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Globally, recruitment is a process whereby a candidate is attracted, screened, interviewed and selected by the employer or recruiter to fill a job opening. However, the recruitment process has transformed dramatically from decade to decade with advancement in technology. Before the rise of internet and modern technology, recruitment was very different and the recruitment industry had been focused on simply filling current vacancies as quickly as possible, without paying much attention to ensuring efficiency or sustainability as they had limited resources as compared to modern age recruiters. In order to attract candidates, they relied on advertisements in newspapers and word-of-mouth. They had to handle huge amount of hand-written job applications and the storage and accessibility of such data was a huge challenge. Recruiters conducted hiring based on their intuition and believed that they hired the best candidate using their natural analytics and cognitive ability.
Compared to the above scenario, with the advent of computer and advanced technologies, candidate databases created through modern software has made storing and retrieving of resumes easier. Applicant tracking systems have made it convenient to find applicants with right skills for the job. Recruiters have learnt to use online job portals to access resumes of a huge pool of candidates. Popular job boards in India like Naukri, Indeed, CareerBuilder, and the like provide a platform for employers and applicants to come together and find each other. LinkedIn, a professional social networking site provides recruiters access to millions of professional profiles at the click of a button. Recruitment process has gradually increased in transparency as some websites provide candidates the ability to track the status of their job application and give real time updates to job applicants as soon as recruiters perform any action on their applications. Personal branding has become center stage and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter enhance recruiter’s ability to advertise and scout for candidates. Both new age start-ups and traditional companies are communicating with the hashtag generation through hiring videos or hirals (portmanteau of hire and viral) on YouTube (Bhupta, 2015). Other sites such as Vine, Pinterest, and Instagram provide employers with platforms to target more audience and present varied content enabling interested candidates to gain better understanding of the organization. Social games adapted to specific business situations offer an engaging way for organizations to connect with potential employees and showcase their growth potential and organizational culture effectively. Also, it is now imperative for people to take care of their online personality and the kind of impression they create online. The recruitment software landscape has further expanded with the evolution of many tech companies catering to various activities in the recruitment value chain. For example, Xref and Skill Survey conduct candidate reference checking; Hackerrank, Hackerearth, Aspiring Minds, ELitmus and Cocubes conduct online tests; Ideal, IBM Watson, X.ai, Glider.AI, belong.co and param.ai handle Artificial Intelligence and automation in recruitment; Skype, SparkHire, WePOW, Google Duo conduct video interviewing; and BambooHR, KinHR take care of onboarding (Bersin, 2017). The recruitment landscape has thus seen extensive changes over the years and has evolved with the creation of new recruitment tools and processes.