DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ELECTRONIC RECRUITMENT SYSTEM

1.1 Introduction

An electronic recruitment system is a comprehensive tool to manage the entire recruitment processes of an organization. It is one of the technological tools facilitated by the information management systems to the Human Resource (HR) of the organizations. Just like performance management, pay roll and other systems, Recruitment Management System (RMS) helps to manage the recruitment processes and effectively managing the return on investment (ROI) on recruitment. Acquiring and retaining high-quality talents are critical to an organization’s success. As the job market becomes increasingly competitive and the available skills grow more diverse, recruiters need to be more selective in their choices, since poor recruiting decisions can produce long-term negative effects, among them high training and development costs to minimize the incidence of poor performance and high turnover which, in turn, impact staff morale, the production of high quality goods and services and the retention the organizational integrity.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

In Nigeria, public service organizations have had little need to worry about market share and increasing competition since they operate in a monopolistic environment. But in recent time, the emphasis on New Public Management (NPM)/Public Sector Management (PSM) approaches has forced public organizations to pay closer attention to their service delivery as consumers have begun to expect and demand more for their tax Nairas’.

Recruitment is described as “the set of activities and processes used to legally obtain a sufficient number of qualified people at the right place and time so that the people and the organization can select each other in their own best short and long term interest”. In other words, the recruitment process provides the organization with a pool of potentially qualified job candidates from which judicious selection can be made to fill vacancies. Successful recruitment begins with proper employment planning and forecasting. In this phase of the staffing process, an organization formulates plans to fill or eliminate future job openings based on an analysis of future needs, the talent available within and outside of the organization, and the current and anticipated resources that can be expended to attract and retain such talent. Also related to the success of a recruitment process are the strategies an organization is prepared to employ in order to identify and select the best candidates for its developing pool of human resources. Organizations seeking recruits for base-level entry positions often require minimum qualifications and experience. These applicants are usually recent high school or university/technical college graduates, many of whom have not yet made clear decisions about future careers or are contemplating engaging in advanced academic activities. At the middle levels, senior administrative technical and junior executive positions are often filled internally. The push for scarce, high-quality talents, often recruited from external sources, has usually been at the senior executive levels. Most organizations utilize both mechanisms to effect recruitment to all levels.

Traditional, recruitment of officers into a vacant position is a difficult task in terms of collection and processing of data since a lot of applicant will apply for a particular job. In the cause of processing applicant data, this causes a lot of errors, inaccuracy, favoritism, nepotism and unreliability, which lead to the organization’s failure of recruiting the right caliber of persons to fill the available vacant positions. Processing manually makes the organization to waste a lot of resources since there are many applicant data which allow recruiting more people to handle these tasks. Entrepreneurs are therefore often faced with fear when hiring their first employee because it is difficult to discover a good employee.

Successful recruitment involves the several processes which include therefore the following:

1. Needs assessment to determine the current and future human resource requirements of the organization. If the activity is to effect the human resource requirements for each job category and functional division/unit of the organization, the organization must be assessed and a priority assigned.
2. Identification within and outside the organization, of the potential human resource pool and the likely competition for the knowledge and skills resident within it.
3. Assessment of qualifications profiles, drawn from job descriptions that identify responsibilities and required skills, abilities, knowledge and experiences.
4. Determination of the organization’s ability to pay salaries and benefits within a defined period.
5. Identification and selection to ensure equity and adherence to equal opportunity and other laws.

On the other hand, most job seekers complain that it is difficult to find the right job, that is, the one which would suit them. Job seekers resort to searching the Internet for job vacancies. This means that job vacancy adverts would get to a large number of potential employees, which also has its advantages and disadvantages. For the recruiters, one job vacancy may attract thousands of job applicants. This makes the process of job recruitment tedious both to the recruiters and job seekers in other to find the perfect fit to the job. Most large organizations even resort to employing the services of recruiting agencies. These are firms that specialized in finding employment opportunities based on a set of criteria provided by the job seeker. They keep record of all job vacancies and try to match it up with prospective employees. To some extent, this system has eased up the recruitment process. This project is therefore, aimed at solving problems related job recruitment. This project can be applied to any organization both public and private that are virtually concerned with productivity and cost effectiveness in managing resources.

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1.3 Statement of Problem

Currently, recruitment exercises are fraught with peril. This is partly due to several factors, of which unemployment has the highest rate in the country. Any job advert would definitely attract applicants. The recruiters would then go through tons of CV’S in a bid to find qualified candidates.

In our society today, the issue of managing human resources in firms, companies or organizations is a great challenge to the management. In managing human resources of any organization, all begins with the recruitment processes of the organization, keeping with current recruitment and selection practices, members of selection panels, however experienced, should be in touch with new practices and procedures. Being faced with the fact of growth in our present society, applicants are increasing day by day, and are putting in their application for available job being advertised for enlistment in any company of their choice according to their qualifications and level of experiences.

Also, there is a problem of open discussion on the criteria for the job and challenging discrimination in all steps of the process in recruitment and essential in employing the best perform for the job.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to Design and Implement an Electronic Recruitment System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop an application software that will:

1. Properly document an individual’s job profile in the organization or firm.
2. Create a database that will manage the applicants’ resume and match with the job profile of the organization or firm.
3. Create a quick search and advance search that the user will use during the recruitment process.
4. Assure equal opportunity and impartial review of applications in an organization or film.
5. Allow for hiring and recruitment manager to effectively manage jobs and applicants in an organization or firm in other to meet the required result both by the organization and the consumer.

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1.5 Significance of Study

The proposed system would simplify the process of recruitment for both employers and the employees. Moreover, the use of software in recruitment would allow job seekers to be screened for interviews without having to be physically present. Those who then meet up with the criteria would be invited over.

This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

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1.6 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of an Electronic Recruitment System. The e-recruitment system is limited towards managing recruitment processed between applicants and the firm or organization by using the software to be developed to search for the applicant resume, and matching it to the organization’s job profile, then the user will do the selection and send mail to the selected individual deemed fit for the job position in the organization.

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1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

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1.8 Definition of Terms

RMS (Recruitment Management System): This is also known as e-recruitment or online recruitment system is a multi-component software tool designed to automate and facilitate the processes involved in finding, attracting, accessing, interviewing and hiring new personnel.

ROI (Return on Investment): A measure of a corporation’s profitability, equal to a fiscal year’s income divided by common stock and preferred stock equity plus long-term debt.

JB (Job Management): This involves the operations of creating job interviews test and grading applicant, and selecting applicant by grades.