The Personal Touch Is Still the Best Recruiting Tool (4/5)

The Personal Touch Is Still the Best Recruiting Tool

It's hard to find good help these days, say 73 percent of survey respondents in a study conducted by Fortune Personnel Consultants, a national network of executive-search firm franchises. This labor shortage is cutting across all industries, but some are feeling the pinch more than others. Survey results indicate that high-tech, manufacturing and professional business-service industries are having the hardest time finding qualified candidates.

With national unemployment rates at just over 4 percent, these findings come as no surprise to most. What is surprising, though, is the perception of online resume database utility. While major players like Monster.com are spending big bucks on traditional advertising, more than half of respondents report that this emerging recruitment tool is least effective for filling management-level positions. According to Fortune, the best candidates are generally recruited using a more personal approach.

Glenn Gutmacher, product/content manager for TownOnline.com, an online city guide featuring a job bank, admits there are still bugs in the online-recruiting system, but they are mostly related to user error. "Because it's so easy for people to apply for jobs online, many job-seekers will send their resume to many companies for many positions, many of which they're not qualified for. This is because the job-seeker ignored the detailed skill requirements in the job description, or they were incorrectly matched to the job, or both," explains Gutmacher.

This typically results in employers receiving far too many resumes, which then need to be sifted through in order to identify promising candidates.

Fortune suggests that before the formal interview process begins, hiring companies can keep recruitment practices cost-effective by shaving the list of potential candidates to a select few. Screening candidates is an effective way to predetermine if the candidate is a good match, according to the survey. More than one-third of respondents say conducting a telephone interview helps narrow the pool, while only 11 percent feel reference checking is effective.

Most human resource departments interview at least five candidates -- and as many as 16 -- before filling management positions, according to the survey.

"Let's face it, when key positions are vacant, a company's bottom line is affected. The solution to stopping the revenue loss is quickly recruiting the right candidate for the right opportunity," says Dennis Inzinna, Fortune's president.

Online recruiters are responding with industry-specific career sites, like JobOptions.com, to compete more effectively with real-world recruiters. While online recruitment for high-tech fields has been strong since graphical World Wide Web browsers debuted, now we are seeing strong growth in job categories not traditionally associated with the Web, says Gutmacher. "Finance, engineering, health care, human resources and biological/environmental sciences are areas that have skyrocketed in the number of online job postings serving those niches," he explains. "What I'm also pleased to see is the significant increase in the volume of job postings and resumes on the minority-focused career sites."

Still, despite the diversification of Internet recruitment tools, a separate study by the William Olsen Center for Workforce Strategies backs up Fortune's findings. According to a just-released national survey, help-wanted classified advertising is projected to be the most widely used and effective venue through which companies will recruit and hire candidates in 1999.

Surveyed companies say nearly half of new hires will be recruited by classified advertising, while a meager 5 percent are expected to be generated via online job databases.

"Temp-to-hire situations will remain a key recruitment strategy for full-time positions," says Gordon Bingham, senior vice president of Olsten Staffing Services. "In these situations, companies and employees alike can assess each other's strengths and weaknesses before making a longer-term commitment to full-time employment."

However, Bingham does see a large window of opportunity for companies to leverage the Internet and other technologies as part of their recruiting strategies. He predicts: "Over the long term, we expect the Internet to replace traditional classified advertising as the primary source of applicants."