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Factors inuencing the adoption of online recruitment

Emma Parry and Hugh Wilson
Craneld School of Management, Craneld, UK
Abstract

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Received 13 March 2007 Revised March 2007, May 2007 Purpose The internet is initially hailed as the future of recruitment and is expected to replace other media as the preferred recruitment method, but the adoption of online recruitment has not been as Accepted 2 September 2008

comprehensively predicted. In addition, empirical research regarding online recruitment from an organisational perspective is sparse. This paper aims to examine the reasons behind an organisations decision to use online recruitment, and reports on the development of a model of the factors affecting the adoption of this recruitment method. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses in-depth interviews and a survey of human resource (HR) managers with recruitment responsibility. The factors that affect the adoption of online recruitment are explored, and related to Rogerss diffusion of innovation theory (DIT) and Ajzens theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Findings Factors related to the adoption of corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards are found to be different, with positive beliefs/relative advantage, subjective norms and negative beliefs emerging in the case of corporate web sites and positive beliefs/relative advantage and compatibility for jobs boards. These results provide some t with both Ajzens and Rogers factors. Originality/value This paper addresses an important area that is under-researched academically and provides a basis for further research into how organisations may adopt online recruitment successfully. Keywords Online operations, Recruitment, Human resource management, Internet, United Kingdom Paper type Research paper

Introduction The use of online recruitment has risen dramatically over the past ten years. However, it has not as yet, at least become as dominant a recruitment method as was predicted by many researchers and practitioners. Despite this, research regarding the adoption of online recruitment is sparse. This study examines the reasons behind an organisations decision of whether to use online recruitment, developing a model of the factors inuencing adoption. Background Recruitment includes those practices and activities carried out by the organisation with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees (Breaugh and Starke, 2000) and is an important part of human resource (HR) management as it performs the essential function of drawing an important resource human capital into the organisation (Barber, 1998). Lievens et al. (2002) asserted that the war for talent meant that the emphasis in organisations moved from the selection to the attraction of employees, and that labour market shortages and recruitment difculties led to a more competitive recruitment market. Research by HR prospects (2003) found that recruitment was the second highest priority for HR practitioners (after absence

Personnel Review Vol. 38 No. 6, 2009 pp. 655-673 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0048-3486 DOI 10.1108/00483480910992265

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management). Given the importance of recruitment, it is surprising that little research has been conducted into the decision making processes that form the basis of an employers recruitment strategy. The internet rst emerged as a recruiting tool in the mid-1990s and was hailed by the popular media as the driver behind a recruiting revolution due to the benets it could bring to recruiters (Boydell, 2002). It was predicted that the recruitment industrys future is on the net (Edgeley, 1995) and that the internet had brought radical change to corporate recruiting (Cappelli, 2001). Online recruitment has indeed grown rapidly over the past ten years and is now widely used by both recruiters and job seekers across the world. In the USA, Cober and Brown (2006) found that over 50 per cent of new hires were sourced from the internet and that this was expected to increase. Crispin and Mehler (2006) found that 20 per cent external hires were from corporate web sites and another 13 per cent were from jobs boards. In the UK, Total jobs (2004) found that two thirds of UK organisations used jobs boards independent web sites matching multiple recruiters to job applicants, typically through recruiter advertisements during the 12 months up to July 2004, supporting the assertion that the internet is now a part of recruitment practices within many organisations. There is still a large proportion of organisations in the UK who have not yet adopted online recruitment at all, and those who do use online recruitment often do so in conjunction with other techniques such as print advertising and recruitment agencies. The Recruitment Condence Index (Craneld School of Management, 1999-2006) has tracked the use of online recruitment over time, and showed its use has levelled out at around 40 per cent of companies for corporate web sites and 25 per cent for commercial jobs boards. This was supported by the CIPDs (2006) nding that 64 per cent of organisations used online recruitment. The RCI also showed that the use of more traditional methods such as national newspapers (29 per cent), regional newspapers (33 per cent) and employment agencies (44 per cent) remained comparable to that of online methods. While online recruitment is becoming well established, then, it has not had the overwhelming impact on the recruitment process that many predicted. Research regarding online recruitment is sparse, particularly from an employers perspective. Lievens et al. (2002) noted that research into online recruitment is very scarce and that all the studies we retrieved focused on applicant reactions. Our own search supported this assertion, with the majority of literature found about online recruitment being from the candidates perspective. For instance, Dineen and others focused on the use of online information to promote person-organisation t (Dineen et al., 2002, 2007; Dineen, 2003); Cober et al. (2004) addressed the impact of web site characteristics on applicant attraction; and Zusman and Landis (2002) looked at applicant preferences for web-based and traditional job advertisements. Very little attention has been paid to the reasons why organisations adopt online recruitment in the rst place. There are two main exceptions to this. One is Williamson and Cables (2003) study, which suggested that recruitment sources were adopted mainly due to mimetic processes. The other is Chapman and Websters (2003) survey research in the USA which found that most organisations implemented technology based recruitment and selection tools to improve efciency, enable new assessment tools, reduce costs, standardize systems and expand the applicant pool. Chapman and Websters study, however, focused mainly on applicant management and assessment rather than attraction.

For the purpose of this paper, we will use Breaugh and Starke (2000) denition of recruitment (above) and will therefore dene online recruitment as the use of the internet to identify and attract potential employees. The internet may also be used for the selection of candidates once they have made contact with the company via the internet or otherwise, but we focus on its use prior to this point as this is more common in the UK (CIPD, 2006), and yet has been the subject of less empirical research. Online recruitment will be divided into the use of an organisations corporate web site for recruitment and the use of commercial jobs boards (such as monster.com) for posting job advertisements. Given that the adoption of online recruitment has yet to be studied in any detail, we need to turn to literature outside of this area in order to provide a theoretical framework. While we are interested in organisational adoption of online recruitment, it could be argued that the decision to adopt this method is primarily driven by an individual such as the head of resourcing. It may therefore be appropriate to examine the literature on individual decision making. A model that has been used to explain the decision of individuals to act in a particular way is the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) which was developed as an extension of the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). This model proposed that the intention to perform a particular behaviour is based upon attitudes and beliefs about that behaviour. Individuals who hold favourable attitudes towards a given behaviour will hold a favourable attitude towards performing that behaviour, while a person who has negative attitudes towards behaviour will hold unfavourable attitudes towards performing it. In addition, individuals hold beliefs that specic individuals or groups think they should or should not perform a particular behaviour, known as subjective norms. A person who believes that those who he is motivated to comply with think he or she should perform the behaviour will perceive social pressure to do so. Therefore, the intention that a person has to perform any action is based upon a combination of their attitudes and normative beliefs towards that behaviour. Ajzen and Fishbein suggested that an individuals intention to perform a particular behaviour, and therefore the likelihood of them actually performing that action, can be predicted by the measurement of attitudes and subjective norms. TPB was developed in order to address the point that the performance of any action is not based solely on the intention to perform that action but also on the perceived behavioural control that an individual has over the action. TPB therefore suggests that behaviour is based upon a combination of attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. TPB has been used as a framework for the examination of the adoption of a number of technological advances, including internet technology (Venkatesh et al., 2007). For instance, the model has been used to explain internet purchasing (George, 2004), the use of mobile internet services (Pedersen, 2005; Wang et al., 2006), internet banking (Ravi et al., 2007) and information systems (Chang, 2007). TPB may also have face validity as a framework for the explanation of the adoption of online recruitment as individuals who have positive attitudes towards online recruitment, who perceive that there are normative pressures for them to use online recruitment, and who believe they have behavioural control over this decision, may decide to adopt online methods within their organisations. TPB has not previously been used to explain organisational adoption of technology. We have proposed that the perceptions of those individuals

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responsible for organisational decision-making around recruitment will have an impact on the adoption of online recruitment but it may be that this framework alone will not be sufcient to explain organisational decisions. We have therefore sought a complementary framework that has been used previously to explain the organisational adoption of technology. An examination of the literature on the adoption of innovations in general may allow us some insight into the processes behind the organisational adoption of online recruitment. The use of the internet for recruitment can, after all, be described as an innovation in the same way as any other. Zaltman et al. (1973) denes an innovation as being any idea, practice or material artefact perceived to be new by the relevant unit of adoption, and Kanter (1985) as the generation, acceptance and implementation of new ideas, processes, products or services. Innovation has been the subject of a vast number of academic studies on topics ranging from factors inuencing innovative product success (Cooper, 1980; Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1987) and types of innovation (Clarke and Staunton, 1989; Damanpour, 1990) to the study of innovative environments and cultures (Ekvall, 1983; Cooper, 1980) and the role of leadership (Van de Ven, 1989; Peters and Waterman, 1982). The key theme in the innovation literature of interest is the study of factors affecting the extent of adoption or diffusion. Rogers (1995), the best-known author in the eld, dened the diffusion of innovation as: the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system and provided a framework for explaining the adoption of innovations by organisations. Based on studies ranging from farming practices to the spread of religions, Rogers (1995) describes a generic set of ve factors affecting adoption: (1) relative advantage: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better than the idea it supersedes; (2) compatibility: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters; (3) complexity: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as relatively difcult to understand and use; (4) trialability: the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis; and (5) observability: the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. This last factor is sometimes termed communicability by other researchers (Daniel, 1998). No previous studies are known which apply diffusion of innovation theory (DIT) to online recruitment specically, but studies within information systems include Lis (2003) survey of electronic newspaper adoption, Bradford and Florins (2003) study of ERP systems and Benyon-Davies and Williams (2003) study of IS development methods. Perhaps, closest to the online recruitment domain are applications of the theory to other areas of e-commerce such as Eastins (2002) study of B2C e-commerce, Martins et al.s (2003) survey on the adoption of the internet as a teaching tool, and Molesworth and Suorttis (2002) examination of car purchases online. DIT may therefore provide a valid complement to TPB for our analysis of the adoption of online recruitment within organisations.

These two theoretical frameworks on rst glance appear very different to each other. However, many of Rogers factors may t with Ajzens idea of positive or negative beliefs towards a particular behaviour. For instance, the perception that online recruitment will provide advantages over other recruitment methods could be described as a positive attitude by Ajzen and relative advantage by Rogers. Similarly, Rogers factor of complexity may be related to perceived behavioural control. Therefore, while these two frameworks are different in their attention on individual versus organisational adoption of behaviour, they do have some similarity in structure. This study will examine the factors affecting the adoption of online recruitment within both of these frameworks in order to analyse the efcacy of each model to explain organisational adoption of online recruitment. We report on an exploratory study that elicits the factors inuencing an organisations decision to adopt online recruitment, via a set of in-depth interviews and the development and application of a survey instrument, and we then reect on the t of these factors with these prior frameworks. A comprehensive analysis of literature was conducted in order to identify factors that had been speculated to affect whether an organisation adopts internet recruitment. As listed in Table I, various positive and negative attitudes about online recruitment were identied from six practitioner and six academic sources. It cannot be assumed that the factors affecting the adoption of corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards will be the same. Indeed, recent research on online recruitment (Zusman and Landis, 2002; Cober et al., 2000) has treated these innovations separately. Therefore, we will be led by the initial qualitative research results as to whether the factors inuencing the adoption of these two channels differ. The unit of analysis in both stages of this research will be the organisation. However, in order to obtain insight into the organisational adoption of online recruitment, we will use key informants (recruiters) within each organisation that are responsible for decision making in recruitment. Stage 1: interviews The hypothesized list of factors of Table I was initially explored using 14 semi-structured interviews with UK HR managers, responsible for recruitment. As the purpose was to elicit all relevant factors, the sample was chosen to gain a spread on a number of relevant dimensions (Wilson, 2004). Firstly, ten interviewees worked for organisations that did use online recruitment, while four did not. Secondly, the formers use included both corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards, and thirdly, this usage ranged from comprehensive users across all vacancies to highly selective users. Respondents were asked to describe their use of online recruitment, the reasons why they did or did not use each method and their attitudes towards each. Respondents were then probed regarding any parts of the hypothesised list that they had not addressed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using NVivo, a computer package for the analysis of qualitative data. Each interview was coded according to the factors in the hypothesized model, and any new factors that had arisen during the interview were added. This produced a number of factors that were used to develop the survey instrument for the second stage of the research (see Table II).

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Reach Pool size 24/7 availability International Passive jobseekers Diversity * * * * * * * * *

Candidate targeting Targeting Provision of information Unsuitable candidates Computer literacy Online screening Ease of screening Swamped with applications Convenience Company image Speed to hire Relative cost Implementation New technology * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Table I. Factors inuencing the adoption of online recruitment literature review

Lievens and Harris (2003) * Cober et al. (2000) Falke (2003) Hays Galanaki Cappelli Arthur Bartram (1999) (2002) (2001) (2001) (2000) Chapman and Webster (2003) Kerrin and Kettley (2004) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

EPS Casper (1999) (1985)

* *

Factor Relative advantage Reach Pool size: the size of the candidate pool that online advertising reaches was seen as a major advantage of online recruitment International: The ability to reach international job seekers was seen as a positive attribute but the numbers of overseas applicants without the necessary permits was a disadvantage Passive jobseekers: There was some concern about the ability to reach passive job seekers Diversity: there was some concern about the diversity of applicants Candidate targeting Targeting the right people: the use of niche jobs boards and corporate web sites allows targeting of particular job seekers Provision of information: more information can be included in online advertisements, especially on a corporate web site Computer literacy: Belief that online applicants had a certain degree of computer literacy Ease of sifting responses: some interviewees used their corporate web site because of the potential for sifting candidates electronically Unsuitable applications: organisations were put off of online recruitment, particularly jobs boards, after being swamped by unsuitable applications Convenience: perceptions of how convenient it was to use online methods were mixed, with some interviewees nding it more convenient to use employment agencies Talent database: some organisations had created a database of potential future candidates through their corporate web site Personal touch: Some interviewees felt that the use of the internet was impersonal and meant that they lost the personal touch offered by agencies Image Company image: some organisations have adopted online recruitment as a means of maintaining their cutting-edge image Employer brand: some interviewees felt that the use of their corporate web site allowed them to promote their employer brand Relative cost: all of the interviewees cited cost savings as one of the main benets of online recruitment Speed to hire: Interviewees felt that using the internet meant that recruitment was much faster Complexity: it was suggested that both the process of selecting commercial jobs boards and setting up a corporate recruitment site could be difcult Compatibility HR function and working practices: some organisations reported that online recruitment tted well with existing practices, while others received resistance from line managers Technological systems: in those organisations that already have a web site and communicate electronically, online recruitment may seem like a natural next step, whereas it is more problematic in organisations that have not already moved online in other areas

No. of interviews

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2 6 1 4

13 4 1 10 12 11 15 3

5 3 14 9 6

10 Table II. Positive and negative beliefs identied from interviews

8 (continued)

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Factor Trialability: Interviewees felt that it was relatively easy to experiment with jobs boards but more difcult with corporate web site Contextual factors Volume of recruitment: online recruitment, particularly corporate web sites, may be more suitable for those organisations that recruit in bulk Extent of competitive adoption: some interviewees had been motivated to adopt online recruitment because their competitors had Extent of job seeker adoption: some interviewees were driven to use online recruitment because it was expected by job seekers in their industry

No. of interviews 4 3 4 6

662

Table II.

Stage 2: survey A survey instrument was developed to organise those items identied during the interviews into factors and to investigate the relationship between these factors and the adoption of online recruitment. The questionnaire was constructed using a number of statements that were taken directly from the interview transcripts. These statements were selected based upon the issues and attitudes elicited above so that the questionnaire contained at least one statement regarding each of the 15 factors, and according to their simplicity and ease of understanding. The interview results showed that the factors affecting the adoption of corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards were different; therefore two separate sets of questionnaire items were developed, with 25 items for corporate web sites and 21 items for commercial jobs boards. An additional 10 items were included regarding online recruitment and the organisation in general. Respondents were asked to rate their agreement with each statement on a ve-point Likert scale anchored by strongly disagree and strongly agree. Respondents were also asked to indicate percentage of vacancies advertised corporate and commercial web sites, to form a dependent variable representing the extent of adoption. This follows Shih and Venkateshs (2004) argument that adoption is best represented as a continuous rather than a dichotomous variable, with the extent of usage being a better measure than the sheer ownership of a product or contractual right to use a service. The questionnaire was piloted using eight HR managers with responsibility for recruitment. Several minor modications were made to the questionnaire at this stage. For the full survey, respondents were taken from a database of 8,000 HR directors and managers, managing directors and nance managers. This database has been developed over six years by a UK business school. The survey was conducted entirely online. Potential respondents were emailed and asked to access the survey via a link included in the email. The survey was targeted at those HR managers and directors with responsibility for making decisions about recruitment and the use of recruitment methods. Those individuals contacted were asked to pass the survey onto a more appropriate person if they did not indeed have this responsibility. The survey remained online for completion for three weeks. A total of 439 respondents completed the survey representing a response rate of 5.5 per cent. Non-response bias was estimated by comparing earlier and later responses to the survey, indicating that there was no signicant difference between the two sets

of responses with regard to the adoption of either corporate web sites (t 0.576 NS) or commercial web sites (t 0.328 NS). Table III shows a summary of the respondents level of use of corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards for recruitment. It can be seen that the respondents demonstrated a wide range of usage of online recruitment. The responses to the attitudinal items were analysed using principal components analysis to organise the items into factors. Two analyses were carried out. The rst of these included the 25 items on the use of corporate web sites plus the ten neutral items. The second analysis included the 21 items regarding commercial jobs boards plus the ten neutral items. A varimax rotation was used in each case in order to produce a more parsimonious factor structure. Following each PCA, those factors with an eigenvalue of more than one were accepted. Items with a factor loading of less than 0.4 and those in factors with two items or less were removed from the analysis before it was repeated. This ensured that a series of multi-item factors with items that loaded strongly onto each factor was produced. Factor analysis corporate web sites For corporate web sites, after ve iterations of a PCA, a ve-factor structure was produced, and the internal reliability of each factor was examined using Cronbachs alpha (Table IV). The alpha values for factors 1-4 were over 0.6 indicating reasonable internal reliability. As the alpha value for factor 5 was extremely low, this factor was removed. The four remaining factors explained 48.1 per cent of the variance. An examination of the items showed that each factor centred upon a particular theme. These themes can be related back to the factors in both Ajzens TPB and Rogers DIT. Factor 1 was named subjective norms; factor 2, positive beliefs/relative advantage; factor 3, negative beliefs; and factor 4, internal compatibility. Factor analysis commercial jobs boards For commercial jobs boards, following eight iterations of a PCA, a two-factor structure was produced (Table V). The internal reliability of the two factors was examined using Cronbachs alpha. These two factors explained 51.1 per cent of the variance in the sample. The alpha values for both factors were over 0.7 indicating reasonable internal reliability. Based on the items in each factor, factor 1 was named positive beliefs/relative advantage and factor 2 compatibility. Each respondent was given a score for each factor by summing the responses to each of the items in each factor. The relationship between each factor and adoption was
Percentage of vacancies advertised using method 0 1-25 26-50 51-75 76-100 Corporate web site (%) 19 13 6 9 53 Commercial jobs boards (%) 36 38 18 5 3

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Table III. Use of online recruitment (n 405)

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Factor

Item Please indicate to what extent you agree with the following statements about the use of corporate web sites for recruitment Our potential employees tend to look for work on corporate web sites Most of our competitors use their corporate web site for recruitment Online access among our target workers is high Our organisation needs to use online recruitment to move with the times The culture of our industry is very much online It delivers cost savings It is no faster than using any other method (reversed) It makes it easier to sift out the right candidates It speeds up the recruitment process It allows you to build up a database of candidates for talent searching The quality of candidates is lower than through other methods Companies that use them get swamped by unsuitable applicants The sheer number of responses to online adverts makes it labour intensive It is very expensive to set up a recruitment web site Online recruitment is less personal than other recruitment methods Our HR systems are readily compatible with the use of corporate web sites Our company welcomes the use of new technology Most of my organisations HR procedures are already electronic Applications are limited to certain types of people People who apply for jobs online tend to be more computer literate It is more appropriate for younger, technology-based organisations

Factor loading

Cronbachs alpha

664

0.588 0.688 0.723 0.671 0.572 0.624 0.520 0.716 0.745 0.638 0.583 0.724 0.748 0.530 0.478 0.709 0.675 0.741 0.586 20.723 0.639

0.77

1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4

0.71

0.66

0.64

Table IV. Factors relating to the use of corporate web sites for recruitment

5 5 5

2 0.05

then examined. Correlations between the predictors are shown in Tables VI and VII. While these correlations are signicant in each case, they are all less than 0.5 and not large enough to warrant concern. The relationship between the predictors and criterion variable was investigated using linear regression, using the enter method and listwise deletion of cases (Tables VIII and IX). Regression analysis corporate web sites The model for corporate web sites was highly signicant ( p , 0.01) and produced an adjusted R 2 value of 0.243. The regression analysis showed that subjective norms and negative beliefs had a highly signicant ( p , 0.01) impact on the use of corporate web sites. Positive beliefs/relative advantage also had a signicant effect at the 5 per cent level. Internal compatibility did not have a signicant effect.

Factor

Item Please indicate to what extent you agree with the following statements about the use of commercial jobs boards for recruitment It improves the diversity of applicants It is easy to attract the right candidates It is much easier than other recruitment methods It helps promote the image of being a leading edge organisation Speed to hire is one of the big attractions of using them Their use extends the reach of our advertising Our company welcomes the use of new technology Most of my organisations HR procedures are already electronic Online access among our target workers is high Our organisation needs to use online recruitment to move with the times The culture of our industry is very much online

Factor loading

Cronbachs alpha

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1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2

0.718 0.632 0.699 0.738 0.715 0.702 0.658 0.721 0.697 0.574 0.757

0.81

0.73 Table V. Factors relating to the use of commercial jobs boards for recruitment

Mean Subjective norms (1-25) Positive beliefs/Relative advantage (1-25) Negative beliefs (1-15) Internal compatibility (1-15) Percentage of vacancies advertised 16.17 16.34 16.79 9.62

SD 3.78 3.46 3.33 2.51

External compatibility

Relative advantage 0.465 * *

Internal Difculties compatibility 0.178 * * 0.489 * * 0.461 * * 0.267 * * 0.108 * 0.223 * *

0.465 * * 0.178 * * 0.461 * * 0.421 * *

0.189 * * 0.267 * * 0.115 *

0.108 * 0.277 *

62.05 42.20

Notes: *p , 0.05; * *p , 0.01

Table VI. Bivariate correlations (Pearsons product moment), for corporate web sites

Mean Positive beliefs/relative advantage (1-30) Compatibility (1-25) Percentage of vacancies advertised Notes: *p , 0.05; * *p , 0.01 19.12 16.75 17.13

SD 3.84 3.71 23.30

Relative advantage 0.381 * * 0.270 * *

Compatibility 0.381 * * 0.283 * * Table VII. Bivariate correlations (Pearsons product moment), for commercial jobs boards

Regression analysis commercial jobs boards The model was highly signicant ( p , 0.01) and produced an adjusted R 2 value of 0.102. Both positive beliefs/relative advantage and compatibility had a highly signicant impact on the criterion of the percentage of vacancies advertised using commercial jobs boards ( p , 0.01).

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Discussion This study has examined the factors affecting the organisational adoption of both corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards for recruitment, within the two frameworks of the TPB and DIT. Initial qualitative investigation demonstrated that the factors affecting the adoption of these methods were not the same; therefore, they have been treated separately in subsequent stages of investigation. Corporate web sites The survey results identied four factors with relation to the adoption of corporate web sites for recruitment these have been named subjective norms, positive beliefs/relative advantage, negative beliefs and internal compatibility, in line with terminology used by Ajzen and Rogers. The rst three of these factors were found to have a signicant impact on the use of a corporate web site for recruitment. The signicance of subjective norms suggested that those organisations that come from an industry in which both organisations and workers tend to be online are more likely to use online recruitment. This relationship was highly signicant and yet subjective norms have not been discussed at any length in the literature on online recruitment. A number of authors have discussed the importance of using online recruitment for companies within the technology sector (Galanaki, 2002, Arthur, 2001, Bartram, 2000) but the idea that certain types of organisations may feel compelled to use the method because their competitors and target jobseekers are using it has not received much attention. Ajzen asserted that individuals that believe that specic individuals or groups think they should or should not perform a particular action will perceive social pressure to do so. In the case of online recruitment, those organisations that perceive that their industry or target job seeker is online may feel pressure to adopt this method and therefore be more likely to do so. The negative beliefs factor was negatively related to the use of online recruitment suggesting that those HR Managers who perceive the use of corporate web sites for recruitment negatively are less likely to use the method. This factor is in accordance with Ajzens suggestion that negative perceptions of actions are negatively related to intentions to perform and therefore the actual performance of that behaviour.
b
Std. error 0.626 0.638 0.591 0.875 13.401

666

b
0.426 2 0.130 2 0.243 0.034

t 7.647 2 2.499 2 5.213 0.657 2 3.455

Signicance 0.000 0.013 0.000 0.512 0.001

Table VIII. Multiple regression analysis (corporate web sites)

Subjective norms Positive beliefs/relative advantage Negative beliefs Internal compatibility (Constant)

4.787 2 1.595 2 3.082 0.575 2 46.300

b
Table IX. Multiple regression analysis (commercial jobs boards) Positive beliefs Compatibility (Constant) 1.051 1.278 224.249

Std. error 0.359 0.376 6.940

b
0.177 0.206

t 2.925 3.397 23.494

Signicance 0.004 0.001 0.001

Therefore, organisations that perceive online recruitment negatively are less likely to adopt this method. This perception of online recruitment as somewhat problematic particularly with respect to targeting, which accounts for four of the ve items in this factor is in accordance with the literature reporting organisations being swamped by applications (Lievens and Harris, 2003; Falke, 2003, Arthur, 2001) and receiving high levels of unsuitable applications (Lievens and Harris, 2003). Practitioners may overcome these difculties by using web site functionality to lter out unsuitable candidates. Positive beliefs/relative advantage had a small, less signicant and indeed negative impact on the use of online recruitment (b 2 0.13, p , 0.05). This nding is surprising given that this factor revolves around cost and time savings which have generally been associated with the use of online recruitment (Kerrin and Ketley, 2003; Arthur, 2001). We suggest that as the corresponding correlation between positive beliefs and adoption is small but positive, the negative beta value should probably be discounted, as there may be a suppressor effect occurring. Nonetheless, the effect of positive beliefs seems small compared to that of the subjective norms and negative beliefs. This in itself is of considerable interest. While the existence of this factor is in line with both TPB and DIT, positive beliefs/relative advantage do not play as central a role in the adoption of online recruitment as these theories might typically suggest. We suggest that adoption of corporate web sites is becoming a hygiene factor for organisations in some sectors, where subjective norms are prevalent: HR managers do it because it is expected of them, rather than to achieve specic measurable benets. If this interpretation is correct, a clear implication for practitioners is that planning for recruitment in a more strategic way, choosing the most cost and time effective method rather than just copying other rms within their sector, may be benecial. The relationship between the above factors and the use of corporate web sites for recruitment can be summarised in Figure 1. Commercial jobs boards The survey identied two factors impacting the adoption of commercial jobs boards: compatibility and positive beliefs/relative advantage. Both were highly signicant. The importance of positive beliefs for the adoption of jobs boards is in line with TPBs positive beliefs and with Rogers factor of relative advantage. This result also supports the literature on online recruitment that the use of online recruitment allows access to a wider range of candidates (Galanaki, 2002) and is more convenient (Arthur, 2001). These advantages seem more prominent with respect to commercial jobs boards than

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Subjective norms/ compatibility Positive beliefs/ relative advantage

Use

Negative beliefs ()

Figure 1. Model of the adoption of corporate web sites for recruitment

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with corporate web sites. This may be because jobs boards are viewed by potential recruits who may not have considered approaching the advertising organisation, hence expanding reach or due to more conscious consideration of relative advantage in the case of commercial jobs boards: after all, every time a commercial jobs board is used, cash leaves the organisation in the form of the advertisement fee. Further research is needed to establish whether one or both of these interpretations is correct. Compatibility was important for the use of commercial jobs boards as well as corporate web sites. The compatibility factor for commercial jobs boards was largely concerned with subjective norms, through items such as the culture of our industry as very much online although two of the items relate to internal compatibility issues (Our company welcomes the use of new technology and Most of my organisations HR procedures are already electronic). Again, further investigation of the impact of contextual factors on the adoption of online recruitment is needed. This factor therefore demonstrates some consistency with both Rogers factor of compatibility and Ajzens subjective norms. The relationship between the above factors and the use of commercial jobs boards for recruitment can be summarised in Figure 2. Contrasting jobs boards and corporate web sites One of the most striking aspects of these ndings is that the factors that affect the adoption of corporate web sites and commercial jobs boards, while in some respects similar, are not the same. The majority of the literature discusses online recruitment as a single entity, although some authors (Zusman and Landis, 2002; Cober et al., 2000) have treated these methods separately. Our ndings suggest that organisations attitudes towards these two methods are different, demonstrating that online recruitment methods have developed sufciently not to be seen as a single entity. This premise is also supported by the different levels of use of the two methods. This suggests that corporate recruitment web sites and commercial jobs boards should be treated independently in future research. We have produced different factors for these two methods as dictated by our interview results. However, a comparison of these methods over the same dimensions may be a useful avenue for future investigation. The ndings in relation to theory Both of the models displayed in Figures 1 and 2 resemble TPB. The factors of positive beliefs/relative advantage for both online methods and negative beliefs for corporate web sites t well with Ajzens suggestion that the intention to perform actions (and therefore the actions themselves) are related to individuals positive and negative

Compatibility

Figure 2. Model of the adoption of commercial jobs boards for recruitment

Use Positive beliefs/ relative advantage

attitudes towards that action. The factors of subjective norms for corporate web sites and compatibility for commercial jobs boards may be similar to Ajzens subjective norms. It should be noted that, by selecting respondents that are responsible for decision making in recruitment, we have perhaps partially removed the notion of behavioural control from our examination. Potentially for this reason, the notion of behavioural control was not elicited as an important factor in the consideration of online recruitment adoption. There are a number of limitations to our use of the TPB as a framework. We have not measured the intentions of individual recruiters or organisations to adopt online recruitment, but have looked directly at the actual adoption of online recruitment methods, presuming that the link between intentions and actual adoption is strong. We have also not explicitly investigated perceived behavioural control. We have used Ajzens model to examine organisational behaviour rather than individual behaviour. We justify this in that we have selected respondents who are responsible for recruitment decision-making on the assumption that their attitudes and subjective norms will be related to the behaviour of the organisation in adopting online recruitment methods. We have also compared the t of Ajzens framework with DIT (Rogers, op cit), which has frequently been applied to organisations, and have found that our data supports aspects of both models. This has wider implications for the use of TPB and for the impact of individual decision-makers attitudes on organisational behaviour. Both of the models presented also bear some resemblance to the generic DIT model proposed by Rogers (1995), including Rogers factors of relative advantage and compatibility. We have extended the notion of compatibility to include compatibility with the wider external context in the form of subjective norms. Negative beliefs may be seen as similar to complexity in Rogers model as it concerns the difculty of using corporate web sites for recruitment. Rogers other factors of trialability and observability were not found to be relevant in this context. Limitations and research directions Our use of an online survey provides some limitations through its convenience sampling of those HR managers who are already at least to some extent internet users though the sample nevertheless contains a proportion of organisations that do not use corporate web sites (19 per cent) and commercial jobs boards (37 per cent). This suggests that the present studys contribution is to focus on those organisations that have the capacity to use online recruitment but may choose not to. The inclusion of organisations without online access would presumably add the dimension of those organisations that do not use the method because they are unable to. An extension of the research to include the attitudes of HR Managers in less technologically sophisticated organisations could be of value. The nature of our sampling has also led to a relatively low response rate so the testing of these suggestions within a larger sample is important. Another limitation of our study is the fact that there is no check to guarantee that the person completing the survey is also the person who has the discretion to adopt online recruitment methods. As only one person from each organisation completed the survey, it was impossible to analyse whether views on the adoption of online recruitment differed within single organisations and how this affected the adoption of

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the method. This use of multiple sources of data to validate our ndings may be a fruitful avenue for future research. However, our research design is in line with the literature on the use of key informants (Kumar et al., 1993) that suggests that the use of an appropriate key informant (in our case the person responsible for recruitment decisions) may be a valid way of collecting data within organisations. We have focused on the main effects of attitudes on the degree of adoption of online recruitment. It may be that these factors are moderated by factors such as organisation size or industry. Future research should investigate this and should more generally examine the nature of those organisations that do and do not use online recruitment. However, our results suggest that there are some attitudes that may have an impact on the decision of whether or not to adopt these methods regardless of the nature of the organisation. In addition, our study has a strong UK focus and therefore may not be generalisable to all countries. Indeed, legislation in countries such as the USA may mean that the use of online recruitment is somewhat different. Conclusions This study has provided some insight into how recruiters make decisions about which recruitment methods to use. We may have presumed that organisations select recruitment methods based upon the benets that they offer, but our results show that recruiters base their choice of recruitment channel largely on subjective norms, and on their negative beliefs towards that method, rather than selecting the methods that are most successful, cost effective and efcient. This study is intended as a rst step towards establishing of what lies behind an organisations use of online recruitment. The identication of those factors that separate an organisation that uses online recruitment methods from one that does not may provide a platform for the further development of this recruitment method and therefore may prove valuable to online recruitment providers and recruiters alike. A further step would be to examine the factors that enable an organisation to use online recruitment successfully, going beyond adoption as the dependent variable to examine the success of that adoption (Shih and Venkatesh, 2004) on such criteria as the quantity and quality of new employees gained: such research would help online recruitment fully to realise its potential within the recruitment marketplace and would have signicant practical implications for both recruiters and providers of internet recruitment tools.
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Shih, C.F. and Venkatesh, A. (2004), Beyond adoption: development and application of a use-diffusion model, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, pp. 59-72. Total jobs (2004), available at: www.totaljobs.co.uk Van de Ven, A. et al. (1989), Research on the Management of Innovation, Harper and Row, New York, NY. Venkatesh, V., Davis, F. and Morris, M. (2007), Dead or alive? The development, trajectory and future of technology adoption research?, Journal for the Association of Information Systems, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 267-86. Wang, Y., Lin, H. and Luarn, P. (2006), Predicting consumer intention to use mobile service, Information Systems Journal, Vol. 16 No. 2, p. 157. Williamson, I. and Cable, D. (2003), Organisational hiring patterns, interrm network ties and interorganisational imitation, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 46 No. 3, p. 359. Wilson, H.N. (2004), Towards rigour in action research: a case study in marketing planning, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 38 Nos 3/4, pp. 378-400. Zaltman, G. et al. (1973), Innovations and Organisations, Wiley, London. Zusman, R. and Landis, R. (2002), Applicant preferences for web-based versus traditional job postings, Computers in Human Behaviour, Vol. 18, pp. 285-96. About the authors Emma Parry is a Senior Research Fellow at Craneld School of Management. Emma has conducted research across the spectrum of human resource management but her main research interests are in the use of technology for human resource management (particularly recruitment); managing an ageing workforce; HRM in the voluntary sector and international comparative HRM. Emma Parry is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: emma.parry@craneld. ac.uk Hugh Wilson is a Professor of Strategic Marketing and Director of the Customer Management Forum and Craneld School of Management. His research interests are in the areas of e-commerce, CRM and multi-channel marketing.

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