April 09, 2007	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 20, 1428

HIRA Pervaiz finished her BBA (Hons.) from a private university in Lahore early this year and found herself in an unfamiliar territory. “I was all set to start a career, but didn’t know how to find work. It was precisely at that time that someone told me to use the Internet to search for the job,” she says.

“I came back home, began surfing the Internet and hit a couple of portals advertising a number of jobs in no time. It took hardly a few minutes to upload my resume on one of the sites and less than a fortnight to get the job offer,” Hira says.

“Had I not been advised to use the Internet for finding the job, I might still have been looking for work,” she says. “It is quicker, hassle-free and convenient. Just a few strokes on the keyboard and one can search multiple jobs and apply for them without having to leave the comfort of one’s home. No printouts of your resume, no traveling during rush hours, no expense on mailing the application; in fact, no hassle at all. And one doesn’t have to look through piles and piles of newspapers for months and years to find a job. It’s great.”

The Internet is a popular resource to find jobs for hundreds of thousands of people around the world. In Pakistan, too, its use as a match-maker between the potential employer and the job seekers is becoming increasingly popular as one can actually view lots of jobs listed in the one place with all the information – job description, qualifications, experience and skill requirements and application details.

“Had it not been on the Internet, I would never have known the existence of the company that hired me. Even if I knew about the company, chances are that I might not have known about the existence of positions offered by it,” says Hira. “There is no match for online recruitment. By simply uploading your resume, you get access to employers — a scenario not possible in the world of traditional advertising. If you don’t find an employer, he will find you.”

As the number of Internet users is growing — 12 million Pakistanis are estimated to be using the Internet at the moment — and as the economy is expanding at 6-7 per cent a year, the trend of listing positions and searching work online is expected to catch up in the years to come. Already, a number of job portals have been launched over the last few years, and a large number of companies are advertising positions on the Internet as more and more job seekers are searching employment online.

“Yes, the trend is definitely catching up here in Pakistan. Specialised portals advertising entry level to senior positions on behalf of large and small firms is growing in number,” says Sameer Siddiqui, the vice president at Naseeb Networks, which owns ROZEE.PK, a major job board launched three years ago.

Some five major portals and several smaller ones have already entered into this business of online match-making between employers and job seekers in Pakistan. “What we see today is just the tip of an iceberg,” says Sameer.

He sees tremendous growth in online hiring in future provided economy continues to grow. “That rumbling noise that you can barely hear in the background is the sound of success of these portals. The number of Internet users in Pakistan is growing exponentially. Second, the sheer ease that job sites provide to both the job seekers and the employers is something that traditional means cannot compete against. Third, over time, both employers’ and job seekers’ numbers on job portals are increasing significantly. All the portals are advertising extensively, bringing awareness to their sites and to the medium, which will translate into their growth.”

What is driving more and more companies to post jobs online and job seekers to use the Internet to find employment? “It is a fast and economical method of recruiting and finding jobs,” says Sameer. The Internet is a great equaliser. Cost-effectiveness of online recruitment has enabled even smaller companies – which could not afford to take out expensive newspaper advertisements for recruitment and had to depend on other traditional means like employee referrals or social contacts – to list positions on the Internet and avail of the services offered by the job sites to fill positions.

“The traditional means of hiring — print advertising and others — is far more expensive and far less efficient than online recruitment. The traditional means of recruitment is like a small, crowded room. The employer has to try hard to work his way through the disorganised group to hire the person he is looking for,” points out Sameer.

“On the other hand, the Internet is like a large hall where there is a large pool of candidates who are all well organised in small groups. It is easier for the employer to find the right kind of person(s) for the position(s) he needs to fill,” he says. “In addition, you have to pay a very small amount to access a large hall (the Internet) full of candidates organised in groups than you pay to enter a small room (newspaper) filled with disorganised crowd.”

Hiring online is cost effective not only in terms of money but also in terms of time, and quality and breadth of candidates. Additionally, the Internet is also effective as it has online tools to nicely categorise and pick the right candidate, whereas by other means, the employer receives a mountain of CVs that he has to go through manually.

“Hiring online is convenient, efficient and gives us global access (to Pakistanis living overseas but wanting to relocate),” says Syed Zulfiqar Ali Zaidi, Mobilink’s head of staffing and compensation division. Recruitment through print advertisement of vacancies is cumbersome and inefficient as it gets you piles of applications, which requires a lot of time and a huge effort to sift through and shortlist the right kind of candidates you would want to hire. Further, it takes weeks and weeks to interview the short-listed candidates and find the right person that fits your requirements,” he says.

“On the other hand, if you post a job on the Internet you don’t have to spend more than a few hours to find the right person for the position you want to fill. You just have to define the basic criteria of the job advertised and you can shortlist the people matching your requirements in no time,” Zaidi says. “I cannot give the exact number of positions filled online during the last two or two-and-a-half years, but I can say this that we are focusing maximum on the Internet for hiring,” says Zaidi. “It is a fantastic experience to recruit online, which costs far less than the traditional means of advertising.”

Almost all job boards are free for the job seeker who can post their CVs or browse through listed without having to pay anything. Some job boards do not charge even the employers who simply want to list jobs. They make money on their value-added services like CV Search Engine, Hot Jobs, Power Tools, Applicant Filter, and Career Portal sold to the employers. Sameer says different job sites offer different services to the employers for a reasonably small amount for listing positions and searching candidates through their database of applicants.

The Internet may be a great equaliser and the most efficient match-maker, but the fact remains that each portal has hundreds of thousands of resumes uploaded by the job seekers against only a few hundred or, at the best, a few thousand listed positions.

Hira may have been lucky in getting her first job offer in less than two weeks of her graduating from the university. For others finding a job is still as tedious and time-consuming as ever because they do not match the criteria defined for the listed positions.

What can the Internet do for a job seeker if there is no work for him or her in the market?