An Investigation into the Business Case for E-recruitment and achievement of Business Benefits

Abstract

Recruitment is a significant activity for organisations and the use of technology to support and improve the process increases as solutions evolve to take advantage of the Internet. Providers of so called e-recruitment solutions offer a range of benefits including reduced costs, more efficient processes, better management information and higher quality candidates. There has been limited research into the benefits of organisations using e-recruitment tools and in particular the idea that change management activity to implement the new solution and processes might be connected with how much benefit an organisation realised from the change. This study seeks to add to the body of knowledge by answering the question "How does the implementation of an e-recruitment solution deliver expected benefits and how important is change management in achieving these benefits?" A review of existing literature on the subject was conducted to learn from previous research, explore trends and summarise key ideas. From this a research methodology was defined that identified a valid and rigorous approach to answering the research question. This research studied five large organisations that have implemented an e-recruitment solution from the Jobtrain company. Through semi-structured interviews a questionnaire was completed to collect quantitative and qualitative data on the experiences of the participants. This was analysed and conclusions drawn to meet each of the identified research objectives. In summary the study concludes that the actual drivers for implementation differed from that identified in previous literature but the solution met the organisations expectation in delivering the benefits. Management of change through well planned and implemented activity to ensure realisation of benefits could have been better. There appears to be a correlation in that the better an organisation plans such change activity the better their realisation of benefits. The study recommends that further research is conducted to validate these findings with a larger sample.