ANALYSIS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF E-RECRUITING FOR GERMAN COMPANIES Jürgen Karla, Heidi B. Friedrichs, Wilhelm Schwieren RWTH Aachen University Institute of Business Information Systems Templergraben 64 - 52062 Aachen - Germany ABSTRACT For companies, to decide whether to implement Web 2.0 services in E-Recruiting or not, at a first point the general importance of E-Recruitung is to be analyzed. This analysis – concentrating on the german market – is presented within this paper. Basing on the analysis presented here, research on how to implement Web 2.0 services in E-Recruiting is addressed in a follow-up research project, which is recently in progress. KEYWORDS E-Recruiting, application, job advertisement, requirements, staff, company 1. INTRODUCTION Recently Web 2.0 services are being regarded in an intensive research throughout many universities and companies. The simplicity of the implementation and of the usage of those services force the introduction into companies. One special field for the usage of Web 2.0 services lies in the application for E-Recruiting. Here especially social networks are being regarded. For companies, to decide whether to implement Web 2.0 services or not, at a first point the general importance of E-Recruitung is to be analyzed. This analysis – concentrating on the german market – is presented within this paper. Basing on this analysis presented here, research on how to implement Web 2.0 services in E-Recruiting is addressed in a current research project, which is recently in progress. 2. IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF RECRUITING The usage of IT gains in importance in the context of recruiting. Some numbers shall be given to point out the impact of IT on recruiting: • In 2006, large companies posted about 86% of their job postings at their career site and 60% at online job exchanges, only 27% posted their job advertisements in print media. As one can see in figure 1, the importance of online channels (career site and online job exchange) has increased while print media and the Federal Employment Office (FEO) have lost in importance. [KWEW07, p. 24] • In 2006, nearly 2/3 of all employments were generated via job postings at companies’ career sites or at online job exchanges in 2006 in Germany as shown in figure 2. [KWEW07, p. 25] • In 2006, large companies received more electronic than paper-based applications for the first time (figure 3). By 2011, companies expect 75% of incoming applications to be electronic. [KWEW07, pp. 29, 31] IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2008 355