The web is not just changing the way people look for jobs but the way companies go about the entire recruitment process. Ian Campbellreports

NOT SO long ago, applying for a job meant updating a CV and popping it in the post before the deadline passed. A subsequent call for an interview or a rejection letter was entirely based on whether a couple of sheets of paper ticked the right boxes and made an impression on the employer. As with so many aspects of life, the internet has changed everything.

“There are a lot of technologies that now accelerate the process of introducing a job candidate to an employer,” said Cathal Grogan, founder of Verify Recruitment, a company that opened for business in 2008. He refers to is as “job dating”.

Because Verify specialises in IT jobs and works for companies like Google and PayPal, the impact of the technology is more acute. Grogan sees it as important at every point in the process, from sourcing prospective candidates to matching their skills to posts.

Companies are increasingly savvy in the way they use the web to cultivate a brand image that will attract potential employees, particularly those with an internal HR department that is able to sustain an ongoing presence among communities like Facebook or on a professional networking site like LinkedIn.

Some go further, like Paddy Power and PayPal, which have their own jobs portals. “All this kind of activity is about establishing a reputation and being seen as an interesting company to work for. And because communications are a lot more pervasive, they can be proactive when they are looking to fill a particular position and generate a huge amount of noise,” said Grogan.

Services like Twitter mean that a job vacancy can become viral and read by hundreds or even thousands of people almost instantly. But the web in all its forms can also facilitate a more targeted engagement. Candidates can also assume more control and push their profiles out in the public domain.

According to Hugh McCarthy, IT jobs leader at Brightwater Recruitment, LinkedIn is the single biggest development. Traditional job boards are fine for people actively involved in job hunting but LinkedIn offers something different.

“Anyone is contactable on the site so it is an excellent tool for people who may not be actively in the market for a job, but have appropriate skill-sets that might come to the attention of a headhunter,” said McCarthy.

He estimates that around 90 per cent of IT candidates would now have a profile on the site. It will almost certainly be one of several ports of call for employers as personal information becomes increasingly available in the public domain.

“Employers tell us they will ‘Google’ candidates and you can guarantee that media-savvy HR people will have a look at a candidate’s Facebook page.”

Concerns about Facebook’s ever-changing privacy rules highlight how careful job candidates need to be. McCarthy recommends that people run a professional Facebook page alongside their personal one, where they can carefully choose privacy settings and which friends to feature.

He said Twitter hasn’t really kicked off yet as recruitment tool but thinks it’s only a matter of time. Blogs can play a part as a real-time resume, but McCarthy warns they have to be treated carefully because every off-the-cuff remark offers insights that might not always chime favourably with potential employers.

Recruitment web sites and job boards have made it much easier to find work, a process that is being honed further by companies like Monster that are constantly improving their on-site search capabilities, matching candidates to roles more quickly by using key words. But the main currency for job applications, however, is still a word document sent out over email. Although there may be the temptation to lodge copies of your CV on job portals, McCarthy recommends that candidates update it for every application rather than letting it sit statistically on a site for use in multiple applications.

When a CV makes a good impression, a face-to-face interview usually follows, though even this is starting to change. Video interviews are the speciality of Sonru, an Irish start-up that targets the early stages of recruitment, promising to save its clients time and money.

Inspired by the success of sites like YouTube, company founder Edward Hendrick thought there must be a video service with a business application. Recruitment provided the niche. He developed a self-service portal where candidates take part in an online video interview from anywhere. Over a set period of time, they are asked a series of text-based questions chosen by the employer.

All a candidate needs is a laptop with a web cam and a reasonable broadband connection – both near ubiquitous at this stage. Log-in details are e-mailed to them and they are invited to partake in their own time but before a set closing date.

There is a preparation area where candidates can practise with random questions and see what they look like on video. After the main event, the interview is automatically saved and ready for the employer to review.

Customers for the service include Eircom and Ebay, firms where the culture of using technology is more embedded. Sonru charges businesses an average of €10 per video, but only for videos that are recorded and viewed.

“The big benefit is speed to interview,” said Hendrick. “First-round interviews waste a lot of time, both for candidates who have to travel to the interview, and employers who have to schedule them into their day. It typically takes up to three weeks to set up interviews. With our system you can take 50 CVs and set the video interviews up almost instantly.”

He also claims that by setting questions and removing the interviewer from the process, the format is more standardised and easier to analyse. That said, he is not claiming that it does away with face-to-face interviews entirely.

Such innovations as video interviews are just the tip of the iceberg as technology is transforming the entire people management process. Companies are using HR solutions from vendors like NorthgateArinso that are accessible to different parts of the business. Managers can use the systems to view holiday leave in their department or check the training progress of employees. Crucially, employees can update their own records.

“Using self-service software you can reduce the cost of HR processes by between 45 and 80 per cent,” said Roddie Aherne, the company’s business director in Ireland.