Your Business and the Internet
Over the past few years, here at Electronic Search, I've personally seen rapid growth in both access to and use of the Internet. I know that in many other offices the World Wide Web has also become just a keystroke away. This makes the speed of communications for many tasks nearly instantaneous. Things for which I once might make a call, await a fax or the mailman, can now happen with the speed of my keyboard.
At ESI, the Internet has evolved from a curiosity - a mere novelty - into one of the important tools of our trade. Not to confuse our 'trade' with it's 'tools.' I would like to be clear with this: We're in the recruiting business, and primarily, personal contact is how you set up and lock in placement agreements between clients and candidates. We don't expect this to change or become automated, or electronically controlled or something like that. The basic business of recruiting is not what we're proposing to change. But the tools available are changing dramatically.
A tool is, according to Miriam Webster anyway: "Something regarded as necessary to the carrying out of one's occupation or profession." So, if our clients are availing themselves of this new technology; if our prospective candidates are doing the same, then it stands to reason we too need to take part in similar advancements - if we wish to be operating in the same ball park as the rest of the players (not to stretch a metaphor).
Today, while live on the net, I can look over a company's products and services, compare pricing, and submit a request for more information by simply hitting a few keys. Our own clients are able to post job openings on ESI's home page, as well as check currently posted candidate profiles. We can accompany such activities with e-mail - which effectively cuts the communication delay of a few days "snail mail" - down to under and hour.
So we're not trying to replace human contact as our primary means of business here. Instead, we're augmenting it. We're speeding up the communications, the effectiveness and efficiency of the time we spend involved in the transfer of information through our use of e-mail and our homepage presence on the Internet. And I'm not even getting into the issues of broad availability of information, and the marketing possibilities opening up. That's another discussion altogether.
Finally, we now have ourselves a department for web site development that is assisting other organizations to take advantage of these same tools. Recruitment and HR activities have been ESI's stock in trade. ESI Website Services is now helping companies to speed up communications and the transfer of needed and wanted information, as well as effecting broad marketing exposure through the Internet, with an emphasis on recruitment and HR activities. That was a mouthful!
