Evolution of Internet Recruiting

Sharing information on the internet – as Mark Zuckerberg put it – is in a stage of “profound exponential growth.” The Internet has revolutionized communication – specifically for recruiting – but it can also create what some call information overload. SaaS (Software as a Service) organizes the information. More online information does not have to mean that the user hears more noise on the internet. The next generation of Internet recruiting is open SaaS on the cloud.

When the internet emerged as a widely accessible technology, it took time for most businesses to realize how to utilize the vast amount of technologies within it. At the end of the 20th Century, job ads began migrating from newspaper classifieds to the Internet. In 1999, Monster.com organized internet classifieds into what we now call job boards, and announced this revelation to the world with the iconic ad, “When I Grow Up” (below) during television’s most viewed event of the year, Super Bowl XXXVIII (for those interested in Trivia: Adam Vinatieri kicked the game winning field goal as the Patriots beat Panthers 32-29, and this Monster ad was the only commercial in Time Magazine’s best “Best Television of 1999.”)

In the beginning of internet recruiting, the buzz around the sheer volume of information was, “There is no faster, simpler, more convenient or more cost effective way to reach hundreds of thousands of qualified candidates, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week,” (The Basics of Internet Recruiting by MedZilla Staff). While the previous sentence is completely true it also implies, ‘there is no faster, simpler, more convenient or more cost effective way to reach hundreds of thousands of unqualified candidates, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week.’

The job board industry grew, and most companies posted on many boards through trial and error, as well as, copy and paste. There are enough job boards to make your head spin when choosing which will get you the candidates you need. Fortunately, that also means there is a sample size large enough to identify which job boards have attracted the best candidates based on your position, location, and necessary skills/experience. Modern Internet recruiting software uses this data to offer the solution of recommended job boards and a job widget to instantly spread your posting to the Internet channels that will meet each businesses need.

Online Recruiting

As erecruiting evolved, job postings brought in more resumes, more emails, and more candidates. But email accounts are not designed to facilitate “apple-to-apple” comparison of candidates. This information overload created the need for applicant tracking, especially at multinational corporations. In 1999, entrepreneurs, such as Jerome Ternynck, began creating global enterprise SaaS platforms, such as MrTed, RecruitSoft, and RecruitMax, to meet the hiring needs of the most innovative corporations. The recruiting software industry at-large grew through the decade, because businesses demanded it. Businesses demanded it because it worked; putting candidates on the same platform creates more equal and efficient candidate comparisons.

“With the flourishing of the internet, online recruitment has become wildly popular among companies of all sizes,” (Internet Recruiting by Stefan Martinovic of Gaebler Ventures). As smaller companies imitated bigger companies and SaaS providers improved, applicant tracking systems – on the enterprise and subscription level – took off.

While early applicant tracking systems summarized qualifications, keywords, and experience, they still were not capturing an important element in the first few years of the millennium, how humans actually talk. All the candidates were in one place, but the question remained to be answered, how does the company choose the best hire amongst many qualified candidates?

Always remember, “The internet recruiting industry is a field of dramatic growth and constant rapid change” (Internet Recruiting News). The founding of Facebook in 2004, and its rapid emergence – along with the emergence of Twitter and LinkedIn – brought the human element to the Internet. The social aspect of discussion with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter naturally found a role within recruiting software.

Internally for businesses, a social platform creates discussion within the hiring team, much like a Facebook Wall, that summarizes the team’s preferences, opinions, and concerns on every potential candidate in order to make hiring more social and efficient. Hiring is social; modern recruiting software makes recruiting social.

Open SaaS has revolutionized recruiting into one browser. Modern recruiting software casts your net to the websites where nets like yours have historically caught the best fish, organizes and facilitates the managing of and communication with all applicants  in one place, provides the platform for internal discussion to make the fairest candidate comparison so your business can make the best hire sooner rather than later. Oh, and the information is accessible from anywhere. Thank you, cloud. And the software should be free. One less thing to worry about. It’s what the recruiting industry demands.

As an Open SaaS company, SmartRecruiters releases product updates every quarter to all of our users. SmartRecruiters believes hiring should be fast, social, fair, and why not free?