Week 18 - Recruitment

Week 18 – Recruitment

Monster.com – This employment website is one of the largest of its kind in the world. In 2006 Monster was one of the 20 most visited websites out of 100 million worldwide. Monster is the largest job search engine in the world, is has over a million job postings at any time, and over 63 million job seekers every month. It even employs 5,000 people in 36 countries to maintain the company. As the businesses main asset is its website allowing employers to list jobs and people to search for jobs it is extremely important that the website is effective.

The website itself doesn’t look overly appealing, it’s not as slick and innovative as other websites. And from a company of its size you would expect better. However the website itself is actually very useful, it’s straight forward to upload your cv, search for jobs in various areas and apply for them. And from the other point of view it seems relatively straight forward to advertise a job position on Monster so the accessibility is very good. It’s also straight forward to sign up to the site. So overall the website definitely serves its purpose, and more. It also has features that allow you to look at other peoples CV’s and explains how to write a good CV, there are even tips for job interviews. 

Red bull flight school – This e-recruitment campaign has been featured on websites like youtube and social network sights, the videos are all innovative in the way that they grab your attention. The videos are very light hearted and make you want to learn more about them. One of the videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=te2XnI6MWq0 shows all of the existing members of the flight school singing and dancing along to a song, which shows the job has an obvious fun aspect to it. I think the campaign caught my interest because the videos funny and at the start intriguing. The video has an external link to the red bull website showing more details about the jobs, there are two types of jobs for students. One of them is to join the ‘wings team’ which involves driving around a mini covered in red bull embroidery with a huge red bull can attached to the back. The job involves driving around to various places and handing out red bull. The other job available is to become a student brands manager. http://www.redbull.co.uk/cs/Satellite/en_UK/Red-Bull-Jobs---Flight-School/001243018889772

 Aptitude tests are used to determine what kinds of careers they are suited too. They are a bit like exams and require you to answer questions designed around a specific area. I have carried out some aptitude tests in order to determine whether they would be useful in recruitment as a tool before gaining an interview. Hiring new candidates for positions is a difficult job, if the business hires someone who isn’t suited for the job it can lead to them being fired and then the company will need a replacement. Finding this replacement will be costly and take up some time, so aptitude testing could potentially wean out potential candidates if they don’t meet the mark. People lie about their qualifications and work history and an aptitude test would eliminate some of these people. Other benefits of including an aptitude test to the interview are that they can help the interviewer compare and contrast different potential candidates. If the aptitude test is standardised the test will be valid and reliable, and will meet the equal opportunity legislations. They can help pick out strong, desirable areas in candidates that they feel is suited to the role, if the job role is for something in finance and the test comes back showing they are good numerically then this can help the interviewer. The tests are also relatively easy to mark and give out.

The main disadvantage of aptitude tests is that there’s not a perfect connection between aptitude and performance. Having an aptitude for a certain skill doesn’t guarantee that a person will perform well in that area. There are more things to performance than aptitude, like different interests, a person’s motivation and their training.