Job search has seen a sea of change over the last two decades and particularly over the past ten years. As the reach of internet increased and improved capability of online search tools, the need to look particularly for a newspaper for a job or an event gradually faded. Until 10 years ago the grand events like mega job fairs continued to attract relevant footfalls. However, in the recent past mega job fairs or recruitment events were replicated online as well. With the advent of internet, and online job portals, the means of looking for jobs has transformed completely.

Technology has redefined the way companies hire today. Firstly, it has made accessibility to jobs and candidates simpler through tools and applications that can now sit on your handheld. Secondly, it has integrated the entire process of manpower planning to induction to employee life cycle possible on a single tool or tools that can connect seamlessly. Adding to these is the analytics derived from various business intelligence tools to help both the parties with relevant qualitative inputs or guidance. With the onset of business intelligence and

analytics based on one’s online profile and search history jobs now land straight into the personal online space of the job seeker and follow him/her wherever he /she goes.

The fundamentals have not changed. Hence, cost and quality of hire remains basic measures across all sources. However, increased stress is now placed on how the platforms are used to create visibility and branding as a preferred employer. As an organization we are always on the lookout for right talents. Our strategy has been to spread our net wide and not to limit our sources to any one platform. Campuses, employee referrals, expert search agencies, recruitment portals and other online forums are all at the disposal of our recruiters. The change has actually been in the percentage of usage among various sources. While traditional sources like employee referral, internal job posting and search agents continue to play a key role, the use of networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook for reaching out to prospects and build an employer brand that attracts has increased. Online portals have also evolved over time in the way they help recruiters and the candidates. The traditional sources too have adapted new age technology to make recruitment experience more transparent and hassle free.

Recruitment portals will always continue to play a big role both in terms of profile base they can offer to employers and the jobs that they can bring to the candidates. However, networking sites and large databases today cover a large part of the working population. What might be interesting to look at as business opportunity today would be tools and applications that leverage the existing databases and provide both organizations and job seekers access to relevant information and simpler ways of taking actions. Online recruitment portal is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to find talent or at least provide reliable leads to talents. Most recruiters today rely on the internet to generate their first lead from where they can network or expand their reach.

I believe the recruitment portals with expanded capability to handle other parts of recruitment life cycle and with technological capabilities will have a significant role even after ten years. By then I suppose there would be no working person without an online profile that can form the base for portals to knit technology around.