010). Internet today has become a prime element in the lives of most of the people around the world this means candidates as well. There are millions of resumes of candidates from fresh graduates to consultant level experts on online job facilitation websites making a huge database of people looking for jobs, switch careers or improve positions by changing companies. This shows a dramatic transition of employment search methods and employee recruitment that is changing every day. What this means is that at any given time, before even posting the advertisement for a job opening, an organization has access to a vast range of potential candidates who are actively or passively looking for jobs or career growth, and this number is increasing every day (Benjamin Schneider, 2006). The premier advantages of online recruitment include time efficiency, lowered costs and having better quality candidates at disposal at all times. As compared to other staffing methods, like getting services from a professional recruitment agency which can cost quite a percentage of the candidate’s annual salary or posting the jobs in the print media which can cost hundreds of thousands dollars, online staffing is much less in cost. A good online job board costs about 100 to 400 dollars depending on the area and profession of the job posted much less then other sourcing methods. In addition, to this taking part in job fairs and running job campaigns also costs higher (ref to www.monster.com). There have been many instances that a job placed on online sources was filled in a day. There is no faster way to get quick response on job openings than the internet sources. On the other hand placing a job opening on print media takes a minimum of 2 days to start getting the input on the jobs posted. Time factor is the most pivotal element that almost all companies try to reduce and online sourcing helps. With a large number of potential candidates who apply for the job opening, it becomes easier to find high quality candidates. Online staffing methods also reduce the personal biasness of employers towards the candidates. There are many cases of discrimination on the basis of color and sex that cost heavily to the employers. With online sourcing, information technology leads the employer to short listing the candidates based on points system that online systems use. It is an automated system that generates points to the candidates because of education, experience, skills and levels of expertise, thus taking out the possibility of discrimination and getting the best-qualified candidates for final stages of staffing. On the top of it all, online staffing is much easier than any other method and the manager can manage the entire staffing process without and HR qualification or expertise (Thomas P. Bechet, 2008). There are however some noticeable downsides of the online staffing method. The primary of this being that while there are millions of resumes placed online, there are thousands of big and small online services that are offering the similar facility. The job seekers are divided into many places and there is no single place where a company can get it all. As a result, there are no assurances that the online staffing service that a company is using will get the right professions sought to be applying for the job the company has posted. This makes things difficult to manage and get immediate results, thus increasing the time duration before the candidate is inducted. In addition, a large number of candidates applies on the any job post that a company places which makes it difficult to manage. In some cases a candidate may be showing his personal interest in the job because his inclination towards or a candidate might be having the potential to grow by leaps and bounds taking the organization along with it giving the whole organization a competitive advantage with his talent but might get lost in the points. Online staffing has also lead to having recruited the worst employee that a company could ever have. If a candidate is hired without taking time and comparing with other candidates, many chances are that haste makes waste will happen. Most of the proponents of internet staffing believe in social media like twitter and facebook to be very helpful in finding the right candidate by spreading the word about job openings. Indeed it is, but on the other side of it, being an informal forum, how many would take is seriously thus lower input (Nicholas C. Burkholder, 2004). Apart from the issues mentioned earlier, the three biggest problems with internet staffing are less in-person interaction, less candidate satisfaction and less retention of candidates. Interviews are an important part of the staffing process whether though internet or by traditional method. However, in internet staffing, most of the times the interview is done remotely giving lesser opportunity to the employee and the employer to interact with each other and try to develop a level of intimacy to know each other personally. The employers are not able to identify the expressions, the temperament, positive and the negative aspects of the candidates, which helps in helps in judging the personality and attitudes of the candidate. Online staffing also leaves the candidate feel less satisfied over his performance and leaves him thinking over the work atmosphere and the temperaments of the prospective bosses (Ashish Pandey, 2006). The employee retention is also becoming an issue with staffing done through internet. A candidate remains in search of better opportunities, and switches to other position when an opportunity strikes him. This makes organizations harder to retain employees without offering good employees better offers to stay. Many rival companies use this as a unethical tactic to increase the costs of other companies. In modern times there is no denying the fact that that the traditional method of staffing is getting lesser attention than before but this method in no way can be done away with. Most of the organizations still use traditional methods including advertising the openings in leading newspapers and magazines and taking written applications in response to them, no matter what the cost. Going through all the applications, directly interacting with the candidates, taking interviews and taking time to select the right candidate is no doubt takes more time than internet staffing. However, human resources being the most primary asset of the organization deserves input because it is they that run the organization not the machines. Personally selecting the candidates and interviewing them in person gives the opportunity to the HR staffing managers to directly know the candidates and look for the potential in them that could be brought about for the growth of the organization, thus acquiring the right quality. In addition of placing the advertisements in the print media, two of the good methods of staffing include internal promotions and employee referral system. (Herbert Gerhard, 2006). Internal promotions help the organization to not only retain employees from switching over but also to achieve experienced workers who are well acquainted with the policies and working methods of the organization. In addition, workers are more satisfied with the organization for having growth opportunities and strive to produce better impacts on higher managers thus increasing the productivity of the organization. For example, an organization has 10 employees that are happy with the company, and they each tell four other potential employees about the organization and leading to 40 people interested in joining an organization. These 40 in turn will produce approximately an additional 160 candidates interested in the organization and thus making finding the right candidate much easier by a current employee referring one to the staffing managers. This produces two effects, a sense of achievement and dedication of the current employees towards the organization and the organization finding the right candidates within time. Most of the organizations that use employee referral system as one of the systems of staffing also reward the employees for introducing potential candidates for the growth of the organization (Morgen Witzel, 2004). Using employment agencies is still in vogue for around the world despite the growth of internet staffing method, which is understood to be more efficient. The reason for this is the fact that the agencies are responsible for the retention of the candidate during the decided upon probation period and the performance of the candidate. If the candidate is not able to come up to the requirements of the employer then the agency will provide with another candidate or refund the fee paid by the employer in full or with minor deduction. Though agency hiring is costlier than that of internet staffing but the satisfaction of the employer is assured by the agency therefore giving a sense of security and being able to hold someone liable. Internet staffing methods however are not able to provide any security to the employer as most of the staffing resources already mention in the contract. One thing that gives a clear advantage to traditional staffing methods over internet staffing is that candidates feel more at ease applying for openly advertised jobs rather than online job boards. There is an inherent fear in most of the good and experienced professionals that their organizational heads or co-workers might find out about their job searching and might result in a negative impact on their position in these economic conditions. This is the reason why most of the professionals avoid putting their resumes online, therefore causing a loss of potential candidacies for the organizations letting the quality human resource remain dependent on traditional staffing methods (Wayne F. Cascio, 2008). Staffing is a vital element part of an organization as good human resources are a need of all the organizations in the world whether big or small. The two main modes of staffing that are used today are internet staffing methods and traditional staffing methods. Both of the methods are distinct and equally useful in the staffing process and none can be called as superior to the other on the overall scenario whether in terms of time, cost, quality and retention. Where one method falls short of, the other method is strong. In terms of database accessibility, ease and efficiency over time, internet staffing is indeed better than the traditional method of staffing. On the other hand, traditional staffing method is able to produce more retention and provide better quality candidates to the organization with both, the candidate and the employer, being satisfied with the staffing process. To get the best results in any staffing process, it is therefore needed to create a blend of the two staffing methods to get the best staff for the company which will lead to better prospects. Relying on one method will lead to relative pros and cons therefore keeping the candidate tap not completely open to the organization for the exploration of the possibilities. Advertising the jobs on the internet and in print media although seems to be more costly but instructing the candidates to apply through a dedicated IT system through the internet is a common blend of data pooling on exact requirements of the organization and this is the method most of the companies are using these days. This way the spectrum of accessibility to the candidates is widened and using technology to do the sorting helps get the most qualified people for further processing. In person interviews, screening and selection are an important part of the staffing process that cannot be let go of in any way. With the right blend of aspects of internet and traditional staffing methods, an organization seeking employees will get the right candidates they desire of in no time. References Carol T. Kulik. Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Benjamin Schneider. Staffing Organizations. Middleton, WI: Mendota House, 2006. Janet Nagle. How to use the Internet to get your next job. Ocala, Fla.: Atlantic Pub. Group, 2010 Thomas P. Bechet. Strategic staffing: a comprehensive system for effective workforce planning. New York: American Management Association; (Alexandria, Va. : Society for Human Resource Management), 2008. Nicholas C. Burkholder; Preston J. Edwards; Libby Sartain. On Staffing: Advice and Perspectives from HR leaders. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2004. Ashish Pandey. Staffing Management. Global Vision Publishing House, 2006 Herbert Gerhard Heneman; Tim Judge. Staffing organizations. Middleton, WI: Mendota House, 2006. Morgen Witzel. Management, The Basics. London; New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. Wayne F. Cascio, John W. Boudreau. Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: FT Press. 2008 Read More