The Role of National Culture on E-Recruitment in India and Mexico

Introduction

E-HRM (electronic human resource management) is the process of using online technology for human resource management activities, such as recruitment, training, performance appraisal and benefits. E-recruitment is maintaining the entire recruitment process online-right from placing the job advertisements to receiving the resumes and communicating back to potential applicants (Othman & Musa, 2007; Rudich, 2000).

E-recruitment can either be in the form of corporate or third-party recruiters. Corporate recruiters allow potential job applicants to post their resumes directly on their job sites without using any other intermediaries. Statistics reveal that 80% of the world’s US 500 companies use corporate websites for recruiting (Epstein & Singh, 2003). Third-party recruiters, such as Monster.com, are synonymous to job advertisement pages of the newspapers identifying thousands of employment vacancies (Epstein & Singh, 2003). They usually charge employers a cost for posting their advertisements for certain duration of time (Tong, & Sivanand, 2005). Usually third party recruiters and corporate recruiters collaborate together to provide best recruitment and career solutions to potential applicants (Pollit, 2005; Mollsion, 2001). The goal of this paper is to discuss the role of national culture on e-recruitment practices in emerging economies like India and Mexico as multinationals seek to establish a strong presence in these countries (Friedman, 2005).

Multinationals are proactively seeking the best talent worldwide. The method of online recruiting allows organizations to transcend geographical boundaries from Monterrey to Mumbai seeking the best in human capital (Birchfield, 2002). E-recruitment has several other advantages; such as its low cost (Rudich, 2000; Galanaki, 2002), quick response time (Hays, 1999), broad range of applicants (Sessa and Taylor, 2000), more educated applicants (Othman & Musa, 2007), and of course worldwide accessibility (Galanaki, 2002; Vinutha 2005). Specifically, it has demonstrated a shorter recruitment cycle and lower cost-per-hire (Sridhar, 2005; Jasrotia, 200; Pollitt, 2005). For instance, Nike has demonstrated with the use of e-recruitment the average time to fill job positions reduced from 62 to 42 days and the recruitment costs reduced by 54% (Pollitt, 2005). From the employees’ perspective, it has made the recruitment process a very proactive one – now passive applicants post their resumes online in anticipation of an interview (Mollison, 2001).

Further, online recruitment allows applicants the luxury of accessing jobs online at their own convenience 24 hours 7 days a week. It provides the comfort of scrutinizing jobs without physically going through the stress of an interview. Finally, it allows applicants to get a thorough understanding of the organization and its culture before joining the organization (Vinutha, 2005).