RECRUITING
HIRE POWER
By Karen Kroll

Online job postings may be old hat, but as the market for qualified finance staffers tightens, companies are using the web in new ways. The goal now is to not just streamline what has long been an arduous manual recruiting process, but to court people with the right skills actively – even if they aren’t necessarily looking for a new job.

If they are looking, conditions are certainly in their favor. The emphasis on corporate governance has boosted demand for experts in “technical accounting”, or the application of regulations to transactions, says Charles Eldridge, US-based leader of the financial officers practice at search firm Korn/Ferry International. Many recruiters are focusing on “passive” job seekers, or individuals who aren’t looking for a new job but may be open to the right offer.

While posting available jobs on company websites has been a common practice for some time, many firms are transforming that portion of their websites from mere listings to a full-on branding campaign in which they tout the many employment advantages they offer and encourage people to apply even if no current openings seem to match their skills.

Kent Kirch, global director of recruitment at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, says that the company’s own website “is the base for most of our recruiting efforts.” To drive traffic, Deloitte purchases keywords on different search websites so that a person searching terms such as audit or tax will see a link to the company’s career page come up. Another tactic is flagging the career section of its website with ads on business websites.

The company may not stop there. A more aggressive approach looms in the form of web crawlers, or search agents, which scour publicly available documents based on keywords. For instance, a crawler might search articles containing the words accountant, manufacturing, and audit, and uncover the name of a qualified accountant with experience auditing manufacturing firms.

While Deloitte is using keyword and web crawler techniques sparingly right now, “as we learn more about how to use them, we’ll do more with them,” says Kirch. Five years ago, most mid-level hires at Deloitte came by way of contingency search firms. Now they come via the web. “It’s both faster and more cost-effective,” he says.