When I read about the sometimes shoddy treatment of candidates (all of us who recruit want to do better, by the way), sometimes I have to sigh.  After all, managing touchpoints on candidiates used to be a lot simpler.  Back before we had this little thing called the Internet.

You know the Internet.  Al Gore invented it, Google perfected it. 

There's a reason why I can't spend more than 5-10 seconds on a glance at a resume when it comes into our shop.  It's because the Internet has made applying for a job such a comodity play for candidates that they can literally apply for 100 jobs a day if they desire.  It's a double edged sword of course - the same technology that allows candidates to spam away has also dropped my cost per hire dramatically.

From Jay Bhatti's Blog at Fast Company:

In 2002 the PEW Internet Project reported that 52 million Americans used the Internet to search for a job, a 60% increase from 2000. By 2007, that number had nearly doubled with approximately 102 million or 51% of American adults using the Internet to look at job postings. Given a new resource to look at online resumes this behavioral trend has benefited HR Personal and Recruiters as well. With a viable new resource, the implications of online job hunting have meant more than just a decrease in newspaper ads and help wanted signs.

Among the many upsides of online recruitment are cost and reach. An SHRM study noted that the average cost per hire from an Internet recruiting strategy was $377 opposed to $3,295 from a major metro newspaper. With career and social networking sites such as Monster, Careerfinder, and LinkedIn supplying thousands of resumes in any number of occupations, recruiters now have access to a significantly larger pool of qualified candidates to pull from.

As tradeoffs go, the online job hunting trend we've all experienced as recruiters and HR pros is a pretty good one.  I'll gladly trade the reduction in cost per hire for the flood of resumes, especially since technology exists (the old ATS..) to help you deal with the onslaught.

Still, the HR pro in me wishes there was time to help those who will never hear from you due to the volume.  The best you can do in today's environment is to write a rejection note that displays more compassion than the others the candidate will receive.

That's employment branding in an Internet-driven recruiting world.  Play on...