IT major Wipro, thanks to its extensive use of job sites in India and abroad, gets 1400 resumes a week and a 25 per cent cost reduction on recruitments. "Job boards and sites are tapping a niche untouched by other sources of hiring, like HR consultants or company Web sites," says Manoj Punja, its Vice President, Strategic Resources. He feels that HR consultants are useful when a company has specific requirements, while corporate sites work only for really big companies.

On the other hand though, the Internet offers all companies the opportunity to advertise at very low costs. Lately, in an industry hit by recession, retrenchment and hiring freezes, it's not just net-savvy job seekers but HR managers and head-hunters who are also exploring this option. Most job sites report a glut of resumes. And while the number of jobs advertised has reduced in the past year, sites claim to receive responses within a few minutes of putting up a vacancy.

Punja believes the Internet is a good idea for planned and larger recruitments. Listing vacancies online also serves another purpose: brand and image-building. "Since we hire throughout the year, across multiple job sites, we are sending out a strong signal that we are constantly on the look out for the best brains."

The other IT biggie, Infosys, uses job sites selectively, for 'special positions in certain geographies'. It relies mostly on its corporate site (which generates a 1000 resumes a day) and special in-house referral programme hosted on its Intranet.

It's for smaller companies, though, that job sites have made a huge difference. Hitesh Oberoi, Vice-President Sales and Marketing, Naukri says these companies cannot afford the services of specialised HR consultants and find the Internet effective enough. Concurs Krishna Krovi, country manager of Monster India: "It is extremely cost effective. Hiring online, worldwide, is one tenth the cost of the offline medium".

There are drawbacks, of course. For instance, one candidate could apply for multiple positions in an organisation, creating confusion. Moreover, says Tapas Parida, most job sites do not warranty replacements if a hired employee leaves after a brief period. The impersonal nature of the medium, HR managers feel, leads sites to stress technical skills, qualifications and experience, not behavioural or conceptual skills. As a result, the volume of responses is high for generic openings and low for specialised ones.

Job seekers have mixed responses. Ranjeev Iyengar, who found an opening in the UK through Yahoo! Jobs, says, "It was a fairly simple and quick process, though I did have to spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant job openings". Prakash Natrajan, a dotcom entrepreneur who shut shop and applied across different sites differs. "I spent three months waiting for a response. They don't work for people in fields experiencing a downswing. HR consultants were quicker, more reliable and got me more results".

In the job-hunting history of Manish Sharma, last Tuesday was a better-than-average day. An ex-startup manager, he posted more than 20 resumes at different sites and managed to get one interview set up. For him, the main problem has not been finding job listings. It is getting someone to reply as the tech-industry faces a downturn.

Hema Ravichandar, Head of HR at Infosys, thinks that job sites work only for those applying for junior positions or looking for short-term posts: "Those applying for middle / senior positions would like to have exclusive contacts and touch time with the company." Sangeetha Rajalakshmi of Glaxo Beecham agrees. "Most senior professionals are wary about applying online, and a lot of CVs in the database are submitted by individuals who are just doing it for a lark". She reveals that their company's tie-up with a leading online recruiter was a waste of time and as expensive as hiring a HR professional, adding that "offline versions of job sites have better databases and are more efficient".

Oberoi admits that Naukri has a bigger and better database offline, but only because not many senior professionals post into a resume pool. "Our online section where senior professionals can post their resumes anonymously is viewed mostly by HR consultants and not companies, because the latter are still reluctant to hire without references".

Predictably, online recruiting has taken a bite out of the executive search industry, already reeling under hiring freezes. Despite this, HR heads feel that job sites will never replace the recruitment consultant. Oberoi explains that if, for instance, a company has a specific candidate in mind, who may be happy working where he is, a HR consultant can be called upon to use his persuasive skills. This is something a job site will not be able to do.

Professional head-hunters are fast waking up to the potential of online recruiting though. Increasingly, HR consultants are advertising on job sites to fatten their database. Mafoi, a recruiting company, also hosts its own portal.

What does the future hold for e-recruiting? Will companies find their CEO online someday? No one's betting on that yet. But if employers get more comfortable online and qualified candidates continue to log on, a certain section of your newspaper may soon become redundant.

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