Traditional Methods of Recruitment versus Modern Methods of Recruitment

One of the most crucial tasks of a company is the recruitment of its people. Every company wants quality talent who can grow and take forward their company. It is not easy to find suitable candidates, and it is the HR manager’s job to find the best method of recruitment for getting good hires into the system.

There are mainly two broad types of recruitment methods, the traditional one and the modern one. The traditional recruitment method has served well in the past years and provided companies with great candidates. But it has its pitfalls; it is time-consuming and also high in cost. With the advent of technology, modern recruitment methods have come up, which are opening new channels and ways of recruiting.


Let us first look into what are these traditional hiring techniques:

• Newspapers – A vast segment of people read the paper, and it has been one of the oldest means of posing a job vacancy.
• Internal hiring – Relying on existing employee’s potential is easy and time tested. Hence hiring one of their own to fill a higher position is a great choice.
• Local employment office – Putting up your job in a local employment office will get a wide range of people to read your post and apply for it.
• Temp agencies – This is one of the most used methods. You make use of a temporary employment agency to shortlist and find good potentials for your company.

Here are some of the modern methods of recruitment:

• Smartphones – The easiest way to connect to the world is today’s age is Smartphones. One can access any page, and recruiters use this to interact and provide information about their company to the prospects.
• Social media – This is the age of Facebook and Twitter. Since most people use these platforms in their everyday life, these mediums can be effectively used to engage with prospective candidates. This is an inexpensive method that also gives you a vast pool of candidates.
• Event recruitment – Companies sponsor events which reflect their ethics and values. This is done to show their association with such values and gain popularity. Lots of likeminded people are part of such events, and it is a great way to reach a wide net of people.

So we have seen the two methods, now is the time to evaluate which is relevant in what circumstance:

1. Time – In the traditional way of the newspaper and other mediums, a lot of time goes between posting and receiving applications. Then comes the sorting of the applications, which is another time taking task.
On the other hand, modern methods are quicker. Jobs can be posted instantly, and applications are received in real-time. Sorting is faster as well by, filtering them using the software.

2. Money – With fixed low-cost hiring, the latest fad in modern recruitment method, the process of hiring has become very cheap. In this, the recruitment consultant charges a very low-cost fixed price, which is based on the package, and they also do all the jobs of an in-house recruitment team. In the traditional methods, a fixed rate of commission is usually charged, based on the salary of the hired person, both form the organization as well as the job seeker. This is much costlier than the modern method.

3. Duration of the job posting – Traditional methods of print media or employment offices give a compact frame of visibility to the job posting, maybe a week or so. That restricts the number of candidacies one receives. But postings on twitter or the company’s web page can remain as long as they want; increasing the probability of drawing more people to apply.

It might look like that modern method of recruitment have a clear win over the traditional method, but there are times when one would like to go via the conventional method. For example, small organizations prefer going the traditional way as they find it more within their reach. Also, using modern methods needs a certain level of technical expertise which might not be present in many organizations. So the recruiter skills too matter in choosing between the two arrangements.