E-Recruitment: Practices, Opportunities and Challenges

E-Recruitment is a new technological means for selecting one of the companies’ most crucial resources, i.e. human resource. Recruitment has become an important process in the highly competitive labour market. The traditional methods of recruitment has been revolutionized by the wave of internet. E-recruitment is the latest trend and it has been adopted by large and small-sized organizations. Many companies use e-recruitment to post jobs and accept resumes on the internet, and correspond with the applicants by e-mail. The main success factors of e-recruitment are the value-added services provided by the job sites cost effectiveness, speed, providing customised solutions, helping to establish relationship with HR managers and facilitates brand building of the companies. Despite the inherent benefits, certain challenges are also associated with the e-recruitment process. The emerging trend in technology and process or globalization suggests that the process will continue to expand, and consequently organizations should key in into the process to enhance the quality of their staff recruitment functions. The main objective of this study is to analyse the overall trends in e-recruitment use and practice and to list the opportunities and challenges faced by job seekers and employers. Keywords: e-recruitment, opportunities, challenges, e-recruitment practices, e-recruitment trends.

Direct Marketing Based on Fuzzy Clustering of Customers (Case Study: on one Mobile Company)

Objective There is a general tendency toward direct marketing these days. Therefore, instead of designing advertisement and marketing strategies for all the customers in the market, it is recommended to classify the customers based on clustering techniques and then design specific strategies accordingly. This will reduce marketing and advertisement expenses, increase sale department efficiently, build closer and quicker relationships with different customers and etc. There are a variety of clustering methods. Provided that clustering means classifying customers in different groups with maximum similarities within the groups and maximum difference among the groups, it may not be appropriate to apply such a rule in clustering customers (people) due to their nature. Hence, fuzzy clustering technique seems more appropriate for customers because there are no absolute borders considered among different groups just as the market suggests. This study, then, aims to emphasize on this concept in order to apply fuzzy clustering on market.   Methodology This practical research is descriptive-exploratory in nature of data collection. The statistical population includes all the customers of a mobile company, but due to availability issues only a part of their customers would be involved in the present study. A questionnaire including 6 questions was distributed among those customers and only 760 were correctly responded. Finally, EXCEL and S-PLUS were used to analyze the data.    Findings The data in this study include three different parts of information. The first part includes some indexes selected for analysis of the clustering. Second part concerns with the customers service usage such as distant phone calls, free calls and wireless services. The third part refers to other mobile services provided for each customer. This part is presented in a binary fashion deciding whether a customer has received a specific service or not. Such services include activating more than one mobile line at the moment, using voicemail, paging, internet and other services. This algorithm was used to conduct fuzzy clustering in the present study. Following applying fuzzy clustering, only 2 clusters were judged appropriate for such data. The first cluster includes customers with lower income, job stability and lower loyalty to the mobile company, while the second cluster includes customers with higher income, higher job stability and more loyalty to the mobile company. The customers in the first cluster used services like free calls, wireless networks and pay phones. On the other hand, the customer in the second cluster mainly used services like distant calls and rarely used wireless services. In general, we can claim that paging services were the highest requested and then there are voicemail services, internet, and e-pay services respectively. The two clusters reported to have a similar tendency in using services such as voicemail, multi-lines, conferencing; yet, they were different in services like paging, internet, call forwarding (diverting), call waiting and e-pay services. At the end, mobile companies can set marketing strategies based on such findings.   Conclusion It is suggested that mobile companies focus on general advertisements and distant call services, but only a little focus on wireless services. They can also put more thought on services like paging, voicemail, internet and e-pay services respectively. It is also recommended that, for female customers (mostly within the first cluster), the companies should focus on pay phone services, distant calls, and free calls as well as voicemail and internet. On the other hand, for male customer with higher job stability, it is suggested to focus the most on distant call services and provision of special discounts with this regard, but the least on wireless and pay phone services. Besides, voicemail services, paging, call waiting, call forwarding and e-pay services should be the mobile company’s priority for male customers

Careering through the Web: the potential of Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies for career development and career support services

This paper examines the environment that the web provides for career exploration. Career practitioners have long seen value in engaging in technology and the opportunities offered by the internet, and this interest continues. However, this paper suggests that the online environment for career exploration is far broader than that provided by public-sector careers services. In addition to these services, there is a wide range of other players including private-sector career consultants, employers, recruitment companies and learning providers who are all contributing to a potentially rich career exploration environment.UKCE

Get yourself connected: conceptualising the role of digital technologies in Norwegian career guidance

This report outlines the role of digital technologies in the provision of career guidance. It was commissioned by the c ommittee on career guidance which is advising the Norwegian Government following a review of the countries skills system by the OECD. In this report we argue that career guidance and online career guidance in particular can support the development of Norwa y’s skills system to help meet the economic challenges that it faces.The expert committee advising Norway’s Career Guidance Initiativ

Enhancing choice? The role of technology in the career support market

This report explores the role that technology has played in the development of the career support market. This market is conceived broadly to include all possible resources that individuals might draw upon to support them in their career development. A key element is the role that is played by public-sector career services and by careers professionals; though these resources are supplemented by services paid for in a wide range of ways and delivered by a range of professionals and non-professionals.UKCE

Managing Customer Services: Human Resource Practices, Turnover, and Sales Growth

This study examines the relationship between human resource practices, employee quit rates, and organizational performance by drawing on a unique nationally representative sample of 354 customer service and sales establishments in the telecommunications industry. Multivariate analyses show that quit rates are lower and sales growth is higher in establishments that emphasize high skills, employee participation in decision-making and in teams, and HR incentives such as high relative pay and employment security. Quit rates partially mediate the relationship between human resource practices and sales growth. These relationships also are moderated by the customer segment that frontline employees serve

NET WORKING: Work Patterns and Workforce Policies for the New Media Industry

This report, based on a study of a group of highly accomplished professionals in New York City, is one of the first to take up labor market issues in the new media industry. It describes the challenges faced by professionals and employers alike in this important and dynamic sector, and identifies strategies for success in a project oriented environment with highly complex skill demands and rapidly changing technology. Our findings suggest three central issues

Telecommunications 2000 Strategy, HR Practices & Performance

This report constitutes the first benchmarking survey of business and human resource practices among a nationally representative sample of workplaces in the broadly defined telecommunications industry that includes wireline, wireless, cable, and internet providers. It grows out of a multi-year study of organizational change in the industry, and is based on extensive field study, site visits, interviews, and surveys conducted by research teams at Cornell and Rutgers Universities. Managers at 577 establishments across the country gave generously of their time during a lengthy telephone survey. The study was made possible through a generous grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. While this report is based on data collected among workplaces in the U.S., it has implications for the restructuring of the global telecommunications industry. In other research, we have found that the United States has been at the forefront of market deregulation and technology change, but many other countries have followed a similar path and look to the United States as a model for organizational restructuring (Katz 1997). Thus, at least some of the patterns we find here are likely to occur in other countries undergoing similar patterns of deregulation