A particular day in 1992 comes to my mind when I had to accompany my neighbor to a nearby Employment Exchange. It was summer and I was enjoying my summer holidays when I was asked to accompany him. With boredom killing me I relented. My neighbor had completed his Bachelors in Engineering and the job hunt beckoned him. When we reached the agency there was a serpentine queue for obtaining the form. Youths had lined up in the hot summer sun, waiting patiently for their turn to get their hands on the form, fill it up and submit it to the Employment Exchange. Then the inevitable wait for the mail from the Exchange informing them about the job opportunities. This was what one had to do to net a job those days. Good old nineties.Then a revolution of sorts happened. Online portals redefined the way youth approached the prospect of job hunt. Job sites where the user had to create an account and post his resume. The response in most cases was lightning quick.
Back to the present; Blogs have become the cynosure of prospective employers. Hours are being spent on the net to find a suitable candidate and cull out more information about him by going through the candidate’s blog postings. I did come across an article by Writankar Mukherjee writing for The Economic Times where Ma Foi Management Consultants CEO E Balaji is quoted saying, “Blog as a recruitment channel has gained credibility for technological talent. Several IT and BPO firms use it to their advantage. Even other sectors such as retail, banking, finance and insurance services (BFSI) are experimenting with it.”
Most of the industry experts have agreed that this exercise certainly brings down the recruitment costs by nearly 20-25%. However, everyone also agrees that people getting recruited by this method still remains a small number.
Social networking sites like Facebook are not far away from this trend. Job vacancies are embedded so that users can check them out, refer jobs to friends and even make money if their friends take the job.
Companies nowadays have an option on their websites to submit resumes. This knocks off recruitment agencies from the picture and they are not happy about it. They warn the companies that this would be additional work and the prospect of losing the right candidate is more as the companies might resort to automated resume filtering. They say that human touch is necessary and they provide it. Of course for a cost that is.
Well Bloggers keep blogging, who knows you might just land up with your dream job. Thanks to this wonderful idea called “Blogging.”
Image Source: PostJournal.com
Thanks for this post. Although we are not in the same field this was still a confirmation for me. Thanks!! Blog on!!
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