Shane Bordeaux’s company is a chemical company which is relatively small and is located on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After bidding on a major government contract for several years, his company is received this big contract – it would make his firm a main player in the industry. Therefore, with the position of HR director for the company, Shane has a great responsibility to recruit more 20 new engineers immediately. It is a difficult mission for Shane because his firm has little turnover and hired only three engineers in the last two years. Moreover, all his recruitment methods like from magazines, from colleges or from an employment agency are unfeasible or take a long time; whereas he has to find enough skilled engineers to manufacture fast or the government will yank the contract. Thus, there is a good solution for recruitment’s problem which Shane face with: using the Internet and above all, Shane should plan for long-term recruitment strategies to advoid lack of staff for big contracts.
1. Question 1: In this incessantly developed world, especially in business field, that knowing how to use advanced technology like the Internet is really easy and useful. Thank to the Internet, there are many companies which have been really successful at online recruiting such as Sony BMG Music Entertainment which is a global recorded music company located in New York, United States. This corporation advertised their recruitment about assist lawyer position on the Internet. After only a few day posting, they received a lot of application letters of students from many countries with the academic excellence; hence, Sony recruited a suitable person for this position quickly. For this reason, recuiting people from the Internet is likely to solve the problem of Shane’s company because it has many advantages: wider geographic approach, convenient and economical. In the recent years, Internet is growing dramatically, using for many business fields, and becoming an effective tool for people to seek and to apply for jobs. According to a survey of Statistics Canada (2001), there was approximately 30 percent of the Internet users using the web to look for work and employment’s information; therefore, the Internet concludes a range of information about employees and it is quite easy for Shane to search about the profile of the wokers he is seeking. He will have more choice to recruit suitable people, not only in his country but also around the world; moreover, because of the quality of chemical industry, Shane should hire some engineers from other countries, which helps his company’s staff know more about the new technique of many different countries. Besides, Internet recuiting is convienient for both Shane and the candidates, because Shane can access the Internet 24 hours a day, 365 days per year and it takes him a few minutes to post his recruitment on the Internet without waiting for Chemical Monthly to be published after several days; and can receive, respond the application letters by emails easily. Futhermore, advertising on the Internet is cheaper than traditional advertisement. Although he has to pay a lot of money to put his recruitment in newspaper, that takes a long time to get published; or he can seek emloyees from an employment agency but it only find one person who does not want to work on the outskirts and its cost is also really expensive; whereas if he uses Internet, he will not have to pay for recruiting costs because many website allow employers post their recruitment advetising freely. Shane’s company also saves much money and achieves benefits in three areas: reduced the incidental costs from newspaper advertisements and employment agencies, travelling cost, reduced the workload of human resource department in classifying and collecting the applicants, and saved the recruiting process time. Futher, the freelance witer Jill Elwisk (2000) found that advertising costs from a traditional newspaper are much more exspensive than those from Internet recruiting and if a company has a good online recruitment system, they will achieve a lower cost by 90 percent. In short, nowadays, the employers in almost department have approached advanced technology to keep up with the rapid chance of the world, especially HR professfsionals who are in charge of recruiting and training staff. Moreover, although Shane’s company is a medium-sized chemical company, it has a reputation for being rather innovative; therefore that using online recruitment is reasonable and necessary.
2. Question 2: Shane’s chemical company has been successful at bidding on a major government contract; however, his company is meeting with difficulties about the labour resource. Shane has to recruit a lot of new skilled engineers, which could affect the process of the contract’s performance if he does not get enough employees. Consequently, to avoid the problems of the human resource, HR department of Shane’s firm should carry out a permanent recruitment campaign to find and engage the number of staff which is needed for the contracts not only in this period but also in the future. The first strategy that Shane should try is outsourcing the recruitment activities. His firm can hire an outside company which specialize in undertaking recruitment; since this company seeks employees for only Shane’s firm, it will work more responsibly than other employment agencies and can reduce a large amount of work for HR department in the important periods of big contracts. However, using an outsourcing company for recruiting is a provisional measure because of expensive costs; while if Shane wants to have a stable workforce system, he should make plans for permanent recruitment strategies. Hence, the second strategy is part-time staff. The part-timers are students, graduated students or job-seekers and that recruiting those extra staff is really necessary since Shane’s company will always reserve enough employees for the contracts afterwards and if these part-timers work efficiently, Shane can select them for full-time position without going to many places to seek employees in a hurry. The third strategy is sponsorship program. Shane’s firm can finance a chemical scholarship program for universities, the students who study well, have good knowledge about chemistry will receive this scholarship and these students themselves are a future human resource of Shane’s company because Shane can recruit them as soon as they graduate and does not need to find out about their education like other candidates. Moreover, if Shane wants to get skilled engineers, he should spend more money to invest in intership programs. Although this program will take a long time to train the staff, his company will have a staff system who are professional, flexible, are likely to adapt to the working circumstances quickly and can meet all the requirement of the company’s leaders.
In conclusion, nowadays, Internet are becoming more and more popular and it continues to increase rapidly. Therefore, it is essential for Shane’s company to use Internet for recruiting since he can advertise his recruitment quickly and can get the employees all over the world. Futhermore, his firm is short of staff seriously and they have to have those people fast or they will miss this government contract. Thus, to avoid this problems, Shane’s company should plan for a long-term recruitment campaign and it is in urgent need of carry out because if Shane has enough skilled engineers, he will not worry about seeking employees whenever the company receives a big contract.
References
– HR Portal, 2003, ‘Introduction to Online recruitment’, Accessed date: 5 April 2003.
http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/recruitment/introduction_to_online_recruitment.htm
– Elswick, J. 2000, ‘Online service give small business a competitive boost’, Employee Benefit News, December 2000
– http://2-0.lawmatch.com/c/job.cfm?site_id=8499&jb=6401079
– http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=LVlRgShTc7QxYRwcfMw1T9JY2D1tqjcnqVqDQk0VvNhYbkQgP6F8!64367729!1201110973?docId=5006186096
– E-Recruitment practice: Pros and Cons
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:HfEGwojKH8oJ:www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article5%2520-%2520Full.pdf+E-+RECRUITMENT+PRACTICE:+PROS+VS.+CONS&hl=vi&gl=vn&sig=AHIEtbTSdA92tyFsz_FLR0kRzRibvZY8HQ
He also can collect and classify a large number of applicants, which helps him see the qualification, ability of the employees quickly.
Bussler, L. & Davis, E. 2002, ‘Information systems: the quiet revolution in Human Resource management’, Journal of Computer Information Systems, winter 2001-2002.