Campus recruitment practices at Recruitment Process...

Acme Intellects International Journal of Research in Management, Social Sciences & Technology ISSN 2320 – 2939 (Print) 2320-2793 (Online) Let your Research be Global search– An ultimate search of Truth- Reforms through Research Vol- 28 No. 28 Oct 2019

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Campus recruitment practices at Recruitment Process Outsourcing

companies

by Dr. R. Sethumadhavan[a]

& Ms. Sneha Prasad[b]

Abstract

This study is to examine how informed the companies are on the latest recruitment methods,

technology and compliance. It also focused on analyzing the effectiveness of new recruitment

methods at recruitment process outsourcing companies. This study specifically covers the

emerging trends of sustainable recruitment in campus placement process. The survey is

conducted by using a structured questionnaire and the target segment is HR professionals

involved in recruiting. Convenience sampling is used for collecting the data and the sample size

is 230.The data is analyzed by using descriptive statistics and chi-square test. The major findings

are all the students don’t turn up for campus interviews after confirmation and the selected

candidates do not commit with their employer. 43% of the clients preferred to do internship

based recruitment. It is also found that there is no significant relationship between appointing

brand ambassadors and marketing company’s job offers through college fests. Finally

researcher suggested that by focusing on sustainable ‘candidate experience’ during interviews

and increasing the presence in the online job portals effectiveness of recruitment can be

enhanced. The trend of internship based recruitment can be encouraged further as it has become

an important means of the demonstration of a fresher’s true working capability.

Keywords: Recruitment, placement, internship, campus interviews

[a]Dr. R. Sethumadhavan

Faculty, Department of Management Studies

Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering

Bangalore – 560 078

[b]Ms.Sneha Prasad

Research Associate,

Department of Management studies

DayanandaSagar College of Engineering

Bangalore – 560 078

1. Introduction

The Recruitment Industry in India is growing at 24% per year and is approximately worth Rs.

36,000 crores as per Executive Recruiters Association and Ernst & Young. While the permanent

recruitment segment in India is estimated at over Rs 3,500 crore, the search industry is estimated

to have a market size of over Rs 800 crore. In the next 5 to 20 years a lot many countries and

major corporate will be investing in India, and therefore with all the investments coming in, the

preferred choice is definitely India. Talent is the key driver of businesses, organizations will pay

the extra dollar to Recruitment firms that specialize and offer area specific services. For this,

recruitment firms have to be domain-focused & develop and nurture a highly efficient talent

available on-tap.

On-campus recruiting is also an important tool for promoting a brand. Many of the

potential future recruits will be first exposed to a company on their college campus.With talent

being limited, students are generally hired with a plan to be trained and fast tracked into

Acme Intellects International Journal of Research in Management, Social Sciences & Technology ISSN 2320 – 2939 (Print) 2320-2793 (Online) Let your Research be Global search– An ultimate search of Truth- Reforms through Research Vol- 27 No. 27 Jul 2019


leadership. With this in mind, such high stakes, companies need to ensure that they not only get

the best, but also the ones who are the right fit for the company and will stay for a longer period.

However, there is no dearth of colleges that provide a degree with no proper check on quality

and this leaves employers confused. As a result of our knowledge of campuses and their

placement lifecycles, outsourcing companies are able to help companies draw up the ideal

campus recruitment program and implement it in a coordinated manner. The icing on the cake is

the Campus RPO solution which promises to make recruitment process completely paperless and

clutter-free. Recruitment process outsourcing companies have specialist practices in every key

aspect of recruitment. In addition, they help to integrate and bring together all of the aspects in a

highly efficient and result effective manner.

2. Review of literature

Deep Meher(2012) studied Campus Relationship Management and quotedSeeing and

being seen on campuses, around the year, is a great campus recruitment mantra. Relationships

are not built in a day, and reaching out only at recruitment time is so out of date. When good

relations with an institute are established, they send in the troops, the recruiters. To having strong

executive sponsors as campus champions for key campuses much a good company should for

key customers is also a great strategy. It also discusses the effectiveness of funding the campus

fests to take advantage of the summer internship paranoia.

RoosaRajamäki (2014)looked into different theoretical frameworks and provides a

research in the form of two cases studies from the point of view of both outsourcing service

provider and the service user. RPO is an important business process that is constantly

developing and becoming more and more popular alternative for traditional in house recruiting.

The research revealed that even though it is evident that a company may start to look into

outsourcing the recruitment process due to its cost effectiveness, the decision to actually go

through with the decision is supported by many other elements that truly add value to the

recruitment process. According to the researcher, the expertise of the outsourcing company could

result in doing a better job at it by building strong relationships. Also, outsourcing the

recruitment function might help the organization to detect its weaknesses and strengths that it

would not have to analyseif it was not going through the extent evaluation on what could be

outsourced and what not. This could help the organization not only to invest in the cost-

efficiency of outsourcing but to build and better the core competences with the talent and teams

that exist in-house.

Amita Betgerikar (2016)quoted in her study that the recruitment process was assessed as

something that consists of various steps that must be analysed differently in the outsourcing

context. An original underlying theme of recruitment processes is the transforming nature of

human resource department in modern companies. If the company is seeking more strategic

human resources department, it is required to Downsize the HR administrative tasks filled with

resource intensive functions. These benefits are something that the RPO activities share with

other HRO processes like payroll. It is certainly possible that for some companies the expected



results this triggers that recruitment outsourcing to establish more strategic HR. This theme is

visible in the interview as well as in the results of the quantitative survey. Besides the benefits at

the strategic level, there are also some efficiency and related process and justifications for RPO.

If the ultimate rationale for outsourcing recruitment is the desire to improve processes in

question, the reason is to seek either cost benefit or external expertise.Andrea Ordanini &

Giacomo Silvestri (2017) informed that Outsourcing HR operations is spearing rapidly across

different industries. This also corresponds to evolution in the on-transactional work of selection,

recruitment, on boarding and training – which are the most outsourced HR practices. This article

evaluates the outsourcing decisions of recruiting companies. Findings confirmed the importance

of both categories of predictors, but they reveal how efficiency and motivations are more

important for the decisions to outsource recruitment and selection practices while competitive

issues matter more for the other strategic side of action. Theoretical and managerial implications

are offered on the basis of such evidence.

Hsi-An Shih and Yun Hwa Chiang (2018) emphasises on the alignment of outsourcing

human resource management activities with the company's strategy. It explores the effectiveness

of decisions made to outsource recruiting and training, and to what extent these decisions are

effective. The study involved multiple respondents in 125 Taiwanese firms. The researchers

found that outsourcing recruiting is profitable when line managers focus sincerely on effective

human resource functioning. But the researchers did not find any strong or significant link

between outsourcing training and human resource function effectiveness.

Bart Kittle and Diane Ciba(2018) examined the websites colleges and universities on the

World Wide Web. They effectively used the five-level relationship marketing model, Web

content was discussed focusing on pre-transaction student recruitment strategies in content areas

like applications, faculty, and tours. It was found that several firms today are not interested in

long-term relationships and, instead focus on acquiring clients. The majority of home pages by

universities followed this trend and gave no indication that collecting feedback from prospective

students was an important area. In fact, many institutions aim to remain competitive by

concentrating on the efficiency of websites to send messages, create more impressions, increase

brand awareness, and making a positioning statement.

3. Objectives of the study:

1) To examine how the companies are updated about the latest recruitment trends for campus

placements

2) To evaluate the effectiveness of new recruitment methods and technologies for campus

placements

4. Research methodology

The research design is descriptive in nature and the convenience sampling is adopted for

collecting information from the respondents.



The sample size 230 has been chosen from the five Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies

in Chennai.

5. Tools Used For Data Collection:

Structured Questionnaire tool was used to collect the data. The Questionnaire consists of both

closed ended and open ended questions to get the expected responses from the employees.

Tests Used:

The test used for analyzing questionnaire data is Descriptive statistics and Chi-Square Test

6. Analysis and discussion

Table 6.1

From the above table we can say that 43.5% of the respondents agree that the reason for

recruitment outsourcing is the need to cut costs, 17.4% of the respondents disagree with the first

opinion, and 39.1% of the respondents believe that recruitment outsourcing is done more as a

need for cutting efforts than costs.

Table 6.2

From the above table we can say that 52.2% of the respondents agree that the company keeps a

pre- accessed pool of candidates that companies can simply browse through and hire, 13% of

the respondents say the company does not do so, and 34.8% of the respondents are not sure if

the company follows that method.

Table 6.3

From the above table, we can say that according to their experience, 56.5% of the respondents

agreed clients prefer to screen applicants online before conducting on-location interviews.

21.7% of the respondents said that only corporate firms who mass-recruit used this method and

only 4.4% said that the decision of whether applicant should be pre-screened online or not was

left to the vendor firm. 17.4% of the respondents disagreed with the statement altogether.

Table 6.4

From the above table we can say that 56.5% of the respondents agree that most, if not all of the

corporations in Chennai use Hackathon events to select and hire engineering graduates; 43.4%

respondents did not think most corporations used Hackathons for hiring new employees.

Table 6.5

From the above table we can say that, according to 30.4% of the respondents said that most of

the clients prefer to recruit through internship-based evaluation. But 43.5% said not most but

some of the clients prefer to recruit through internship based evaluation. 21.7% of the

respondents voted „very few‟ clients being in favour of internship-based recruitment, and only

4.3% were of the opinion that all clients prefer to recruit though internships.

Table 6.6

From the above bar graph we can say that the majority of the respondents (52.1%) agree that

the trend of marketing a company‟s job offers through college fests is effective. 34.8%



respondents remained neutral and only 13% of the respondents disagreed on the effectiveness of

marketing job offers through fests.

Table 6.7

From the above table we can say that, the majority of the respondents (65.2%) agree that the

trend of promoting a good image of the company through campus ambassadors is effective.

21.7% respondents remained neutral and only 13% of the respondents disagreed on the

effectiveness of promotion through campus ambassadors.

Table 6.8

From the above table we can say that, the majority of the respondents (78.2%) agree that

Applicant Tracking Systems have become commonplace in almost all recruitment consulting

firms. 13% respondents remained neutral and only 8.7% of the respondents disagreed with the

statement.

Figure 6.1

From the above graph we can say that amongst the many criteria used for verification of the

authenticity and validity of candidates during campus hiring, these are the proportions in which

the candidates have experienced the company using different verifications: 95.7% - educational

qualifications, 69.6% - reference check, 60.9%-professional back ground check, 56.5%- legal

back ground check, 52.2%-family back ground check.

Figure 6.2

From the piechart, we can say that according to their experience, 56.5% of the respondents

agreed clients prefer to screen applicants online before conducting on-location interviews. 21.7%

of the respondents said that only corporate firms who mass-recruit used this method; and only

4.4% said that the decision of whether applicants should be pre-screened online or not was left to

the vendor firm. 17.4% of the respondents disagreed with the statement altogether.

Figure 6.3

From the above bar graph we can say that, the majority of the respondents (47.8%) used

shiksha.com for finding appropriate colleges to hire candidates for their clients; 34.8% used

indaeducation.net to find the right colleges and 21.7% usedaicte-india.org.

Table 6.9

H0: There is no significant relationship between the purpose of using RPO to save costs and pre-

screening applicants online before conducting on-location interviews.

H1: There is significant relationship between the purpose of using RPO to save costs and pre-

screening applicants online before conducting on-location interviews.

From above table we can assess that the test value 0.122 is more than 0.05 at 95%

confidence level hence we can accept null hypothesis (H0) and reject alternative

hypothesis (H1).

Table 6.10

H0: There is no significant relationship between the purpose of using RPO to save costs and

doing the main recruitment evaluation online if campus in question is far from job location



H1: There is significant relationship between the purpose of using RPO to save costs and doing

the main recruitment evaluation online if campus in question is far from job location

From above table we can assess that the test value 0.196 is more than 0.05 at 95%

confidence level hence we can accept null hypothesis (H0) and reject alternative

hypothesis (H1)

Table 6.11

H0: There is no significant relationship between appointing student ambassadors and marketing a

company‟s job offers through college fests (the two factors together cannot contribute towards

attracting fresher employees).

H1: There is significant relationship between appointing student ambassadors and marketing a

company‟s job offers through college fests (the two factors together can contribute towards

attracting fresher employees).

From above table we can assess that the test value 0.725 is more than 0.05 at

95% confidence level hence we can accept null hypothesis (H0) and reject

alternative hypothesis (H1).

7. Findings

1) The recruitment industry is a steadily expanding sector which, so far, has good

future growth opportunities.

2) Increasing number of companies are using Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies

for functions like sourcing, screening, selection and on boarding.

3) The recruiters are keen on accurate data and information in order to choose the college

for recruitment or campus engagement activity purpose.

4) Companies rely on the online rankings like NIRF, NAAC Accreditation to select

campus to run recruitments.

5) The companies makes use of educational search portals to hunt for colleges suited to their

client‟s needs.

6) All the candidates do not turn up for campus interviews even after confirmation. This

is a hindrance because it affects client satisfaction and also company profits.

Because of this the company always focuses on mass-recruitment operations to

ensure cost-to-volume recovery.

7) Though the candidates are recruited against the right jobs it becomes a problem because

many of them do not enter into a commitment with their employer and this can affect

the brand image of the company (as was shown in the survey results that 20-50% of

candidates selected for jobs back out after receiving the offer).

8) Campus engagement activities, like appointing brand ambassadors marketing job/internship

offers through college fests are done to make freshers aware of a company as well as new

job opportunities. Analysis revealed that there is no significant relationship between the

two activities though - student ambassadors are strictly effective for marketing a

company‟s offers and promoting its good image; whereas promoting job or internship



opportunities during college fests is the specific activity is more suited for recruitment

marketing.

9) During the study we found that recruiters believe that campus engagement activities are

necessary and effective.

10) Most of the client companies use RPO services for campus recruitment do so more with

the aim of saving effort and increasing efficiency than cost-saving.

11) Although they outsource for sourcing and screening, decisive interview is done mostly by

the client.

12) Hackathons are increasingly becoming the singular and most reliable method of

selecting engineering graduates for employment by corporations across Chennai.

13) It is important positive branding of the client companies through well-organised

campus interviews, so that candidates form a good opinion about the concerned

company.

14) “Employer Branding” and “Candidate Experience” are becoming an important

aspect of emerging recruitment trends which need to be given more attention.

15) Although screening, aptitude tests, interviews and selection is the standard process

being followed for most campus selections, summer internships are becoming an

increasing preference for hiring freshers.

16) Planning and decision making are based on data acquired through HR technology such

as Applicants Tracking Systems and Aptitude tests. This can improve some of the most

important hiring metrics such as time to hire, cost to hire and quality of hire.

17) Having an online presence in job portals and professional social networking websites

like LinkedIn and Naukri.com is not a prerequisite for getting hired as far as freshers are

concerned, but having a profile available online is an added advantage.

18) Structured interviews are the predominant method for campus recruitment at Hire PRO

because they allow the interviewers to measure candidates‟ competencies with prepared

questions based on job analysis.

8. Suggestions

1) The timeline can be made shorter, as it takes significant amount of time to conduct or

run an initiative. The timeline can be reduced.

2) The emerging trend of “Candidate Experience” can be given more emphasis – i.e.

increasing focus on providing a good candidate experience during campus interviews –

candidate relationship management, timely updation about the results of the various

rounds, clearing doubts about the company, role and expectations. We also keep the

communication lines open till the candidate joins Client Company etc.

3) This will help increasing accuracy in the attendance of predicted candidates.

4) During the survey, 43.5% of the respondents said that “some” of the company‟s

clients preferred to do internship based recruitment. This trend can be encouraged

further as internship has become an important means of the demonstration of a



fresher‟s true working capability.

5) Having an online presence in job portals and professional social networking websites

like LinkedIn and Naukri.com is not a prerequisite for getting hired as far as fresher‟s

are concerned, but having a profile available online is an added advantage, so the

company can use campus ambassadors to encourage students to create or update their

resume and upload it in job portals and social networking websites.

9. Conclusion

Through focus in sourcing based on specialization and establishing a link between

campuses and prospective employers it has established in business where all three – the

recruitment consulting firm, the client company and educational institutions concerned will

benefit with mass volume of quality recruitment. With a wide range of software, methods and

tools evolving and dominating the HR recruitment industry in 2019, this study is to learn the

extent to which these new trends are being practiced (with regards to campus recruitment) in the

company, to what extent and how valid they are in the eyes of the practitioners.

It can be concluded from the analysis that almost all of the trends and technology relevant

to campus recruitment outsourcing like keeping a pre-assessed pool of candidates, pre-screening

candidates online, conducting video interviews and aptitude tests though supervised portals,

conducting drives for internship-based recruitment, structured interviews, Applicant Tracking

Systems etc. are all followed by the companies to a very significant extent. Areas where

problems are faced are commitment are - many times the students who apply for interview do not

turn up in the promised number, and also a significant number of candidates back out after

receiving job offers. Also, the company can focus more on increasing emphasis on employer

branding through candidate experience during interviews, and also in encouraging more of

internship- based hiring which is becoming an increasingly preferred and reliable source of

candidate evaluation.

10. References

1) Betgerikar, Amita (2015), Recruitment Process Outsourcing: a new type of service provider,PhD

thesis, Dublin Business School

2) Deep Meher (2012), ‘Campus relationship Management’, IIM-B journal, vol.3.No.4, pp.46-56

3) Diane, Ciba and Kittle, Bart (2008), Using College Web Sites for Student

Recruitment: A Relationship Marketing Study, The Haworth Press,Inc.

4) Kristina Martic (2018) 15 New Recruiting Trends You Should Implement in

2019.TalentLyftblog.Retrievedfromhttps://www.talentlyft.com/en/blog/article/87

5) Nathan (2018) Recruitment Technology: Changing the Hiring Way. HirePROBlog. Retrieved

from https://blog.hirepro.in/tag/recruitment-technology/

6) Prajanma Das ( 2018) Why Hackathons, not Group Discussions work for Virtusa's hiring.

Edex Live. Retrieved fromhttps://www.edexlive.com/happening/2018/dec/01/why-

hackathons-not- group-discussions-work-for-virtusas-hiring-4593.html

7) Rajamäki,Roosa(2017),TherationaleandbenefitsofRecruitmentProcessOutsourcing(RP

O), Helsinki Metropolia University of AppliedSciences

https://www.talentlyft.com/en/blog/article/87/15-new-recruiting-trends-you-should-implement-in-2019-updated

https://blog.hirepro.in/recruitment-technology-changing-the-hiring-way/

https://blog.hirepro.in/tag/recruitment-technology/

https://www.edexlive.com/authors/?q=Prajanma-Das

https://www.edexlive.com/happening/2018/dec/01/why-hackathons-not-group-discussions-work-for-virtusas-hiring-4593.html





Annexure

Table 6.1: fundamental reason for recruitment outsourcing is a need for cutting costs

Frequency Percent Valid

Percent

Cumulative

Percent

yes 100 43.5 43.5 43.5

no 40 17.4 17.4 60.9

Valid more for cutting

effort than costs

90

39.1

39.1

100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Table 6.2: companies keep a “pre-accessed pool” of candidates ready for hire

Table 6.3: Screen applicants online before conducting on-location interviews


Percent

Cumulative

Percent

yes 130 56.5 56.5 56.5

no 40 17.4 17.4 73.9

Va

lid

Only large corporate firms who

mass recruit

50

21.7

21.7

95.7

the employer leaves

decision to us

10

4.3

4.3

100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0


Percent

Cumulative

Percent yes 120 52.2 52.2 52.2

no 30 13.0 13.0 65.2

Valid not sure 80 34.8 34.8 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0



Table 6.4: Corporations use hackathons for hiring engineering graduates

Frequenc

y

Percent Valid

Percent

Cumulati

ve

Percent all of them 30 13.0 13.0 13.0

most of them 100 43.5 43.5 56.5

Valid some of them 70 30.4 30.4 87.0

very few of them 30 13.0 13.0 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Table 6.5: clients prefer to recruit through internship-based evaluation

Frequen

cy

Percent Valid

Percent

Cumulative

Percent

all of them 10 4.3 4.3 4.3

Valid most of them 70 30.4 30.4 34.8

some of them 100 43.5 43.5 78.3

very few 50 21.7 21.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Table 6.6: Marketing a company’s job offers through college fests


Percent

Cumulative

Percent

Strongly agree 50 21.7 21.7 21.7

Valid agree 70 30.4 30.4 52.2

neutral 80 34.8 34.8 87.0

disagree 30 13.0 13.0 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0



Table 6.7: Positive effects of student ambassadors on the company image

Table 6.8: An Applicant Tracking System has become commonplace in consulting firms


Percent

Cumulative

Percent

strongly agree 70 30.4 30.4 30.4

Valid agree 110 47.8 47.8 78.3

neutral 30 13.0 13.0 91.3

disagree 20 8.7 8.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Table 6.9

Chi-Square Test - purpose of using RPO to save costs Vspre-screening applicants online

before conducting on-location interviews

Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-

sided) Pearson Chi-Square 10.05

2a

6 .122

Likelihood Ratio 9.141 6 .166

Linear-by-Linear Association .031 1 .860

N of Valid Cases 230


Percent

Cumulative

Percent

very effective 30 13.0 13.0 13.0

Effective 120 52.2 52.2 65.2

Valid Neutral 50 21.7 21.7 87.0

Not effective 30 13.0 13.0 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0



Table 6.10

Chi-Square Test- purpose of using RPO to save costs Vs doing the main recruitment

evaluation online if campus in question is far from job location

Value df Asymp. Sig.

(2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

8.629

a

6 .196


Linear-by-Linear Association .468 1 .494


Table 6.11

Chi-Square Test- appointing student ambassadors Vs marketing a company’s job offers

through college fests

Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 6.144

a

9 .725


Linear-by-Linear

Association

.270 1 .603


6.1 chart showing verification for campus hiring



6.2 chart showing screening of applicants before interviews

6.3 chart showing the portals used for campus hiring

Campus recruitment practices at Recruitment Process...

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