E-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia

Explore the factors, issues and challenges that leave Saudi Arabia behind the trend in implementing E-recruitment solutions

A study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Information Systems management

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

by

Nawaf Rafeeq Registration No. 090212857

September 2010
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Abstract
Background. Currently, e-recruitment has only been adopted by a few Saudi companies as a solution to recruitment procedures, however most of these companies demonstrate a limited perspective of its capability by merely using this to post job vacancies and receive job applications via their companies' websites. Therefore, this dissertation will examine e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia and analyse the perception of Saudi recruitment managers towards the e-recruitment concept. Aims. The study aims to explore the factors that obstruct the full implementation of the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia and how these may be overcome.

Methods. A questionnaire was designed that was based on the review of literature undertaken for this current study. The questionnaire was sent by email, as e-mail invitations that contain online questionnaire link to around 450 human resources professionals from different sectors in Saudi Arabia and there was a response rate of 27.77%.

Results. The data gathered from the questionnaire was analysed by statistical tests applied by using SPSS software. Moreover, the findings of the research showed that the main obstacle that hinders e-recruitment adoption in Saudi Arabia is the management style of HR Managers; however, other factors that influence erecruitment adoption include employees resistance against change, absence of top management support, receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications, language barriers and the lack of knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment concept within human resource communities.

Conclusions. It was surprising that the findings showed the main obstacle that hinders e-recruitment adoption is the human resources leaders themselves, because their management styles have a significant influence on adoption e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia. However, there is an apparent need for more research on e-recruitment solutions in Saudi Arabia, and further studies in the future should expand the research boundaries of this field by observing the applicants' views as well. 2

Acknowledgement
First and foremost, I would like to thank God, the Creator and who gave me the health and the power for all of my life and to whom I owe my very existence.

Secondly, I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to my father, Hamed, and my mother, Wedad and my little brother, Ahmed and my little princess sisters Gheda and Rola for their love and best wishes, which despite their physical absence, have helped me in the successful completion of my Master dissertation.

My special thanks go to my wife, Walaa, and my little angel, my daughter Toleen, for their love and support that was the driving force that kept me going.

My thanks extend to my academic research supervisor Dr. Lin Angela, for her support, advice and guidance, as without her help this research would not have been possible.

I would like to thank Oilwell7.com for their sponsorship for this research, and specially to thank Mr. Tariq Al-Kahily for his generous support.

Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to all those people who gave me their time and honest views to participate in this research; and would like to dedicate this research to all people who are working in the human resources field in Saudi Arabia, and I hope that this research will help them to have a better understanding of the obstacles that hinder the implementation of the full concept of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia.

Table of contents
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 8 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2 Research Background .................................................................................... 8 Problem statement ......................................................................................... 9 Research aims ................................................................................................ 9 Research objectives ..................................................................................... 10 Research rationale ....................................................................................... 11

Literature Review............................................................................................. 12 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 Introduction ................................................................................................. 12 Traditional Recruitment .............................................................................. 13 Recruitment methods and sources ............................................................... 16 Recruitment process .................................................................................... 18 Problems of traditional recruitment process ................................................ 21 E-Recruitment overview .............................................................................. 23 E-recruitment process .................................................................................. 27 E-recruitment Functions .............................................................................. 29 E-Assessment tests ...................................................................................... 30

2.10 Online interview .......................................................................................... 34 2.11 E-Recruitment implementation ................................................................... 36 2.11.1 2.11.2 2.11.3 Factors and Motivators ......................................................................... 36 Evaluation of implementation .............................................................. 42 Obstacles and Challenges..................................................................... 43 E-recruitment and discrimination................................................. 47 E-Privacy and Trust in E-Recruitment ......................................... 49

2.11.3.1 2.11.3.2 3

Methodology ..................................................................................................... 51 3.1 Research strategy and approach .................................................................. 51 4

3.2 3.3

Negotiating access ....................................................................................... 53 Questionnaire............................................................................................... 54 Questionnaire tool................................................................................ 54 Questionnaire Design .......................................................................... 55 Pilot Testing ......................................................................................... 58 Questionnaire Distribution and Data collection.................................. 59

3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.3.4 3.4 3.5 3.6 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Data analysis ................................................................................................ 59 Research ethics ............................................................................................ 60 Research Schedule ....................................................................................... 61

Research findings ............................................................................................. 62 Discussion .......................................................................................................... 73 Limitations and future research ..................................................................... 85 Recommendations ............................................................................................ 86 Conclusion......................................................................................................... 89 References ......................................................................................................... 90 Appendix ......................................................................................................... 102 A. Questionnaire.......................................................................................... 102

List of Figures
FIGURE 2.1 - E-RECRUITMENT PROCESS ...................................................................... 27 FIGURE 3.1 - QUANTITATIVE METHODOLOGY PROCESS ............................................... 52 FIGURE 4.1 - AGE DISTRIBUTION ................................................................................ 63 FIGURE 4.2 - EDUCATIONAL LEVEL............................................................................. 63 FIGURE 4.3 - CAREER LEVEL ....................................................................................... 64 FIGURE 4.4 BY COMPANY SIZE CAREER LEVEL ........................................................ 65 FIGURE 4.5 - THE REASONS OF WHY ONLINE ASSESSMENT IS UNCOMMON IN K.S.A .... 69 FIGURE 4.6 - JOB PORTAL WEBSITES USAGE IN SAUDI ARABIA .................................... 70 FIGURE 4.7 - JOB PORTAL WEBSITES SERVICE .............................................................. 70

List of Tables
TABLE 3.2- THE RESEARCH SCHEDULE ................................................................................. 61 TABLE 4.1- THE RESPONDENTS BY GENDER .......................................................................... 62 TABLE 4.2- WORKING EXPERIENCE ....................................................................................... 64 TABLE 4.3- COMPARING INFLUENCE OF THE FACTORS BASED ON THE MEAN ....................... 72 TABLE 5.1- AGE FACTOR AND ADOPTION OF THE E-RECRUITMENT CONCEPT ...................... 73 TABLE 5.2- EDUCATIONAL LEVEL FACTOR & ADOPTION OF THE E-RECRUITMENT CONCEPT 74 TABLE 5.3- THE REASONS OF WHY ONLINE ASSESSMENT IS UNCOMMON IN SAUDI ARABIA 75 TABLE 5.4- THE REASONS OF WHY ONLINE INTERVIEW IS UNCOMMON IN SAUDI ARABIA ... 76 TABLE 5.5- COMPARING INFLUENCE OF THE FACTORS BASED ON THE MEAN ....................... 78 TABLE 5.6- ROTATED COMPONENT MATRIX ......................................................................... 79 TABLE 5.7- COMPONENT 1 ..................................................................................................... 81 TABLE 5.8- COMPONENT 2 ..................................................................................................... 82 TABLE 5.9- COMPONENT3 ...................................................................................................... 82 TABLE 5.10- COMPONENT 4, 5, 6 AND 7 ................................................................................. 84

1 Introduction
The last fifteen years have seen a revolution of communications that have had a significant impact on many aspects of human life, and it has changed operations, management and controls in business systems and structures. One of the most important developments of communications that has affected organizations and individuals is information technology (IT), however this has had an important effect for businesses for their recruitment procedures. It is generally recognized that the role of recruitment within organizations is critical to their overall success by providing employees of high calibre and fulfilling strategic goals. IT developments are now evolving e-recruitment facilities to enable organizations to recruit staff online. The concept of e-recruitment has been adopted and implemented across the world in many countries, and this concept has been introduced in Saudi Arabia, but its adoption has been much slower than in other countries.

1.1 Research Background

Observers of the Saudi economy will recognize that its trend has shown strong growth over the last five years, and this should encourage Saudi companies to enhance their business in different aspects. Furthermore, conventional banks in Saudi Arabia earn billions of dollars from trading the current and savings accounts of Saudi citizens, who do not obtain interest from their funds, because it would be considered as usury or 'riba', which is prohibited in the religion of Islam (Arab news, 2010). As a result, the economy and finance for most Saudi companies should enable them to invest in improving their recruitment functions, but the response from many companies is one of hesitation.

1.2

Problem statement

Recruitment has been described as the second most significant function of the human resources sector of organizations, after management (Parry and Wilson, 2009); however, few Saudi companies have implemented e-recruitment as a solution, and these mostly have a limited perspective of its use, such as career opportunities on their websites and do not use its wide range of services available to companies. Therefore, this dissertation will examine e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia and analyze the perception of Saudi recruitment managers towards the e-recruitment concept, to understand the reasons that have led to e-recruitment failure or by implementing it partially in Saudi Arabia.

1.3 Research aims

The purpose of this research is to explore the factors, issues and challenges that leave Saudi Arabia behind the trend in implementing e-recruitment solutions; therefore, the research aims to answer these questions: What are the factors that obstruct the full implementation of the eRecruitment concept in Saudi Arabia? How can obstacles to e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia be overcome?

There is an apparent need for more research in e-recruitment solutions in Saudi Arabia, as very little research has been undertaken in this field. As a result, the findings from this research might be of use and value for Saudi companies.

1.4 Research objectives

To fulfil the aims of this research, there are a number of objectives that need to be achieved and controlled by applying SMART criteria as the following: What? (Specific)- To find out what factors appear to obstruct the full implementation of the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia. Why? (Realistic) To identify gaps in knowledge of the full concept of erecruitment in Saudi Arabia, and to give Saudi human resource (HR) directors opportunities to improve their understanding of the challenges that face e-recruitment in the commercial market of the country. Furthermore, to make recommendations on how to overcome the obstacles that face erecruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia. HOW? (Achievable) - To review the literature of implementing e-recruitment solutions in companies or governments across the world in order to identify some factors or theories that might help to answer the research questions and by carrying out a questionnaire survey to a sample of Saudi human resource (HR) managers to obtain their views about the factors that obstruct the full implementation of the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia.

(Measurable) The quantitative data will be analysed by using a statistical package for social science, the SPSS software, as an instrument to analyse the data. When? (Time) The literature was obtained during the month of June, and the questionnaire was distributed during the first week of July until the third week of July.

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1.5 Research rationale

The most significant issue that concerns human resources managers is cost, as the functions of recruitment often require very large budgets to meet an organisation's goals and objectives for recruitment. As a result, human resources managers face a choice of reducing the number of new employees needed to achieve organisational goals, or to seek different solutions for hiring staff that may help reduce recruitment costs. Moreover, e-recruitment vendors claim that their systems help organisations speed up the processes of the cycle of recruitment, as well as reducing costs. Furthermore, e-recruitment claims to provide organisations with the ability to reach a wide pool of applicants, as well as creating a cost effective way to build a talent pool for future vacancies (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2009).

There has been a considerable amount of research on the topic of e-recruitment; for instance, David Tong (2008) carried out a study on the adoption of e-recruitment technology in Malaysia (Tong, 2008); and in France, Girard Aurlie and Bernard Fallery carried out an exploratory study on e-recruitment (Aurlie and Fallery, 2009); in addition, in Germany, Jrgen Karla (2008) with other researchers undertook an analytical study of German companies, by analysing the importance of e-recruitment to them (Karla et al., 2008). Furthermore, there has been much research undertaken in the United States regarding e-recruitment implementation, such as Soonhee Kim and Jennifer G. O'Connor (2009) who carried out a study to assess electronic recruitment implementation in state governments (Kim and O'Connor, 2009).

In contrast, there have been few studies undertaken in the Middle East, such as one by Gulftalent.com, which is one of leading recruitment portal websites in the Middle East, which carried out a study on recruiting online in 2009. Nevertheless, surprisingly, there are no known studies regarding the e-recruitment situation in Saudi Arabia; moreover, this is despite the booming Saudi economy and Saudi job market. Therefore, this research will offer a good opportunity to explore the full erecruitment implementation concept in Saudi Arabia (Arab News, 2010).

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2 Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
This review of literature will provide an overview of recruitment in the traditional aspects of definition, processes, methods, sources and problems, and then discuss how these have been affected by the development of e-recruitment technology. The literature review of e-recruitment will present a brief analysis of the specific concepts and processes that underlie this technological development; moreover, this research will focus on two functions of e-recruitment that are Internet-based, which are eassessment and online interview, by identifying research evidence that both supports and criticises these functions. Following this, this literature review will discuss motivating and challenging factors that create an impact for the implementation of erecruitment across the world.

This study has found no related literature or research studies on the implementation of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia; as a result, this literature review has concentrated on studies that have analysed how e-recruitment has been implemented in different countries across the world. Nevertheless, the factors that have determined the success or failure of e-recruitment in these other countries may also provide useful evidence for the study of e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia at the present time (Parry and Wilson, 2009).

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2.2 Traditional Recruitment

There are many different functions of Human Resources Management, but their importance to individual organisations may vary to a significant degree. Nevertheless, the critical functions would normally include staff relations, training, career development, compensation & benefits and recruitment (Ahmed Maher, 2007). Whilst management may be regarded the most important function for human resources departments in any organisation, the second most important function is generally recognised as recruitment (Parry and Wilson, 2009). Moreover, Taylor and Collins (2000) argue that an organisation's success and survival depends on the critical role of recruitment for human resources managers (Taylor and Collins, 2000), and this view is supported by Roberts (2005), who considers recruitment procedures as the most vital function for an organisation. If newly appointed employees lack the required qualities for their work, or insufficient numbers of applicants apply for vacant positions, then these organisations will be unlikely to satisfy their needs or achieve strategic goals. As a result, clients, customers and stakeholders will judge the efficiency of the organisation by its methods of recruitment (Roberts, 2005). Whilst many researchers in this field have attempted a variety of definitions for recruitment, the consensus of findings demonstrate that the function of recruitment is to hire individuals to fill job vacancies in an organisation (bnet.com, 2010). This definition of recruitment is similar to that proposed by Tom Redman and Adrian Wilkinson (2009) who consider the main goal of an organisation is to identify and attract qualified applicants for any job vacancies, and the activities, practices and processes adopted define recruitment (Redman and Wilkinson, 2009). Moreover, Dr. Madani Alaqi defines the function of recruitment as demonstrating three distinct activities, which are seeking, attracting and selecting candidates that are appropriately qualified. Nevertheless, this definition depends more on the processes adopted that will determine how successfully these activities are achieved, and 13

whether they meet the requirements of the organisation. However, this definition offers a simplistic explanation of three important activities (Alaqi, 2007).

Recruitment also requires a clear definition from a legal perspective, as the number of people employed by an organisation at specific locations or at different times may be regulated by national or local legislation for employment. Therefore, legal restrictions on the processes of recruitment should ensure security for both the organisation and employee, and operate in the best interest of both parties (Schuler and Jackson, 1987).

Edwards et al. (2003) adopt the organisation's viewpoint, and define recruitment as practices and policies that have a goal to attract individuals to apply for job vacancies within the organisation, establish a sufficient number of candidates and then offer the job to candidate selected (Edwards et al., 2003).

In contrast, Edwin B. Flippo (2007) describes recruitment as a two-way process, because there is a direct link or relationship between an organisation and an applicant. He describes this relationship by explaining that whilst job seekers may be searching for employment vacancies, the organisations need to create motivation for individuals to apply for their employment vacancies (Naukrihub.com, 2007).

Robbins (1978) argues that the definition of recruitment requires a process that establishes where suitable candidates may be found to meet the hiring needs of the organisation. He proposed a schedule for recruitment that adopted various measurement indicators that might attract and enable the selection of suitable candidates (Robbins, 1978).

Nevertheless, the perception of human resource researchers and practitioners have a consensus view that recruitment involves various groups of processes, which begin by identifying recruitment needs and end by hiring those candidates that are best qualified. The researcher has adopted the definition of recruitment presented by Dr. Madani Alaqi that will be used for this research, as he defines three clear activities, which are find, attract and select. Moreover, his perception of recruitment recognises 14

this concept to be a group of processes that are interrelated, which will support the research processes for this study appropriately.

Recruitment and selection are significantly different terms, but are often adopted as alternatives, which may be confusing. Overall, recruitment determines the procedures selected by an organisation to identify the needs of their workforce and the methods for attracting suitable candidates to fill employment vacancies. In contrast to this, selection determines how candidates are selected for a specific job from a group or pool of applicants, and the processes and activities required to achieve this. Nevertheless, in this study the researcher intends to use the term of recruitment for both recruitment and selection (CCH Australia, 2009).

To summarise the definition of recruitment, researchers have presented an overall explanation that recruitment should match the candidate with the appropriate qualifications and experience to a job that matches these factors. However, to define this further, the skills and abilities of candidates need to match the elements of the job description that is vacant (Roberts, 2005).

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2.3 Recruitment methods and sources

Recruitment managers have a goal of attracting suitably qualified candidates for job vacancies, but to satisfy this goal they need to adopt various methods and sources to find such suitable individuals. On the other hand, recruitment teams are more likely to use a wider range of selection processes that can forecast which applicant is most qualified and who meets the requirements of the job description sufficiently. Normally, one or two methods of recruitment are adopted, or a combination of these, to hire the best candidates, but these selection methods are determined by several controlling factors, such as time, accuracy, cost and ease of administration (Torrington and Hall, 1987).

Roberts (2005) undertook research for the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) into methods of recruitment, and identified specific procedures that enhance traditional methods of recruitment, such as assessment centres, psychometric tests, interviewing and graphology (Roberts, 2005).

Recruitment teams can access various sources to seek appropriately qualified candidates for job vacancies, but are mainly divided into two types: internal and external resources. Internal resources include: 1. Employee promotion, 2. Employee transferring between company departments, and 3. Internal job posting.

Whilst most organisations may adopt this source of possible candidates, Catano et al. (2005) find that some organisations adopt a policy of considering internal candidates for any vacant positions as a first stage of the recruitment process. They found a significant pattern whereby new jobs were advertised on an organisation's website or on a display board in departments throughout the organisation for specific periods prior to seeking external candidates. When candidates are selected from an internal pool, the organisation has a better opportunity to analyse the suitability of these candidates for the job vacancy, and raises the morale of employees. The findings from this research argued that appointing internal candidates to other positions within 16

the organisation is a better prospect than losing an experienced, qualified employee to a competitor organisation (Catano et al., 2005).

Employee referrals are another method that can be adopted to fill job vacancies with the most appropriate candidate, as qualified external candidates, who are known to employees of an organisation, improve the selection process for organisations in filling job vacancies with the best candidates, as knowledge of candidates is validated by internal employees (Naukrihub, 2007).

In contrast, sourcing candidates externally is likely to achieve a greater number of applicants and the potential of applicants that are more highly qualified and experienced. As a result, recruitment teams are likely to use sources that would include the following: 1. Newspapers advertisements, 2. Organisation's website, 3. Job portal websites, 4. Recruitment agencies, 5. Recruitment headhunters, 6. Walk-in candidates, 7. Career Fairs that often take place at universities, and 8. Outsource companies to hire outsourced staff (Naukrihub, 2007).

However, in a study on recruitment in the Middle East by bayt.com, the findings showed that 52% of companies used the Internet as the main source to seek applications for job vacancies, compared to around 11% that use job advertisements in newspapers and 9% declined to give information about how they filled job vacancies. Other findings from this research showed that only 7% of companies advertised job vacancies on their websites, and only 5% used of career fairs to seek appropriate candidates for job vacancies

(Al-Riyadh Newspaper, 2009).

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2.4 Recruitment process

Applicants that are seeking new job opportunities are likely to market themselves based on the sources normally adopted by recruiting agencies or organisations. The recruitment process has several stages that often include recruitment, processing information, elimination of unsuitable candidates and selection. Traditional methods of recruitment normally placed advertisements in newspapers, screened the application paper-based forms received, arranged an interview and then selected the candidate for the job vacancy. However, the rapidly increasing use of the Internet for recruitment processes has had a significant impact on these traditional methods (Laumer et al., 2009).

The e-recruitment process enables a much wider range of methods that can be adopted to seek, attract and select suitable candidates, and these would include the following: Placing a job vacancy announcement in suitable off/online channels, Filtering applicants to select successful candidates for interview, Using assessment tools such as work samples, and psychological and aptitude tests, and Carrying out interviews and references checks.

These methods are used throughout the complete process of recruiting for a job vacancy, and may be described as steps.

Step 1: Identify vacancy Human resource managers identify when a job vacancy occurs that may depend on the following factors: Staffing changes, as a result of resignation, retirement, termination or shortages of staff, and Work requirement changes that may be due to creating a new job position. 18

Step 2: Review requirements for vacancy: Human resource departments need to consider various elements to be able to define the job requirements, such as the position description, the organisation's recruitment policy and budget restrictions. Whilst managers may take initial decisions regarding requirements, all members of the recruitment team supervise the review process.

Step 3: Seeking and attracting applicants Following the identification of a job vacancy and defining a clear job description, approval to proceed further may be required from senior managers in the organisation. Heads of different departments can alert human resource departments of potential job vacancies by sending a hiring request, along with a job description. In this case, the recruitment team needs to identify the most effective method to seek and attract a suitable number of applicants. These seeking and attracting processes may include newspaper advertisements, recruitment agencies, individuals who had previously presented their CVs to the organisation (walk in candidates) and the Internet.

Step 4: Screening applicants The process of screening requires the recruitment team to gather all application forms or CVs received from different sources and then match these against the vacant position's job description. This process of initial screening should produce a short list of qualified candidates that could be interviewed, but other assessment methods may also be adopted to collect more information about the applicants prior to hiring. As a result, this screening process reduces the numbers of applicants by applying various selection methods, and also unqualified and inexperienced applicants are rejected at an early stage (Dafoulas et al., 2002).

Moreover, this enables the recruitment team to undertake a more effective review of all the information gathered, and establishes a ranking indicator for each of the remaining candidates. This method of ranking should create an order of those who match the hiring criteria and job description best.

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Step 5: Selection When the steps of filtering and screening have been completed, the recruitment team normally works closely with the department that has the job vacancy to make decisions regarding interviews and the results from any online tests that may have been adopted. Nevertheless, although the recruitment team provide advice and made recommendations, the final decision for hiring the successful candidate remains with the hiring department.

Step 6: Unsuccessful candidates - communication Candidates, who were unsuccessful, need to be contacted by the recruitment team by letter, telephone or email and should be polite and respectful in order to maintain the reputation of the organisation. Often, organisations inform unsuccessful candidates that their information will be kept for future reference, and that they may be contacted again if further job vacancies occur.

Step 7: The job offer The job offer and contract of employment are normally prepared by the recruitment team, which then contacts the selected candidate for their approval by signature that completes the recruitment process.

Step 8: On boarding This process takes place after the successful candidate has been hired and is regarded as a method to introduce new staff to the operations and structures of the new job, and would include details of the work environment and any relevant information that new staff need to know (ECU, 2010);(BusinessHR.net, 2010).

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2.5 Problems of traditional recruitment process

Traditional methods of recruitment have been established over many years, and despite improvements in the processes that are often adopted for seeking, attracting and selecting applicants for job vacancies, these methods demonstrate significant weaknesses. The problems incurred with traditional approaches to recruitment are high costs, and the significant effort and timescales for human resource departments. These weaknesses of traditional recruitment methods may be described as:

1. The globalisation of the work environment for many organisations means that recruitment teams need to travel further, 2. When specific talents needed for job vacancies are in short supply, or when potential candidates are using the Internet in greater numbers to seek employment vacancies, recruitment teams adopting traditional methods need to extend their range of sources to find suitable candidates. 3. The economic recession is likely to increase the numbers of applications for any job vacancy, which results in an increase in paper-based forms or CVs that need to be assessed in traditional ways. 4. Job applications and CVs are likely to be submitted in different formats, such as by post, delivered personally, email, fax or received via the organisation's website or professional's networking websites. As a result, recruiting teams face significant difficulties in filing, tracking and retrieving all this data, as the range of possible formats for receiving applications are not interrelated or mutually compatible. 5. Manual screening and review of CVs and application forms is time consuming for traditional methods of recruitment, and when large numbers of applications are received, then it become impossible to filter these effectively or efficiently.

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Furthermore, traditional methods of recruitment do not allow flexibility for human resource teams to share information with external recruitment agencies, and traditional methods of approach demonstrates less team work from recruitment teams, and greater reliance on manager's decisions. As a result of these weaknesses of traditional methods of recruitment, organisations face high administration workloads, increased hiring costs, difficulties in tracking the recruitment process and, overall, the timescale for completing the recruitment process is high.

The findings from research into this field have shown that the adoption of erecruitment by organisations is likely to resolve the significant problems that tradition methods are currently facing. Researchers argue that e-recruitment is no longer an option or convenience for recruiting new staff, as it has rapidly become a core resource of all human resource departments. The risks faced by organisations that do not adopt new technological methods for recruitment are likely to miss opportunities to reduce the costs and workload pressures on recruitment teams, miss opportunities to become more efficient and may not attract high quality candidates (JobDS.com, 2010).

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2.6 E-Recruitment overview

Information technology has enabled organisations to implement information systems (IS) within their operating systems and structures, and these IS systems are regarded by some as the solutions for organisations to respond to any environmental challenges. IS is also seen as having a direct impact on the day-to-day work of business (Kabir et al., 2010).

Nevertheless, before an organisation decides to adopt IS for its organisational systems, the technology needs to be fully understood. Without appropriate planning, training and support for staff to operate such systems, the effectiveness and efficiency of such systems will not be achieved, and the resolution of intended problems, such as improving methods of recruitment, are unlikely. Therefore, a prerequisite for the adoption of IS is comprehensive understanding of the new technology and its potential is essential (Kabir et al., 2010).

Broadly, organisations do recognise that to achieve their strategic goals, it is critical that their recruitment methods attract candidates that are highly qualified and experienced. Therefore, information technology demonstrates that it can speed up recruitment processes, but enabling improved operational tools for screening and filtering. There is a growing trend for organisations to recruit staff online through their websites, and the concept of e-recruitment enables organisations to not only improve their efficiency and effectiveness of recruiting new staff through the use of new technology, but also to store applicants' data effectively for future recruitment needs (Ceriello and Freeman, 1998).

As a result of the rapid expansion of the Internet in recent years, many countries across the world have adopted and implemented e-recruitment as an essential method of recruiting new staff. E-recruitment has been introduced in Saudi Arabia by some organisations, but, when compared to other countries, the adoption and diffusion of this technology has been slow. This appears to be surprising, as recruitment has been

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described as the second most important function for human resource departments for all organisations (Parry and Wilson, 2009). Most Saudi companies demonstrate an insufficient understanding and perception of e-recruitment, or how it might be used by their organisation. Although some organisations in Saudi Arabia have used their website to advertise job vacancies or career opportunities, few companies adopt the wide range of e-recruitment services and tools that are available to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. The reasons why organisations in Saudi Arabia have been reluctant to adopt erecruitment have included the estimated costs of its introduction, and managers of human resource departments in the country have reported a shortage of funds that prevent adoption and implementation. However, such assumptions lack credibility, as the Saudi economy over the past five years has demonstrated strong growth, and this has contributed to the encouragement of Saudi companies to enhance their organisation. This has been demonstrated by the conventional banking sector in the country, which earns a significant income from trading the bank accounts of Saudi citizens, who are prohibited from obtaining interest, as this is prohibited in the Islamic religion. Therefore, conventional Saudi banks have substantial funds that could be invested in e-recruitment, but this has not resulted in the full adoption of the wide range of tools and applications available, and banks only use the Internet to advertise job vacancies and to receive job applications by email. The general consensus of companies' views of e-recruitment is reluctance and hesitation (Arabnews.com, 2010).

Therefore, this study will examine the position of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia and attempt to understand the perception of recruitment managers in the country towards the concept of e-recruitment. The study will also seek to identify why e-recruitment has failed to be adopted and implemented successfully in Saudi Arabia, when compared to its rapid expansion in other countries across the world. The researcher hopes that this study will contribute significant findings and areas for further research in the field of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia. 24

In contrast to the slow adoption of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia, its evolution in the US in 1994 with Monster.com and then in the UK with Jobserve.com, online recruitment rapidly developed across these and other countries. Furthermore, the numbers of e-recruitment websites has also increased across the world, and as a result, the variety of e-recruitment tools and solutions to address the needs of recruitment have been based on the requirements for speed and efficiency (Online Recruitment Marketing Council, 2004).

E-recruitment may be defined as recruitment methods and procedures that use Internet-based technology (Hopkins and Markham, 2003), but the Internet allows significantly wider applications and tools that may be adopted for online recruitment, which not only perform operations and structures for recruitment processes, but also enhances and extends recruitment processes, particularly in extending the source of applicants from the immediate location of an organisation to beyond national borders (Jobshout.co.uk, 2010).

The IDEA recruitment agency defines e-recruitment from a time perspective as they argue that the cycle time for recruitment is reduced as a result of using information technology, and that a pool of candidates is generated by candidates interacting with e-recruitment websites, viewing job vacancies and submitting applications (Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government, 2009).

In contrast, the definition of e-recruitment may also be described as its usage of technology by adopting electronic resources, so that the Internet performs recruitment tasks and that whole process of recruitment is faster. It should also be noted that the term e-recruitment is also known as Internet recruitment and online recruitment, which are intended to mean the same processes (Recruit Advantage, 2010).

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The two definitions previously discussed e-recruitment as using technology to make recruitment processes faster, as well as generating a pool of potential candidates, but failed to identify a wider perspective of e-recruitment uses. To extend the definition of e-recruitment further, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) argues that this technology attracts candidates that are the most highly qualified and experienced. Furthermore, e-recruitment websites that were created in the early stages of development advertised job vacancies and enabled applicants to complete online application forms, and these were common features among many such websites. However, recent technological advances in applications and tools to support e-recruitment have shown organisations adopting online interviews and assessments of applicants' knowledge and experience by using Internet resources. These organisations report that such technological resources increase their efficiency and reduce their costs. This organisation carried out a survey in 2008 in the UK and the findings showed that around 75% of British companies use their own website to recruit new staff (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2009).

This study will adopt the definition of e-recruitment proposed by CIPD for use in this research as this illustrates the limited use of e-recruitment for organisations at the early stage of this technology, such as advertising job vacancies and submitting job applications via organisations' websites. This description of the early development of e-recruitment is similar to its current adoption and use in Saudi Arabia at the present time. Therefore, the CIPD definition will be directly related to this research study.

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2.7 E-recruitment process

There seems little doubt that the functions of recruitment will continue to expand on an Internet basis, as a result the technology is likely to increasingly transform the automation of procedures. Methods and procedures that can be adopted for online communication include the management of job applications, completing forms, online interview, interview feedback forms and notification of candidates.

The E-recruitment progresses through various stages as following:

Figure 2.1 - E-recruitment process

Source: Dafoulas et al., (2002)"Business to employee cooperation support through online job interviews". IEEE [Online], 286 - 292.

1. Recruitment teams receive details of job vacancies from the hiring department, agree the details of the job description and budget limitations, and the advertise the vacancy on their website. Therefore, the organisation's website forms the principle medium for advertising job vacancies, and applicants can access the site and complete forms online.

2. Applicants submit their online forms, which are then screened automatically by system applications to match specific elements of the job description, such as skills and qualifications, to each applicant. Those applications that match 27

the criteria of the job description are passed to the next stage, but those that do not would be rejected.

3. E-recruitment automatically contact those applications that have reached the next stage by email, and they are asked to complete an assessment test on the organisation's website.

4. Those candidates who succeed in passing the assessment would be automatically contacted by email to arrange an online interview. Those applicants that failed the assessment are sent letters of regret and are informed that their information would be stored on the organisation's database for future job vacancies. The online interview process may be carried out in different ways, such as a videoconference with a webcam or applicants may be asked to complete answers to interview questions in the form of a questionnaire.

5. Feedback reports for candidates are produced by the system and sent to them by email or via the organisation's website. The results of the assessments and online interviews are transmitted to the recruitment team.

6. Finally, the decision to appoint the successful candidate is made after both the hiring department and recruitment team have discussed the candidate. If this discussion raises any doubts, other recruitment methods may be adopted to address any uncertainty. 7. When the candidate is hired, their data is transferred automatically to the human resource information system (HRID), and the candidate becomes an employee.

Many organisations fail to adopt the wide range of Internet applications for erecruitment, such as interview, assessment and screening, and limit its adoption to placing advertisements for job vacancies on their website. E-recruitment offers reduced costs for organisations, and there is less chance the most highly qualified and experienced candidate will be lost to another organisation (Gurton, 2001). 28

2.8 E-recruitment Functions

Despite the limited perspective of some organisations of the functions of erecruitment, such as for advertising job vacancies, many organisations are increasingly adopting e-recruitment applications that help them achieve their goals for recruitment strategy effectively and efficiently. Faerber et al. (2003) argues that e-recruitment functions enable the process of recruitment to reflect the organisation's branding, and, as a result, the organisation controls its image as an employer and can adopt practices that can seek, attract, select and retain highly qualified employees. The consequence of this strategy is that the organisation achieves its goals and strategic planning (Employerofchoice.com, 2010) ;( Faerber et al., 2003).

Gulf Talent is an recruitment website for the Middle East and Gulf region which describes how automated system applications are used for screening applicants, filtering CVs by automatically matching these against job description criteria, and how such specialised recruitment websites can provide the administration and logistics for organisations' recruitment processes (GulfTalent.com, 2009).

Sophisticated tools for attracting, tracking and selecting applicants for job vacancies may be achieved by e-recruitment, such as the use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) adopted by the Nike Company. This technology filters applicants for job vacancies by telephone, then establishes a short list of candidates that are invited to participate in an online interview. This results in a further short list of qualified applicants that are invited for face-to-face interviews (Thornburg, 1998).

In order to discover why e-recruitment has been insufficiently adopted in Saudi Arabia, and why this has been implemented in such restricted ways, the following section will discuss e-assessment and online interview functions. The intention is to demonstrate the advantages these functions offer organisations, as well as identifying the concerns of organisations about how these may be implemented.

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2.9 E-Assessment tests

In recent years, large organisations have adopted assessment tests by using the Internet as part of their e-recruitment process, and this trend has established eassessment tests as a central element of the hiring procedure for many organisations. The advantage of online assessment tests is that the answers given by applicants and evaluated electronically, and candidates who do not meet the criteria established by the organisation are filtered out of the process (Taylor, 2005).

Nevertheless, using the Internet for assessment purposes is not a new concept as eassessment has been adopted for use by online education services for several years; however, its use for recruitment processes is much more recent (Ridgway et al., 2004).

The motivation for human resource managers to adopt e-assessment applications to enhance recruitment procedures relate closely to financial considerations, such as savings in costs, effort and time. However, a further motivating factor for adopting eassessment tools is that candidates are now demonstrating higher levels of qualification and experience, and such tools should enable the organisation to employ the best candidate for the job vacancy (Laumer et al., 2009).

Whilst the use of e-assessment for recruitment procedures is still at the early stages of adoption and diffusion, the motivating factors are demonstrating an increased number of organisations adopting this new technology. Moreover, Bartram (2006) explains that e-assessment tools enable the fast and effective matching of applicants' skills and knowledge to the specified criteria of the job description for the vacancy (Bartram, 2006); research into the motivation for companies in Germany to adopt eassessment for their recruitment procedures found the deciding factors were the reduction of costs and time (Laumer et al., 2009).

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This study into how the German companies in the sample used the Internet for assessing the abilities of candidates found some interesting tools for self-assessment tasks prior to applying for a job vacancy. The principle of an online self-assessment

task is a game where applicants perform tasks and receive feedback. This information is not stored by the organisation or used for future hiring decisions, but the intention is to encourage applicants to interact prior to applying for a job vacancy. The feedback given to the applications would indicate if the job vacancy would be suitable for them, and operates as a self-filtering process. Therefore, those candidates that received a negative feedback were unlikely to proceed with their application, but those receiving a positive feedback were more likely to proceed with their application. As a result, the organisation is likely to receive a higher quality of candidate that should save time in further filtering processes (Laumer et al., 2009).

This study also demonstrated that the perception of applicants regarding eassessment was positive, but the significant advantage of self-assessment and eassessment was the greater objectivity applied in creating short lists, as the reasons for rejecting candidates was based on the results of the e-assessment. Moreover, the German companies in this sample did not present any concerns regarding the adoption of e-assessment functions, but recognised the benefits of saving time and costs, accuracy of data and the likelihood of hiring the highest qualified candidates.

E-assessment also enables a wider perspective of recruitment, because the selection process is not limited to a specific geographic location. As a result, e-assessment applications enable organisations to attract a wider range and number of candidates for job vacancies, and assessment tests for candidates provide data that saves time and are cost effective. E-assessment enables organisations to ensure that candidates are able to fulfil the criteria of the job description, but also to determine whether they are likely to work well within departments and teams by adopting system applications for personality tests (Martindale, 2009).

Furthermore, e-assessments offer benefits for both the applicant as well as the organisation for the purposes of recruitment, as e-assessments enable candidates to 31

assess their own knowledge and expertise, and to recognise whether a particular job vacancy is suitable. Human resource teams in organisations adopt e-assessments to filter large numbers of candidates to a short list for interview that is faster and more efficient that traditional methods, as so reduces costs and time for recruitment processes (Jones and Fletcher, 2002).

In contrast to these advantages, critics of e-assessment have claimed that online tests do not have a time limit, so some candidates make take more time seeking answers to questions than others, but the e-assessment process would not identify this. Another criticism highlights the issue that an organisation does not know who is completing the e-assessment, as the applicant may ask someone else to complete the assessment task, and this also cannot be identified by the software. Finally, face-to-face feedback is not possible with e-assessment, but this is considered an important factor for the administration of tests generally (Taylor, 2005).

Martindale (2009) also raises concerns that e-assessment tests take place without the organisation knowing the emotional or health state of the candidate, so that if candidates were feeling unwell whilst undertaking the online test, they may be automatically rejected, but that they might also be highly qualified and experienced and would be a loss to the organisation. Another concern raised was the possibility of cheating in e-assessment, which might be due to someone else completing the assessment tests or the candidates providing answers they may assume the organisation want to hear. Nevertheless, the solutions to these disadvantages may be achieved by clearly stating on the assessment website that candidates will be tested again at the organisation's offices (Martindale, 2009).

Whilst cheating is possible with e-assessment tests, this factor has not reduced the interest in online testing for organisation's recruitment procedures. Companies that offer e-assessment for recruitment can design the tests in the form of a game, so that candidates are not aware that the application is being used for screening purposes for recruitment. As a result, candidates are likely to enjoy the interaction experience and be motivated to complete the tasks themselves, which reduces the element of

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cheating, or the candidates may be invited to complete the assessment tests in the organisation's offices (Taylor, 2005).

Some human resource managers are also reluctant to place an assessment test on the Internet, because of concerns that it might be viewed and adopted by competitors or

applicants may use its freedom of access to share with others who may help them complete the tests (Chapman and Webster, 2003).

To counter these possible weakness and concerns regarding security researchers have demonstrated that e-assessment tests enable large numbers of applicants to be dealt with on a twenty-four hour and seven days a week access. As a result, the application system is convenient and reduces the costs of the selection stage of recruitment (Hricko and Howell, 2006).

Whiteley (2002) argues that e-assessment tests need to be clear in their design, as applicants may have insufficient time to ask for details about the testing process or to complete this. Concern is also expressed about the opportunities for people with physical impairments, such as sight disabilities or applicants with little prior experience of using the Internet, and e-assessment needs to consider these groups when designing the tests. Further concerns highlight the digital divide, as many individuals lack equality of access to technology and the Internet compared to other applicants, and whether e-assessment tests should be restricted to a specific time limit (Whiteley, 2002).

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2.10 Online interview

The operating structures for most organisations have been directly affected by the rapid growth of the Internet in recent years, and recruitment procedures are increasingly adopting this technology to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. This has been demonstrated by replacing face-to-face interviews for job vacancies with online interview tools, as organisations recognise that its human resource team can view the recorded online interview several times to evaluate the applicant's performance or share this resource with the hiring department to help their decision in selection the best candidate.

The online interview enables organisations to interview candidates that may live a significant distance from their location, and also offers greater convenience to applicants; for instance, candidates who live in Dammam (Saudi city in eastern province), but are interested in a job vacancy in Jeddah (Saudi city in western province); In this case, the interview costs would include a flight ticket and other expenses for a trip that would be likely to last for at least one day. Nevertheless, when applicants live overseas, the cost of their expenses in attending a face-to-face interview would be considerably higher. To contrast this example with an online interview alternative, there would be no cost to the organisation and applicants would only be involved in about one hour of their time at their home location.

Online interviews may be carried out as a videoconference interview or may be operated as an online interview questionnaire, and researchers in the UK have found that human resource departments find the information they require for recruitment more effectively and efficiently by using online interviews. These are structured so that they help the hiring department make the best decision for appointing new staff, and usually take place after other e-recruitment methods, such as e-assessment. As a result of this new technology, online interviews reduce costs, time and effort, as well as reducing the potential for bias in interviews. Nevertheless, the researchers demonstrated that whilst online interviews offer many benefits to both the

34

organisation and applicants, they failed to meet the benefits of face-to-face interviews that are used traditionally (Dafoulas et al., 2002).

Online interviews have been justified by researchers, because they are shown to reduce time and effort for human resource departments, as well as filtering applicants to produce a short list of the highest qualified and experienced candidates. Therefore, the numbers of candidates invited for face-to-face interviews will be substantially reduced, and the organisation will make savings in recruitment costs. Furthermore, online interviews use questions that are predetermined, so potential bias is reduced and the selection process demonstrates greater consistency, and all candidates have equal opportunities (Dafoulas et al., 2002).

In contrast, human resource teams criticise online interviews, because they lack significant indicators of the interview process, such as body language and vocal tone, which are more readily identified with face-to-face interviews. Many professionals regard this as a weakness of online interview questionnaires that are adopted by many organisations (Dafoulas et al., 2002). Critics have also argued that candidates involved in online interview questionnaires are unable to pose their own questions to the organisation, and the process may be regarded as a one-way communication. Nevertheless, online interviews remove the manual process for interview for human resource departments, and enable job vacancies to be filled with appropriately qualified individuals more quickly than traditional methods. Moreover, candidates that may be unqualified for the vacancy are filtered out and the recruitment team can focus on making a selection from candidates that are qualified and experienced, which is more effective and efficient (Dafoulas et al., 2002).

Research in the USA has demonstrated the greatest motivating factor for the implementation of online interviews is significantly reduced costs. Cummings (1993) calculated the average costs for interviewing applicants on a face-to-face basis who do not live near an organisation was approximately $1700 per candidate. This estimated cost was based on a range of normal expenses that included meals, hotels and transport costs. This was compared to estimated costs of videoconference 35

interviews for around thirty minutes for each candidate to be in the region of $50 to $250 per candidate (Cummings, 1993). Although this research was undertaken almost twenty years ago, and the example costs for comparing online interviews with face-to-face interviews needs to allow to inflation in today's monetary values, the differences in costs remain valid for this research.

Videoconference technology has been shown to reduce recruitment costs, and was the motivating factor for Procter and Gamble to invest in this technology. Microsoft has also developed Internet software applications to enable candidates to be interviewed online, which is known as 'Live Meeting' (Chapman, 1999); (Fielding et al., 2008).

The successful implementation of online interviews for recruitment depends on a careful consideration of whether applicants are able to access and use this technology, and whether they feel comfortable in interacting with this process. Further considerations need to address applicants' computer skills, and the willingness for applicants to learn to use such new technology, such as online interviews.

2.11 E-Recruitment implementation

2.11.1 Factors and Motivators

The increasing trend for organisations to adopt e-recruitment across the world in recent years would have been unlikely unless these adopting organisations had carefully researched and compared the costs of investment with the projected savings in costs, time and effort. Nevertheless, Irani (2002) argues that the decision-making process as to whether to invest in e-recruitment and other technology is complex due to technical and social factors (Irani, 2002); Dafoulas et al. (2002) found that the most important decisions made by human resource managers were related to hiring new staff, and, as a result, seek solutions that reduce the time needed for this process, such as e-recruitment, which also maintains quality for recruitment overall (Dafoulas et al. ,2002); In general terms, the adoption of e-recruitment has enabled 36

organisations to achieve benefits of reduced recruitment costs by about 50% and to reduce the time spent on the process of recruitment overall by about 60% (Jobtrain.co.uk, 2010). These examples provide strong motivation for human resource managers to adopt e-recruitment, as they are able to justify its initial investment costs against the benefits of savings in costs and time, compared to the costs of traditional methods of recruitment.

In contrast, Horner-Long and Schoenberg (2002) find that the human resource manager's character is a strong determining factor that influences e-recruitment adoption and implementation, as those managers that demonstrate enthusiasm to adopt online solutions for their work. These managers are likely to demonstrate characteristics that are entrepreneurial, who are willing to take risks and are generally less conservative in their approaches to recruitment (Horner-Long and Schoenberg, 2002); In contrast, Agourram (2009) argues that the culture of Saudi Arabia has a direct impact on implementing information systems in the country, and that managers of Saudi organisations demonstrate reluctance to make decisions that may be perceived as risky and novel. Therefore, there is a tendency to maintain traditional methods and a reluctance to introduce elements of change, particularly related to new technology. Implementing information systems that require new technology is perceived to be a high risk in Saudi Arabia, the countries high level of bureaucracy give significant power and control to managers (Agourram, 2009).

As a result of these findings, the researcher justifies the validity of studying the relationship of human resource managers and the implementation of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia. In contrast to these negative findings, Atiyyah (1989) found that Saudi managers perceived computers to present an image that was modern and demonstrated progress for the organisation in his study of the effectiveness of information systems in the country (Horner-Long and Schoenberg, 2002); (Atiyyah, 1989). Nevertheless, two motivators for implementing e-recruitment for organisations are demonstrated from research, which are moving toward the concept of e-corporation and the need to speed up recruitment processes (Dafoulas et al., 2002). 37

In a survey of fifty companies in the UK in 2003 regarding the factors that had influenced the adoption of e-recruitment solutions, resulted in the following reasons: Raising the image of the company, Reducing the expenses of recruitment, Reducing administration levels, and Using new technology to improve and speed up the process of recruitment (Kerrin and Kettley, 2003). As well as these motivating factors, the international job market now demonstrates increased competition, as organisations are seeking the best qualified and experienced candidates for job vacancies that extend beyond national borders, particularly when there are shortages in specific fields, such as engineering and IT (Laabs, 1998). Before the introduction of e-recruitment, organisations were unable to gain access to international candidates with the highest qualifications due to high costs, but e-recruitment enables candidates from any country in the world that have access to the Internet to apply for job vacancies, which increases the number of applicants and the quality of expertise and experience of candidates at significantly reduced costs and shorter timescales. In addition, e-recruitment enables organisations to efficiently and automatically filter unqualified applicants who do not meet the requirements of the job description (Naukrihub, 2007).

Other advantages for organisations in encouraging human resource managers to adopt e-recruitment solutions were presented by the CIPD Institute. These are: E-recruitment enables companies to enhance their operating structures by using information technology solutions, E-recruitment attracts candidates from across the world with twenty-four hour Internet access, Advertising costs are reduced, such as with newspapers, as job vacancies may be advertised on the company's website at no cost, and E-recruitment enables organisations to handle large numbers of applications in a consistent format, which provides considerable advantages over the 38

traditional methods that would find such numbers to be time-consuming and complex for filing, tracking, screening and retrieval (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2009);

Furthermore, E-recruitment raises the brand image of the organisation, and, as a result, is more likely to attract more candidates. Another advantage for organisations and applicants is that e-recruitment applications improves the management of information, particularly in producing reports automatically to help human resource managers make decisions about hiring. Also, e-recruitment offers tools for interactive assessments and online test, so there is no need for assessment centres (WCN.co.uk, 2010).

Applicants' attitudes are also affected positively by the usability and speed of online recruitment (Cober et al., 2003). Whereas Turban (2001) argues that the factors of applicants' attitudes are determined by the job vacancy or the company image, and these remain of critical importance. Nevertheless, other research has shown that an organisation's recruitment system's usability and speed of completing an application is a significant factor in attracting candidates to apply for job vacancies (Lievens et al., 2002); (Turban,2001).

Furthermore, candidates that are considering applying for a job vacancy are significantly influenced by the level of information provided about the job and organisation, and this level of information provision determines candidates values and expectations of working for the organisation throughout the e-recruitment process (Derous et al., 2004).

Another determining factor of whether candidates apply for a job vacancy is their perception of fairness throughout the recruitment process, and this is particularly important at the early stage of the recruitment cycle, particularly with regard to the process for selection. When this is clearly explained on the organisation's website or recruitment agency's website, candidates will understand what criteria or standards are used to determine the selection process (Lievens et al., 2003).

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Most organisations adopt and implement e-recruitment for different reasons, but research has shown that companies identify costs within specific categories for its effective implementation. These included training, change management costs, time costs for human resource and IT employees, redesigning processes of organisation, selecting vendors, maintenance, user acceptance testing and security. The research also found that companies that participated in the study identified additional expense due to extended working hours for employees to implement their e-recruitment systems. Examples of investment costs ranged from $3M for comprehensive technology investments to $100,000 for standard software systems available commercially (Chapman and Webster, 2003).

The researcher found no studies that have been undertaken on the implementation of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia, however other studies have been undertaken in the country regarding the adoption of information technology, and these demonstrate similarities with adoption of e-recruitment. These include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, the adoption of the Internet for e-commerce and the adoption of electronic newspapers and these might help to identify factors that may also be related to the adoption of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia (Parry and Wilson, 2009). The researcher identifies the common factor for these studies, as well as for the adoption of e-recruitment, is the reluctance to accept and use new technology in the country. Nevertheless, Parry and Wilson (2009) studied factors that influence the adoption of e-recruitment, and suggested a diffusion of innovations theory, which might help organisations that are unfamiliar with the concept of e-recruitment to accept new technology, which was developed in 1962 by Everett Rogers.

This theory is based on five factors that affect the acceptance of any new ideas, and are described as: Relative advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Observability and Trial ability. However, in this study on e-recruitment, observability and trial ability are not relevant.

1. Relative advantage determines the level of perception by managers of erecruitment over traditional methods of recruitment, such as a raised brand image

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for the organisation and lower costs, and a longer-term replacement of traditional recruitment methods.

2. Compatibility measures the level of consistency that e-recruitment systems would have with systems or methods that already exist.

3. Complexity measures the level of difficulty in understanding and use of erecruitment systems and applications when compared to traditional methods (Parry and Wilson, 2009).

Tornatzky and Klein (1982) describe the factors of compatibility and relative advantage as positive influences for adoption, but complexity is described as a negative influence. (Tornatzky and Klein ,1982)

Davis (1989) proposed a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) that demonstrates similarities to the diffusion of innovations theory, and he proposed two factors that influence the acceptance of technology, which are: Usefulness and Ease of use.

1. Usefulness: the level of belief that an individual demonstrates with regard to implementing a new system that will significantly help their job performance.

2. Ease of use: the level of belief that an individual demonstrates with regard to implementing a new system that will significantly reduce physical and mental effort.

Both the technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovations theory provide useful determining influences for accepting and using new technology and information systems (Davis, 1989).

Research in the USA regarding the reasons human resource managers adopted new technology for recruitment and selection procedures for their organisations demonstrated the following factors: Efficiency (44.8%), Enabling New Assessment 41

Tools (41.1%), Reduced Costs (31%), Standardised Systems (27.6%), Expanded Applicant Pool (24.1%), Promotion of organisation's brand (15.5%), and Increased convenience for applicants (15.5%) (Chapman and Webster, 2003).

Research into factors that influence the adoption of information systems in Saudi Arabia described the importance of costs of investment, as well as cost savings after implementation, the support of top managers and time for staff to be trained and supported, as well as time for staff to install the new technology (Straub et al., 2000).

Nevertheless, when human resource managers are motivated to implement erecruitment, the organisation needs to consider the perception of potential candidates to this technology. However, research into attitudes of applicants towards to erecruitment is shown to be generally positive (Salgado and Moscoso, 2003); (Zusman and Landis, 2002). In a study of the perceptions of applicants of erecruitment in the UK, Netherlands and Belgium, the findings determined five factors that had a direct influence on their attitudes, which were Internet recruitment efficiency, user-friendliness, information provision, fairness perceptions, and Internet selection image (Sylva and Mol, 2009). Nevertheless, research into perceptions of applications to e-recruitment need to identify that each applicant will be different, in that they are likely to have different levels of computer skills, different opportunities to access the Internet and different characteristics that may determine their willingness to be open to new experiences (Anderson, 2003); (Williamson et al., 2003).

2.11.2 Evaluation of implementation Following implementation of e-recruitment systems, human resource managers need to justify its initial capital investment by the organisation by evaluating its success, such as attracting the highest qualified candidates, filtering applicants' suitability automatically and matching their skills to the job description or selection criteria (Smith and Rupp, 2004).

A survey of organisations in the USA investigated how e-recruitment systems were evaluated, and the findings described responses based on the percentage of new 42

employees that were retained, as well as satisfaction feedback from department heads with new employees to human resource managers. Some human resource managers evaluated their e-recruitment systems based on the feedback from candidates and analysis of traffic on the organisation's website. This research also identified the need to evaluate implementation costs for e-recruitment (Kim and O'Connor, 2009).

2.11.3 Obstacles and Challenges This study of factors that influence the adoption of e-recruitment has described advantages, as well as obstacles and challenges, for organisations, and human resource departments in particular, to recruit new employees through new technology. In a study of the adoption of information systems in Saudi Arabia, two significant challenges were identified that Saudi organisations need to address. These related to the importance of implementing information systems effectively, and the requirement to evaluate and assess the success of the new information system (Agourram, 2009).

Despite studies that describe the perception of human resource managers that information systems are central to an organisation's success, very large investments of money have been allocated to implement information systems, but these systems have a tendency to demonstrate inefficiency on a regular basis, or may even fail (Garg and Lather, 2008).

As a result of the trend for information systems to demonstrate significant weaknesses or even failure may have a negative impact on intentions to adopt erecruitment in Saudi Arabia, and human resource managers may use these concerns are reasons for hesitation in changing from a traditional method of recruitment to erecruitment. Ramirez et al. (2007) argue that the decision to implement e-recruitment for an organisation relies too much on the decisions of human resource managers, and organisations need to analyse the effects of decisions made by individuals that may not be in the best interests of the organisation goals and strategy. (Ramirez et al., 2007)

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In contrast to these findings, the reasons why organisations have been slow to adopt and implement e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia may be due to a reluctance of change. Studies have recognised many factors that have an impact on whether an organisation adopts e-recruitment and include, insufficient financial funds, and change management issues that present difficulties for human resource managers in implementing such systems. The findings also noted that implementation was less effective when there were insufficient training opportunities for the recruitment team, and that resistance to change from traditional methods was a common feature in most organisations, including human resource departments. Other reasons for reluctance to adopt e-recruitment include perceived technical difficulties of integrating the traditional systems already established, and that potential candidates who live in rural areas that have limited access to the Internet may be unable to apply for job vacancies, as well as security concerns. However, the research formed an important conclusion, which was that e-recruitment website design must present positive advantages that would appeal to both applicants and human resource managers, if the implementation of e-recruitment is to be successful and to justify its significant investment (Kim and O'Connor, 2009). Koh (2009) describes factors that have a direct impact on whether information systems are implemented successfully in organisations that are: Skills of project leaders, Support from vendors, and Implementation approach (big-bang or parallel stage).

Moreover, Professor Koh recommends organisation to persuade employees to accept new systems and encourage them to improve their skills in using the new system, which will lead to its successful implementation (Koh, 2009).

The review of literature describes user acceptance as a significant factor that influences the adoption of new information systems, which is supported by Davis (1989) who argues that reluctance of users to accept new information systems has a significant impact on its success (Davis,1989). Al-Sharq Aawsat Newspaper (2004) studied the adoption of e-recruitment in the Middle East and found that its use for hiring new staff increased significantly between 1999 - 2004 at a rate of 150%, 44

however the study also found that cultural factors have a negative impact on the acceptance of e-recruitment in this region, which reduces the potential of attracting qualified candidates. One example of this reluctance to use e-recruitment is demonstrated for women in Arab Gulf countries who are encouraged not to send personal information via the Internet when applying for a job, due to cultural customs and traditions of the region. In recent years, this reluctance of women to use the Internet has reduced, particularly for women in cities and large town, but traditions appear to have changed little in rural areas in this region. The perception of participants in this study demonstrated reluctance to use e-recruitment, as they saw no benefits for themselves, and also regarded the process as unfair, as not all candidates have access to the Internet. Concerns were also raised about privacy issues when using e-recruitment and many organisations failed to advertise current vacancies on their websites. The overall conclusion of this study was that applicants consider organisations are not seriously interested in the concept of e-recruitment (Al-Sharq Aawsat Newspaper, 2004).

A study was recently carried out by the Saudi Ministry of Civil Services to evaluate their experience of e-recruitment, and the findings identified the main weakness was that candidates who applied for job vacancies were unfamiliar with the new online processes and showed insufficient skills in using the systems. The study found that applicants preferred to use the traditional systems that they understood better, which demonstrates the reluctance to accept e-recruitment for both organisations and applicants (Alyaum Newspaper, 2010). In contrast to these negative factors, research has also found that e-recruitment implementation has been unsuccessful when Internet connection is limited (Feldman and Klaas , 2002). This obstacle was also identified in another study on factors that affect the implementation of e-recruitment, along with other factors that are: Limited access to the Internet for many candidates, Cultural approaches to recruitment adopted by organisations, The lack of knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment concepts by human resource departments, and, 45

 Absent of support and commitment from top management (Kerrin & Kettley ,2003) Furthermore, Hopkins and Markham (2003) disagree that technology issues are a factor that impedes the adoption of e-recruitment, as the main obstacle is organisational issues, and therefore the solution to implementing e-recruitment effectively is to change the behaviour of the organisation's employees, however in a study on the adoption of computer technology in Saudi Arabia, Algahtani (2003) explains the slow adoption of information technology in the country to be a result of language barriers, social factors and politics, as well as the poor infrastructure for Internet access and the relatively high cost of computer equipment. The study concluded that these problems were similar to other developing countries, but were not factors in developed countries, and suggested the success factors for the adoption of computer technology related to individual, organisational and technical issues (Hopkins and Markham, 2003) ; (Algahtani,2003). However, e-recruitment has been described as removing physical interaction between people in the recruitment process and that the influence of human resource departments is also removed when e-recruitment is used for all stages of recruitment. Therefore, the core function of human resource departments is changed negatively (Smith and Rupp, 2004). To support these criticisms, Naukrihub (2007) argues that human resource managers are concerned about several consequences of erecruitment, such as the loss of the human touch, cheating and too great a reliance on Internet applications instead of interaction between people.

The research also found cultural traditions had a significant impact on the perception of e-recruitment, as Indian companies and applicants stated a preference for human interaction in the recruitment process, rather than online interaction (Naukrihub, 2007). In a further study of e-recruitment, human resource staff complained that the system generated very large numbers of applicants that were unqualified for specific job vacancies, and that some candidates applied for vacancies that lived outside the country, which they considered to be a disadvantage. One of the participants of this study explained that their organisation normally received around 5000 job 46

applications each week via their website. Another participant reported around 40,000 applications over a four-month period, and as a result of such numbers of potential candidates, the time and effort to filter these to create a short list is seen as significant (Chapman and Webster, 2003).

Research has also investigated the relationship between e-recruitment and employee turnover, and study reported that 35% of employees hired through e-recruitment changed their jobs more than three times over a five year period. This increased level of employee turnover creates additional costs for the organisations concerned (Wuttke, 2008). The following section will describe two issues regarding e-recruitment that have been highlighted by the literature, and these are discrimination and e-privacy issues.

2.11.3.1 E-recruitment and discrimination

Those that support the implementation of e-recruitment have argued that its adoption can reduce bias in recruitment processes for specific groups of candidates, related to gender, race and age (Graves and Powell, 1995); (Tindale and Spring, 1994). Nevertheless, Steinkuehler (2004) agrees that online solutions do present a potential for solving recruitment problems, but that such solutions do also present drawbacks and obstacles. E-recruitment has also been regarded a source of discrimination against specific groups of candidates, whose opportunities to find employment successful may be limited by such technology (Steinkuehler, 2004). The reasons for this argument are based on the premise that most applicants that use e-recruitment are younger people; so older people may be disadvantaged. Also, more men use erecruitment websites than women; so women may be disadvantaged (Society for Human Resource Management, 2010).

These concerns regarding discrimination were identified in a study that considered the barriers and obstacles presented by e-recruitment processes. The study concluded that over 1.3 million disabled people in the UK of working age had faced exclusion as websites or recruitment systems because they were found to be inaccessible for them. The study also predicted that e-recruitment's inaccessibility for disabled people 47

was a weakness that affects such people across the world, with 5.9 million in Europe, 7.4 million in the USA and 91.5 million across the whole world (Employer's Forum on Disability, 2004).

Furthermore, older workers are increasingly concerned that they are excluded from finding employment as they lack experience and confidence in Internet technology, and experience difficulties in using e-recruitment websites. Candidates have also claimed that some e-recruitment websites use limited key words when searching applications and CVs (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2009).

Kim and O'Connor (2009) support these findings and explain that the intentions of organisations to promote diversity may be limited by e-recruitment systems, as applicants with low incomes are likely to be excluded, as they are less likely to own computers or have Internet access. The findings also identified problems of exclusion for people with disabilities when applying for job vacancies when using erecruitment websites (Kim and O'Connor, 2009).

48

2.11.3.2 E-Privacy and Trust in E-Recruitment E-recruitment has become a successful recruitment application in many countries across the world, but research has demonstrated that significant numbers of applicants are reluctant to enter personal data onto e-recruitment websites, because of data security and privacy. E-privacy is a critical element for e-recruitment website to ensure, so that trust may be established for online applications. Nickel and Schaumburg (2004) describe e-privacy as a significant element that is needed to establish trust for applicants when applying for job vacancies online. They propose three dimensions that have a direct impact on privacy for e-recruitment, and these are: openness, control and data security.

1. Openness requires e-recruitment websites to be transparent, explain how the data will be collected and why it is needed and the privacy policy should be clearly accessible from an icon.

2. Control enables applicants to make changes to their personal data, and should be informed if the website's privacy policy is modified.

3. Data security ensures security technology is applied to all data provided by applicants when transferred (Nickel and Schaumburg, 2004).

E-government adoption and diffusion in developing countries and the challenges that it faces provides a useful comparative study to reluctance to adopt e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia. Ndou (2004) describes the challenges and opportunities of implementing e-government in developing countries and identifies seven challenges that face its adoption, which are ICT infrastructure, policy issues, training for users, change management, strategy and the support of senior managers. These challenges for e-government are similar to those discussed in the study for e-recruitment, and may help predict which factors are the most significant for e-recruitment implementation (Ndou, 2004). 49

Despite the lack of literature that specifically addresses e-recruitment implementation and use in Saudi Arabia, the researcher has successfully identified e-recruitment literature from other countries across the world to attempt to illustrate the factors that affect the implementation of e-recruitment, which might explain its slow adopt in Saudi Arabia. The research findings from comprehensive review of literature will enable the researcher to design a questionnaire for human resource professionals to obtain their views on the implementation of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia. The intention of the questionnaire is also to learn more about the factors, issues and challenges that have left Saudi Arabia fall behind other countries in the increasing trend for greater use of e-recruitment solutions across the world.

The following hypotheses were derived from the literature will be examined in discussion chapter; Hypothesis (1) Age factor has an effect on the adoption of the e-recruitment concept. Hypothesis (2) Educational level has an influence on the adoption of the erecruitment concept. Hypothesis (3) the cheating issue is considered as the main obstacle that hinder Saudi companies in implementing online assessment. Hypothesis (4) Low information obtained during the online interview is considered as the main reasons to explain the uncommon adoption of online interview in Saudi Arabia.

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3 Methodology
This chapter will discuss the methodology that was used during the research in detail, and will include the following sections: Research strategy and approach, Negotiating access, Questionnaire, Data collection, Data analysis, Research ethics and Schedule.

3.1 Research strategy and approach

The researcher used quantitative methodology to achieve the research objectives that were described at the beginning of the research; moreover, Daniel Muijs (2004) defines quantitative methodology as "explaining phenomenon by collecting numerical data that is analyzed using mathematically based methods" (Muijs, 2004). Therefore, the methodology involved the collection of numerical data to clarify, explain and support the findings for this research topic, and according to Mills et al. (2000), quantitative methodology uses the statistical results from the questionnaire to analyse the data (Mills et al. ,2000). Therefore, quantitative methodology was chosen as its measurements are valid and reliable, also it enables the researcher to forecast cause and effect that is obvious and understandable (Cassell and Symon, 1994). As a result, the researcher distributed questionnaires to a large sample of Saudi human resource professionals to obtain their views to help answer the research questions. Moreover, quantitative methodology enhances the generalization of the results of research findings, and it is suitable for the current research, because the researcher aims to generalize the outcomes of the research to e-recruitment situation in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, quantitative methodology provides better accuracy of results and objectivity for the research, whereby the researcher, who was distanced from participants by adopting a self-completion questionnaire, avoided personal bias.

Supporting this view, Kruger (2003) explains that quantitative methodology allows the researcher to summarise large amount of information and enable comparisons across categories and over time (learnhigher.ac.uk, 2008) ; (Kruger, 2003).

51

Nevertheless, some scholars argue that quantitative methodology results are limited, as it provides numerical descriptions, but lacks narrative detail and overall fails to produce elaborate accounts of human perception. As a result, the researcher added some open-ended questions to the questionnaire, in order to learn participants' perceptions with greater detail regarding different aspects of e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, some scholars have also argued that questionnaires that are developed by using pre-determined questions might lead to structural bias and false representation, so that the data gathered may reflect the researcher's views, rather than the views of the participants relating to the subject. Therefore, the researcher designed the questionnaire for the research after reviewing literature on the subject of questionnaire design, and used this knowledge to include various aspects of this topic (learnhigher.ac.uk, 2008). The quantitative methodology that was used has followed the following process:

Theories from literature review

Hypotheses based on literature review

Research design

Select research location

Deicide research topic and respondents

Administer research methodology and data collection

Analysis data

Writing up findings and conclusion

Figure 3.1- Quantitative methodology process

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Moreover, a deductive reasoning approach was used in this research, as the research was formed from a literature review to understand the background of the subject and then followed a path to reach the specific required results. Therefore, the researcher began by considering theories proposed by the literature on this subject, and subsequently, these were narrowed to more specific hypotheses that could be tested. After the data was gathered, the researcher was able to further narrow the research approach, so that the data could be used to test the hypotheses with appropriate data to prove or disprove the original theories.

3.2 Negotiating access

This research was designed to observe opinions and views of human resource professionals in Saudi Arabia and the researcher was working in the human resources field in Saudi Arabia; therefore, the researcher has good connections with many human resource professionals in Saudi companies. Moreover, the researcher contacted these to explain about the current research and its objectives to encourage them to participate. In addition, this research is sponsored by oilwell7.com, which is the first website that aims to organise the Saudi job market and to encourage the recruitment processes to become more transparent. This sponsorship provided effective support to the researcher in gathering the data for the research, and through this help the researcher was able to contact many HR professionals in order to complete the questionnaire.

The questionnaire was designed in an online format by using an online survey service provider, which was adopted by the researcher and the sponsor website to send e-mail invitations to around 450 human resource professionals to encourage them to participate in the questionnaire survey. In addition, the researcher used different approaches to reach larger numbers of human resources professionals in Saudi Arabia through using social networking websites, such as facebook and linkedin.com. Furthermore, the online questionnaire link was posted on several human resource Internet forums and groups. 53

3.3 Questionnaire
3.3.1 Questionnaire tool

The questionnaire helps to answer research questions and meet the objectives of the research, by collecting quantitative data. Moreover, in this study, an online questionnaire was adopted and is described as a quantitative online research process, as the questionnaire is self-administered and allows the respondents to complete the questionnaire themselves (Kultar, 2007).

The online questionnaire is a useful tool as the researcher lives in the United Kingdom and needs to contact human resources professionals in Saudi Arabia, which does not enable personal contact. Therefore, the online tool was very useful as it enabled them to complete the questionnaire in their free time. The researcher used the online survey creator, and participants were given 2 weeks to complete the questionnaire.

Advantages of the self-completion questionnaire may be described as follows: Compared to the interview method, questionnaires are faster and cheaper to administer, Self-completion questionnaires are not subject to distortion, such as in interviews when questions are asked in different ways or in a different order. Respondents have greater convenience as they may complete the questionnaire when they wish, and have time to consider their responses before completion, and The respondents are not subject to any possible influence or bias.

Nevertheless, self-completion questionnaires do present some weaknesses; for example, no one is able to help respondents if they experience difficulty in answering certain questions or who may require further elaboration or explanation of questions. To respond to this potential weakness, the researcher included his contact details 54

with the questionnaire invitation, so that participants could raise any questions or comments if they wished.

3.3.2

Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire included different types of questions, such as dichotomous questions (yes/no) and these were used when the researcher was seeking a lead question; also, the researcher used multiple-choice questions when the questions might have more than one possible answer.

Moreover, the researcher adopted the Likert scale, which was developed by Rensis Likert in 1932, as the scale attempts to assess respondents' agreement/disagreement on a five-point scale. In this questionnaire, the respondents had to give their perception on groups of statements such as: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. In addition, the researcher included open-ended questions to capture a wider perception of respondents' views (Kultar, 2007).

According to Kultar (2007), the order of questionnaire questions plays a significant role when designing the questionnaire; as a result, the researcher designed the questionnaire that started with general questions, and then proceeded towards more detailed questions (Kultar, 2007).

The questionnaire contained 22 questions, whereby: The questions* from 1-7 were designed to gather demographic information about the human resources professionals.

55 __________________________________________________________________
* For the questions details, check the questionnaire copy which is attached in appendixes.

 Question#8* provided answers to help identify the recruitment methods that are used by human resources professionals in Saudi companies, and to discover the percentage of companies who use the Internet as recruitment sourcing. Question#9* was designed to explore the trend of human resources professionals towards the e-recruitment concept, and whether they were keen to implement e-recruitment principles in their companies or were against this. Question#10* aims to discover if there is a gap in knowledge among human resources professionals about what e-recruitment can offer. Question#11* used a matrix rating scale for a group of factors that may have an impact on e-recruitment implementation, as obstacles which have been extracted from the literature review. The researcher believes that the outcomes of this question will be very useful to answer the research question; whereas, in this question, human resources professionals give their views on these factors.

After that, the researcher designed some questions to delve further and deeper into the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia; whereby, the researcher has focused on two of the most contentious functions in e-recruitment, which are online interview and assessment. Questions* 12, 13 & 14, focused on the online interview concept and attempt to explore the human resources professionals' perception about the online interview in Saudi Arabia, and the factors that hinder its implementation in Saudi Arabia.

56 ___________________________________________________________________
* For the questions details, check the questionnaire copy which is attached in appendixes.

 Questions* 15, 16 & 17, concentrate on the online assessment concept and attempt to explore the human resources professionals perception about online assessment, and the factors that hinder its implementation in Saudi Arabia.

Questions* 18, 19 & 20 aim to discover the rate of accessing various job portal websites (Bayt.com, Gulftalent.com, Monstergulf.com and Naukrigulf.com) and whether these websites met the companies' requirements for recruitment functions. In addition, they aim to collect the views of the human resources professionals in Saudi Arabia and their recommendations for improving the services of these websites that were mentioned in the questionnaire. Question* 21 is designed as an open-ended question to give the participant an opportunity to mention any factors that have an impact on e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia, which were not already cover by the researcher's previous questions.

Finally, Question* 22 the researcher designed one text box for comments of participants, so that they could highlight any comments or issues related to the topic of the research.

57 ___________________________________________________________________
* For the questions details, check the questionnaire copy which is attached in appendixes.

3.3.3

Pilot Testing

To ensure that the research questions are answered and the objectives are met, the researcher carried out a pilot test survey to determine whether the questions were well constructed and understood by respondents. This pilot test took place during the last week of June 2010 by sending 10 questionnaires to a group of friends who work in the human resources field. Therefore, the original questionnaire was subjected to some changes and adjustments, based on the respondents' comments and recommendations.

According to Dr. Frederick Bennekom (2002), the main purpose of pilot testing for questionnaires is to identify any mistakes or questions that are unclear, which might affect the quality of the questionnaire. In this case, the researcher administered the test by distributing the questionnaire to a limited number of respondents. Moreover, Dr. Bennekom explains that respondents can make mistakes when completing the questionnaire that cannot be identified by researcher, as respondents may approach the questionnaire from different perspectives (Bennekom, 2002). Furthermore, by adopting pilot testing for the questionnaire, the researcher may also check that the order of the questions is suitable, and that they are likely to be understood by all respondents. As a result, the pilot test enabled the researcher to make appropriate changes to some questions, when some were added, modified or eliminated. In addition, the researcher made revisions to the questionnaire instructions to make sure they were clear and understandable to respondents. The pilot stage has several advantages described by Saunders (2007), as it gives an approximation of the time needed to complete the questionnaire, and ensure that all questions are clear and respondents are able to understand them (Saunders et al., 2007).

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3.3.4

Questionnaire Distribution and Data collection

After the questionnaire was designed, the researcher and sponsor website distributed the questionnaire via e-mail invitations to human resources professionals to complete the online survey. The research used a web-based/online questionnaire for data collection, and this enabled the researcher to collect data from different geographical locations in Saudi Arabia. The web-based questionnaire provided advantages for the researcher throughout in applying graphical power by using HTML programming language. Moreover, it has ability to contact a huge volume of respondents and the cost of collection is minimised by adopting a web-based questionnaire. The online survey design service offered by freeonlinesurveys.com gave the participants the ability to complete the questionnaire via the Internet, which offered greater convenience for them. Furthermore, the participants were more likely to respond faster when they receive the invitation email, which means that the responses may be collected more quickly. However, all personal information and responses were collected anonymously.

3.4 Data analysis

The type of analysis that was adopted was numerical estimation and statistical inference, and the questionnaire has pre-determined questions that were designed with both closed and open questions. These enabled the researcher to analyse the responses, and subsequently use the data to support the conclusions and recommendations of the dissertation. In order to deal with the quantitative data, the research used the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences- version 18) to analyse the data that has been gathered from the questionnaire, and the SPSS is widely used for this kind of analysis (Bryman, 2004). Furthermore, the researcher used the book by Andy Field (2005) called Discovering Statistics Using SPSS as a guide to use the SPSS software 59

step-by-step(Field,2005); in addition to, Alan Bryman and Duncan Cramer (2005) book called Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS 12. This software enabled the factors and obstacles of e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia to be examined. (Bryman and Cramer, 2005).

3.5 Research ethics

The researcher has taken into consideration a number of ethics principles and issues that may relate to the present research suggested by Saunders et al. (2007) and Bryman (2008). These include confidentiality of data submitted by the participants, as well as their privacy and anonymity, also the research approach attempted to avoid discomfort or embarrassment for those who chose to participate in the survey. Moreover, the researcher made it clear to potential participants that completion of the questionnaire was voluntary, and that they may withdraw from the survey at any time. The researcher also confirmed to the participants that confidential and personal data were not required (Saunders et al., 2007); (Bryman, 2008).

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3.6 Research Schedule

The researcher created a research schedule to contain the research within a clear time frame of the project, whereby the researcher detailed all the activities that would be carried out during the project's timescale.

According the research plan, the researcher and sponsor website aimed to distribute questionnaires to a large number of human resources professionals in Saudi Arabia by using e-questionnaires via an online questionnaire link by e-mail for human resources professionals to complete. As a result of using this technology to distribute the questionnaires, greater convenience was afforded to the participants and the researcher, as well as reduced costs by avoiding using paper copies, which is also better environmentally. The researcher allowed sufficient time to deal with any unforeseen problems that may arise, and the following schedule describes the research timescale.

Table 3.2 Research Schedule

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4 Research findings
The main aim of the current research is to discover what factors may hinder the full implementation of the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the research aims to examine a number of hypotheses regarding the e-recruitment implementation concept in Saudi Arabia, and these hypotheses will be examined in detail in the discussion chapter.

Overall, 450 email invitations that contained the online questionnaire link were sent to groups of human resources professionals from different career levels (staff, managers and executives) in Saudi Arabia; subsequently, 125 questionnaires were successfully collected, which represents a response rate of 27.77% (125 respondents out of 450 questionnaires had been collected). 107 respondents (85.6%) were male workers and 18 respondents (14.4%) were female workers as can been seen in Table 4.1.

Responses Male Female Total

Percentage

107 18
125

85.6% 14.4%
100%

Table 4.1 The Respondents by gender

In regard to the nationality of respondents, a total 104 respondents were Saudis (88 Male, 16 female) and 21 were non-Saudis (19 Male, 2 female). As can be seen in Figure 4.1, the age of the majority of the respondents (72.80%) was in the group of 25-34 years; in contrast, 24.80% of the respondents were aged above 35 years; which gives an indication that the workforce in the human resources field in Saudi Arabia is relatively young, with ages between 25-34 years.

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<25 25- 34 35- 44 >44

Figure 4.1 - Age Distribution

The educational level of the majority of the respondents was Bachelors degree (57.6%), (83.3% Saudi, 16.7% non-Saudi); Figure 4.2 shows that no PhD degree respondents completed the questionnaire, which may be due to the human resource community in Saudi Arabia having few employees who hold PhD degree. Moreover, sometimes PhD holders can be considered as over-qualified to join the human resources field, and may be more suitable for academic fields, rather than the commercial sector.

Figure 4.2 - Educational Level

The respondents who hold managerial roles were the majority with 55.77%; in contrast, the staff segment formed 31.73% of the total respondents. The executive group were 12.5% of

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the respondents, which may be due to the difficulty of access to executive managers and this group may not have enough time to participate in the questionnaire.

Figure 4.3 - Career Level

Table 4.2 shows that 34.4% of the respondents have working experience of between 3-5 years (76.7% Saudi, 23.3% Non-Saudi). Also, 28% of the respondents have working experience of more than 8 years (88.6% Saudi, 11.4% Non-Saudi).

Working Experience 0-2 years

Respondents

Nationality

Respondents

26

Saudi Non Saudi Saudi Non Saudi Saudi Non Saudi Saudi Non Saudi

23 3 33 10 17 4 31 4

3-5 years

43
6-8 years

21

Above 8 years

35

Table 4.2 - Working Experience

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Figure 4.3 shows that 92 of the respondents are working in large-sized company (250 employees); but only 13 respondents reported that they are working in a small-sized company. This may be due to small companies not having a separate department to deal with human resources issues, and often the owners of small companies undertake this role along with other management roles.

Figure 4.4 By Company size

Question 8 asked which recruitment channels recruiters used to announce their jobs vacancies and to generate a pool of candidates. The results show that 70.5% of recruiters use the company website to post their jobs and to find candidates for their jobs vacancies. In addition, they use other methods along with company websites such as: Newspapers advertisements Job portal websites Recruitment agencies and headhunters Career Fairs; and Walk-in candidates

Also, the respondents mentioned that they use other channels to announce their jobs vacancies and to generate pool of candidates, but with a lower percentage than the 65

channels that are mentioned above; whereas, 68 of the respondents mentioned that they used internal job posting in their companies and outsourcing was the final choice.

The respondents intended to transfer employees between company departments and employees' promotions to fill their jobs vacancies, and this might be related to the impact of the financial crisis, which led to cutting recruitment costs by using the current workforce to fill the vacant positions.

The respondents also have indicated that personal networking and social networking websites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook are used for sourcing candidates, and used career paths and succession planning for executive jobs. However, some respondents noted that they use high portfolio customers' referrals as candidates for hiring purpose.

Despite Saudi Arabia having limited adoption and implementation of e-recruitment, around 91.2% of the respondents supported the concept of implementing erecruitment solutions in their organizations. In contrast, only 8.8% claimed to be against this concept, and it may be because the companies of some respondents are only attracting low-level positions, such as drivers and clerks, who are not familiar with Internet technology, whilst other respondents noted that they had previously experienced e-recruitment implementation, which subsequently failed.

The answers to question# 10 show the perception of human resources professionals toward the e-recruitment solution in Saudi Arabia; whereas, the outcome shows that 41.6% of respondents believe that the e-recruitment concept applies to functions of posting jobs and receiving job applications, carrying out online assessment and conducting an online interview. Moreover, 29.8% believe that e-recruitment is only designed for posting jobs and receiving job applications; 17.4% believe that online assessment is the only function that e-recruitment provides; and 4.3% believe that the function of online interview is considered as e-recruitment's only function.

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However, 6.8% of the total of the respondents answered that none of the above functions are part of the e-recruitment concept; whereas they believe that erecruitment is designed to plan recruitment needs.

A number of questions were asked in order to go further to find out the perception of human resources professionals towards online interview and online assessment, and the reason for this is that these techniques are uncommon among the Saudi human resources environment.

It was found that 59.2% of the respondents support the implementation of the online interview concept; in contrast, 40.8% rejected the online interview concept.

Although, a high percentage of recruiters support the online interview concept, 76.8% of the recruiters reported that they had not used the online interview before, but 23.2% reported that they had used online interview before.

Furthermore, the respondents suggested the reason that this technique is uncommon is due to the following reasons: Low information obtained during the online

interview (27.3%), Low level of computer literacy among job applicants in Saudi Arabia (23%), Poor IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia (20.9%), and others (27.3%).

The respondents who did not select any of the above choices (9.1%) justified their reasons to relate to the Saudi society, which is a very conservative society, and traditions and habits are considered as obstacles that may hinder implementation of such concepts. In addition to the poor IT infrastructure of some companies, there are often insufficient training sessions to raise awareness of the online interview concept. Also, companies are perceived to be unready for such concepts, due to a lack of trained workers with appropriate technical abilities. Some respondents considered the issue relates to confronting traditional and modern mentalities. Regarding the online assessment implementation; 99 responses of respondents (79.2%) reported that they supported the implementation of the online assessment concept in Saudi Arabia; in contrast, 20.8% of the respondents rejected the online 67

assessment implementation concept, and they justified their reasons as being due to the following reasons: Applicants may have high skills and capabilities, but do not achieve good results from the assessment tests, and they question the accuracy of the tests' outcomes. Online assessment test need to be supervised, but this is impossible due to its nature. Some respondents support online assessment tests, but that these should take place at the company's premises. Cheating is a possibility. Poor IT infrastructure. Difficulty of verifying the identifying of the candidates during the tests.

Even although, 79.2% of the respondents support the implementing of the online assessment concept in Saudi Arabia, 60% of the respondents reported that they had not used the online assessment before. It should be pointed out that the mentality of people who support or reject any new concept, even before they experience this concept, can establish a perception regarding it. However, only 40% of the respondents noted that they had used the online assessment techniques before, either as a recruiter or as a job applicant.

The respondents were asked to indicate their perception of the reasons or factors that resulted in online assessment being uncommon in Saudi Arabia; and as can be seen in figure 4.5; 24.2% of the human resources professionals referred to the potential of cheating when conducting the online assessment; 17.5% referred to their concern about tests questions being able to be copied by competitors or shared among 68

applicants. However, 7.1% of the respondents referred to others reasons, which are mentioned as follows: Some senior and executive managers lack confidence in the feasibility of these tests. Most Saudi companies do not apply offline assessment tests as part of their recruitment process. There is a shortage of training opportunities for introducing the online assessment concept. Vendors of assessment tests do not market their products effectively. The eternal conflict between the traditional and modern mentality. Assessment tests do not reflect the real personality of the candidates.

15

Figure 4.5 - The reasons of why online assessment is uncommon in Saudi Arabia(K.S.A)

As can be seen below in figure 4.5, Job portal websites Bayt.com and Gulftalent.com have the majority of the interest of the recruiters. Bayt.com and Gulftalent.com are used regularly by recruiters with 51.29% and 47.37% respectively; on other hand, the recruiters also reported that they have never used Naukrigulf.com by 65.71%; also they evaluated their usage for Monstergulf.com between rarely and never by 54.29%.

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Figure 4.6 - Job portal websites usage in Saudi Arabia

The recruiters evaluated the job portals with regard to the extent their companies have benefited from these in terms of meeting their recruitment needs; and the results in Figure 4.6 show that none of these job portals were evaluated as excellent service; more than 9% judged the service to be satisfactory; with the exception of Bayt.com and Gulftalent.com that were considered to be above average, which form percentages of 23.68% and 20.00% respectively. In contrast, Monstergulf.com and Naukrigulf.com services were evaluated as extremely poor, at 57.58% and 75.00% respectively.

Figure 4.7 - Job portal websites service

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Question#11 asked the participants about their perceptions regarding various factors that have influenced e-recruitment implementation, based on previous studies in foreign countries. The researcher aimed to observe participants' perceptions of these factors to discover which factors have a negative influence on e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia.

The factor analysis was undertaken by the researcher to find out which factors that have an influence on e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia; the question was designed as a Likert scale, whereas the code was as follows (1= strongly agree, 2= agree, 3= neutral, 4= disagree and 5= strongly disagree) as shown in Table 4.3 in next page, Management style of HR Managers has most influence on e-recruitment adoption and implementation in Saudi Arabia; these factors are ordered based on their mean value, so start from the most influencing factor to least influencing factor.

However, some of these results will be used for further analysis to attempt to produce valued information that will help to answer the research questions and meet the research objectives.

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Descriptive Statistics Mea n Management style of HR Managers Employees resistance against organizations change Absence of top management support and commitment Receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications online Language Barrier The lack of knowledge and understanding of erecruitment concepts within human resource communities Insufficient training sessions for recruitment teams e-recruitment requires Reengineering for organizations processes Low Credibility of e-recruitment among applicants Inadequate financial fund Low candidates-acceptance Poor IT company infrastructure Low vendors support Applicants are not familiar with this tool Increases the discrimination against specific groups such as: disabled people and old people E-recruitment need over time working hours to implement it High cost of E-recruitment systems High cost of maintenance and upgrading Slow internet connection Staffs inequality of skills to deal with computers Online privacy issues E-recruitment systems are not Compatible with existing systems Online security risk Complexity of e-recruitment systems to staff, in terms of difficulty to understand and use it E-recruitment systems are not providing advantages on traditional recruitment methods 3.93 1.087 119 3.39 3.50 1.144 1.049 119 119 3.03 3.13 3.18 3.27 3.34 3.39 1.255 1.096 1.327 1.162 1.130 1.237 119 119 119 119 119 119 2.55 2.66 2.68 2.81 2.87 2.92 2.94 3.01 1.191 1.114 1.193 1.144 1.154 1.151 1.019 1.190 119 119 119 119 119 119 119 119 2.51 2.54 1.065 1.170 119 119 2.43 2.45 1.046 1.055 119 119 2.36 .963 119 2.32 1.089 119 2.05 2.26 Std. Deviation .862 1.012 Analysis N 119 119

Table 4.3 - Comparing influence of the factors based on the mean

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5 Discussion
This chapter will expose some of the research findings to further analysis to meet the objectives of research and answer the research questions; therefore, the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software was adopted to analyse the data that had been gathered via the questionnaire, and to evaluate the hypotheses that were derived from the literature, previously mentioned in the literature review.
Hypothesis (1) Age factor has an effect on the adoption of the e-recruitment concept.

The first hypothesis assumed that there is influence of age on the adoption of the erecruitment concept, and this hypothesis was examined by using the Chi-Square test; whereas, Table (5.1) shows that the Pearson Chi-Square Value is (30.243a) and ChiSquare Tests shows that there is significant difference (p=0 <.05) between the age of human resources workers and the adoption of the e-recruitment concept.

Chi-Square Tests Value Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 114 30.243a 8.893 .152 df 6 6 1 Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) .000 .180 .696

a. 9 cells (75.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .04.

Table 5.1 - Age factor and Adoption of the e-recruitment concept (Chi-Square Tests)

Therefore, the hypothesis has been confirmed, which supports the argument of Meyer (2008); (Twati, 2008) who argued that the age variable has an influence on the adoption of new technology. This result can be justified due to older workers

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being less likely and less qualified to use computer technology when compared to younger employees; therefore, younger employees are more likely to adopt new technologies, and younger generations are keen to change to new technology, more than older generations (Twati, 2008); (Meyer, 2008).
Hypothesis (2) Educational level has an influence on the adoption of the erecruitment concept.

The second hypothesis assumes that the educational level has an influence on the adoption of the e-recruitment concept, and to test this hypothesis, the ANOVA test was used. Table 5.2 indicates that there is no significant difference (p=.967 >.05) between the education level and adoption of the e-recruitment concept.

ANOVA Q9 Sum of Squares Between Groups Within Groups Total 1.006E10 1.955E12 1.965E12 df 4 108 112 Mean Square 2.514E9 1.810E10 F .139 Sig. .967

Table 5.2, Educational level factor and adoption of the e-recruitment concept (ANOVA Test)

Thus, the hypothesis was rejected, and the researcher has justified this by referring to the size sample of the current research, which was small (125 respondents), in contrast to the size of the sample of Jamal Twati's study, which was (317 respondents). Moreover, this might also be due to some top executive managers that are not enthusiastic in being involved in adopting information systems projects, due to their lack of technical background and skills. As a result, they are likely to avoid anything that is new and uncertain, despite their good educational level (Twati, 2008).

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 Hypothesis (3) the cheating issue is considered as the main obstacle that hinder Saudi companies in implementing online assessment.

The third hypothesis suggested that the issue of cheating is considered as the main obstacle that hinders Saudi companies implementing online assessment; therefore, a frequency test was used to evaluate this hypothesis. This is illustrated in Table 5.3 below, and we can surmise that the percentages and frequency of reasons resulting in online assessment being uncommon in Saudi Arabia may be based on these results, as they show that the issue of cheating has the highest frequency and percentage (Frequency 43, Percentage 32.1%) among other factor that influence on the online eassessment adoption.

Q17. Online assessment is uncommon in Saudi Arabia due to Cumulative Frequency Cheating issue Questions can be copied by competitors or shared among applicants. Low level of computer literacy among Job applicants Poor IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia Other Total 6 131 6.7 100.0 26 19.4 100.0 100.0 23 17.2 100.0 100.0 43 33 Percent 32.1 24.6 Valid Percent 100.0 100.0 Percent 100.0 100.0

Table 5.3 - The reasons of why online assessment is uncommon in Saudi Arabia

Thus, these results confirm the hypothesis that was proposed; and has supported the arguments of (Naukrihub, 2007); (Taylor, 2005), which concluded that the cheating issue is considered as the main obstacle that hinders companies in implementing online assessment. Although many organizations have demonstrated willingness to implement online assessment, they have hesitated due to their concerns regarding the possibility of cheating when conducting an e-assessment test. This may be explained 75

as organisations cannot know who is completing the e-assessment, as the applicant may ask someone else to complete the assessment task to provide answers they assume the organisation wants, but this also cannot be identified by the organisations. Furthermore, this criticism was supported by Naukrihub (2007) who argues that human resource managers are concerned about several consequences of e-recruitment, such as cheating in recruitment (Taylor, 2005); (Naukrihub, 2007). However, whilst cheating is possible with e-assessment tests, this factor has not reduced the interest in online testing for organisations recruitment procedures (Taylor, 2005).
Hypothesis (4) Low information obtained during the online interview is considered as the main reasons to explain the uncommon adoption of online interview in Saudi Arabia.

The fourth hypothesis assumed that low information obtained during the online interview is considered as the main reason that explains the uncommon adoption of online interview in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, a frequency test was used to assess this hypothesis, and results are illustrated in table 5.4 below. This shows that low information obtained during the online interview has the highest frequency and percentage (Frequency 47, Percentage 35.1%) among other factors that influence the online interview adoption.

Q14. Online interview is uncommon in Saudi Arabia due to Frequency Low information obtained during the online interview Low level of computer literacy among Job applicants Poor IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia Other Total 11 131 11.1 100.0 100.0 100.0 34 25.4 100.0 100.0 38 28.4 100.0 100.0 47 Percent 35.1 Valid Percent 100.0 Cumulative Percent 100.0

Table 5.4 - The reasons of why online interview is uncommon in Saudi Arabia

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Thus, this result confirms the hypothesis, and has supported the argument of Dafoulas et al. (2002) and Naukrihub (2007), as Dafoulas criticized online interviews despite the many benefits to both the organisation and applicants, because online interview failed to meet the benefits of face-to-face interviews, and this lack of information, such as body language and vocal tone normally noted in face-to-face interviews, fails to address the significant indicators of the interview process. Moreover, many professionals regard this as a weakness of online interview questionnaires that are adopted by many organisations (Dafoulas et al., 2002); furthermore, Naukrihub (2007) supports these criticisms and argues that human resource managers are concerned about several consequences of e-recruitment, such as the loss of the human touch, which may lead to a lack of information (Naukrihub, 2007).

However, the researcher identified various factors that were taken from the literature and these will be assessed and analysed by using a factors analysis test in SPSS software to discover if these factors have an influence on the adoption of the erecruitment concept, by grouping these factors based on their types such as managerial, technical, organisational, users obstacles, etc. Furthermore, grouping these factors will assist human resources managers to view these factors or obstacles more easily. The results of the factors analysis are shown in Table 5.5 and these compare factors based on the mean, whereas the management style of human resources managers factor (Mean=2.05) was the most influential factor on erecruitment adoption and implementation in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, all factors that have a mean less than or equal to 3 indicate that there is some influence. Therefore, these factors are ordered based on their mean value, starting from the most influencing factor to the least influencing factor.

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Descriptive Statistics Mean Management style of HR Managers Employees resistance against organizations change Absence of top management support and commitment Receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications online Language Barrier The lack of knowledge and understanding of erecruitment concepts within human resource communities Insufficient training sessions for recruitment teams e-recruitment requires Reengineering for organizations processes Low Credibility of e-recruitment among applicants Inadequate financial fund Low candidates-acceptance Poor IT company infrastructure Low vendors support Applicants are not familiar with this tool Increases the discrimination against specific groups such as: disabled people and old people E-recruitment need over time working hours to implement it High cost of E-recruitment systems High cost of maintenance and upgrading Slow internet connection Staffs inequality of skills to deal with computers Online privacy issues E-recruitment systems are not Compatible with existing systems Online security risk Complexity of e-recruitment systems to staff, in terms of difficulty to understand and use it E-recruitment systems are not providing advantages on traditional recruitment methods 3.93 1.087 119 3.39 3.50 1.144 1.049 119 119 3.03 3.13 3.18 3.27 3.34 3.39 1.255 1.096 1.327 1.162 1.130 1.237 119 119 119 119 119 119 2.55 2.66 2.68 2.81 2.87 2.92 2.94 3.01 1.191 1.114 1.193 1.144 1.154 1.151 1.019 1.190 119 119 119 119 119 119 119 119 2.51 2.54 1.065 1.170 119 119 2.43 2.45 1.046 1.055 119 119 2.36 .963 119 2.05 2.26 2.32 Std. Deviation .862 1.012 1.089 Analysis N 119 119 119

Table 5.5 - Comparing influence of the factors based on the mean

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The researcher went further in analysing the factors that are shown in the previous table by applying the rotated component matrix to illustrate factor loading, which is the correlation between factors and grouping these factors as show in table 5.6 below.
Rotated Component Matrix Component 1 Absence of top management support and commitment Insufficient training sessions for recruitment teams Employees resistance against organizations change E-recruitment needs overtime working hours to implement it e-recruitment requires reengineering for organizations' processes The lack of knowledge and understanding of erecruitment concepts within human resource communities Inadequate financial fund Online privacy issue Online security risk Slow Internet connection Poor IT company infrastructure Complexity of E-recruitment systems to staff, in terms of difficulty to understand and use it Staffs inequality of skills to deal with computers Language Barrier Applicants are not familiar with this tool High cost of e-recruitment .854 .458 .598 .560 .749 .762 .526 .814 .800 .548 .485 .542 .442 .544 .580 .680 .684 .804 2 3 4 5 6 7

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systems High cost of maintenance and upgrading E-recruitment systems are not compatible with existing systems E-recruitment systems are not providing advantages on traditional recruitment methods Increases the discrimination against specific groups such as: disabled people and old people Low vendors support Low candidates-acceptance Low credibility of erecruitment among applicants Receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications via online Management style of HR managers Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. a. Rotation converged in 8 iterations. Table 5.6 - Rotated Component Matrix .668 .690 .443 .525 .847 .771 .640 .757 .489 .416 .667

As can be seen in Table 5.6 above, the rotated component matrix has allocated the variables (factors) into 7 components, and under each of these components there are numbers of variables (factors). Component 1 seems to reflect organizational obstacles that face human resources division, as seen in table 5.6. Absence of top management support and commitment has the highest loading among other factors in component 1, and this result is in agreement with descriptive statistics whereas the mean was (2.32) and 66.4% of respondents believe that this factor has a high influence on e-recruitment adoption. Also, these results agree with findings of other researchers that have identified factors that influence adoption of information systems in Saudi Arabia, as they also highlighted the importance of the support of 80

top management (Straub et al., 2000). Moreover, insufficient commitment from top management was a factor that was also identified in another study with other factors (Kerrin and Kettley, 2003). There are also other factors that comprise component 1, as can be seen in table 5.7, such as employees resistance against organizations change factor.

Therefore, the reasons why organisations have been slow to adopt and implement erecruitment in Saudi Arabia may be due to a reluctance of change, although other studies have recognised many factors that have an impact on whether an organization adopts e-recruitment, including change management issues that present difficulties for human resource managers in implementing such systems (Kim and O'Connor, 2009).

Component 1 (Organizational Obstacles) Absence of top management support and commitment Insufficient training sessions for recruitment teams Employees resistance against organizations change E-recruitment need overtime working hours to implement it E-recruitment requires reengineering for organizations processes The lack of knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment concepts within human resource communities Inadequate financial fund

Table 5.7 - Component 1

Secondly, component 2 seems to reflect information technology obstacles, as can be seen in table 5.6, and online privacy issues and online security risk have the highest loading among other factors in component 2; although, these results are not in agreement with the mean value (3.34; 3.36) respectively, and 56.8% and 54.4% of respondents found these factors have no influence on e-recruitment. In contrast, research has demonstrated that significant numbers of applicants are reluctant to enter personal data onto e-recruitment systems, because of data security and privacy; whereas, e-privacy is a critical element for e-recruitment adoption (Nickel and Schaumburg, 2004). Furthermore, there appears to be a lack of awareness about 81

online privacy issues and online security within Saudi companies, which suggests that companies are not interested or concerned about online privacy issues and online security.
Component 2 (Information Technology obstacles) Online privacy issue Online security risk Slow internet connection

Table 5.8 - Component 2

Thirdly, component 3 consists of 4 variables, whereas, complexity of e-recruitment systems to staff and their inequality of skills to deal with computers have the highest loading among other factors in component 3. Moreover, this component also consists of other factors, as show in table 5.9 below.

Component 3 (Users ability and obsolesces) Complexity of E-recruitment systems to staff, in terms of difficulty to understand and use it Staffs inequality of skills to deal with computer Language Barrier Applicants are not familiar with this tool

Table 5.9 Component3

However, the remaining components have reflected different aspects, as component 4 seems to reflect systems cost and their compatibility with other systems within organizations, and component 5 reflects e-recruitment advantages and drawbacks, and these results support the implementation of e-recruitment, as it has been argued that its adoption can reduce bias in recruitment processes for specific groups of candidates, related to gender, race and age (Graves and Powell, 1995) ; (Spring et al., 1994). In addition, e-recruitment has also been regarded a source of discrimination against specific groups of candidates, such as those who are disabled and older people, whose opportunities to find employment successfully may be limited by such technology. 82

On other hand, component 6 seems to reflect the e-recruitment acceptance and credibility among applicants; whereas, a study carried out recently by the Saudi Ministry of Civil Services (2010) to evaluate their experience of e-recruitment, found the main obstacles were that candidates who applied for job vacancies were unfamiliar with the new online processes, and the study found that applicants preferred to use the traditional systems that they understood better, which illustrates reluctance to accept e-recruitment for both applicants and organisations (Alyaum Newspaper, 2010). Moreover, Al-Sharq Aawsat Newspaper (2004), in his study of

e-recruitment adoption in the Middle East, found that applicants consider organizations are not seriously interested in the concept of e-recruitment (Al-Sharq Aawsat Newspaper, 2004). Also, the review of literature describes user acceptance as an important factor that influences the adoption of new information systems, and this is supported by Davis (1989), who argues that reluctance of users to accept new information systems has a significant impact on its success (Davis, 1989).

In addition, component 7 seems to reflect e-recruitment adoption decision factors, as this component consists of management styles of human resources managers and receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications online, as can be seen in the table 5.10.

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Component 4 (systems cost and compatibility) High cost of e-recruitment systems High cost of maintenance and upgrading E-recruitment systems are not compatible with existing systems Component 5 (E-recruitment advantages and drawbacks) E-recruitment systems are not providing advantages on traditional recruitment methods Increase the discrimination against specific groups Low vendors support Component 6 (E-recruitment acceptance and credibility) Low candidates-acceptance Low credibility of e-recruitment among applicants Component 7 (E-recruitment adoption decision factors ) Receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications online Management style of HR managers

Table 5.10 - Component 4, 5, 6 and 7

However, in the next chapter, the researcher will attempt to provide human resources professionals with a set of recommendations and tips that might help to overcome these obstacles.

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6 Limitations and future research

There are some limitations that exist in this research. The major limitation was the time factor, due to limited time, the questionnaire's design, the stages of collecting data and subsequently analysing this data that was collected over a relatively short period of time. Interviews, as an effective approach in this research, was discarded due to geographic and time limitations. The sample of participants for this study was relatively small, as the research took place during the summer period, which is considered a vacation period for employees in Saudi Arabia. An ideal development would be to conduct a study with a larger group of participants. Moreover, such a sample could include applicants' points of views in an in-depth research to have a better understanding of obstacles that hinder e-recruitment solutions adoption among private and public Saudi sectors; therefore, an applicants' questionnaire is strongly recommended. However, in any future research, the above limitations should be taken into account.

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7 Recommendations
For future research into this subject, interviews techniques should be adopted, as well as an online questionnaire. Due to the time constraint, the researcher could not apply the interview technique, although this technique would have provided the researcher with more in-depth information and would have allowed an even deeper understanding of relationship between factors that have been mentioned in this study. Furthermore, including a larger size sample would also create greater opportunities for the study, and I recommend future research to be conducted on the influence of management styles of human resources on the adoption of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia, because this research has shown that the management style of human resources leaders is a significant factor that affects e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia; but this factor needs to be studied further to discover how this influences e-recruitment adoption, and how to overcome the negativity of management styles that many human resources leaders have adopted.

Moreover, the findings suggest that there is a need to raise awareness of erecruitment benefits to help organisations overcome their lack of knowledge and understanding of these concepts within human resource communities. Furthermore, raising awareness will help organisations to realise the benefits of this cost-effective solution to their long-term goals, and will in turn make the recruiters less stressed by automating their administrative duties to save their time and effort, which would free them to concentrate on more strategic activities. Also, companies need to ask erecruitment vendors to arrange awareness and training sessions regarding erecruitment concepts and functions for human recourses staff and mangers.

On other hand, one obstacle for implementing e-recruitment is receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications online, but this problem occurs as companies only use e-recruitment function for posting job vacancies and receiving job applications. This could be avoided by implementing full e-recruitment concepts, whereas I would recommend the function of filtering questions where questions 86

would be asked automatically to applicants to decide if they felt qualified to join to initial long list (initial qualified candidates list) or to automatically send regret letters to candidates via e-mail. Moreover, this technique would benefit companies and applicants; whereas the companies filter out the applicants to generate a pool of candidates that saves time and effort. In turn, applicants perceive that the company is serious about their e-recruitment process.

Change is an inevitable obstacle in any organization and employees' resistance to organisational change may be resolved by different methods, such as the most effective approach by managers, which is to use education and communication, as effective communication helps employees to understand logical reasons behind the change, particularly as resistance is due to poor communication or misinformation. Also, employees are reassured when they receive honest information that clarifies misunderstandings, which contributes to them accepting changes. In addition, by including employees in the decision-making processes of introducing changes, they are less likely to resist change, and are more likely to be committed to changes, as well as improving the quality of the decisions. Furthermore, opportunities for support and advice tend to reduce resistance to change, and training sessions could be provided by e-recruitment vendors, which should contribute to achieving this.

Regarding, the language barrier, this may be overcome by raising the criteria for hiring for job vacancies, so that applicants' need to be able to speak English, or provide an e-recruitment system with an Arabic interface. Nevertheless, this may not be possible with off-the-shelf systems or from international vendors. However, recruitment mangers should help potential applicants become more familiar with erecruitment techniques by including an educational video on the company's website to teach and explain how e-recruitment functions operate. Moreover, the low creditability of e-recruitment among applicants may be resolved by the company if they receive rapid feedback following each stage of the process, which should demonstrate to the applicants that the company is dealing with their applications professionally, and will also help to raise the image of the company. Finally, human resources managers need to ensure that specific groups of potential applicants, such

87

as older people and disabled people, are able to access the website easily, and this should reduce any possible discrimination against such applicants.

Nevertheless, a company's e-recruitment infrastructure needs to be sufficiently flexible so that it can integrate with its IT strategy, and this factor should be considered carefully by human resources managers, as well as all other factors that have been presented in this study, so that the implementation of e-recruitment functions efficiently and effectively, with few limiting factors.

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8 Conclusion
The aims of this research were to explore the factors that obstruct the full implementation of the e-recruitment concept in Saudi Arabia, and how obstacles to implementing e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia may be overcome. These aims have been satisfied; however the findings of this research show that the main obstacle that hinders e-recruitment adoption in Saudi Arabia is the management style of HR managers, because human resources manager's characteristics and their management style are strong determining factors that influence e-recruitment adoption and implementation. Furthermore, the findings of this research have highlighted various factors that have an influence on e-recruitment adoption, such as employees resistance to change, lack of support and commitment from senior managers, large numbers of unqualified applications received online, the barrier of language, and insufficient knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment concepts within human resource communities.

The objectives of this research have been met in answering the research questions, as the researcher has reviewed the literature of implementing e-recruitment solutions across the world in order to identify factors or theories; the literature was used as a framework and provided the basis for designing the questionnaire. The questionnaire was adopted to conduct a survey from a sample of Saudi human resource (HR) managers to discover what factors obstruct the full implementation of the erecruitment concept in Saudi Arabia. Based on these findings, the researcher has made recommendations on how to overcome these obstacles.

Hopefully, this research might suggest a direction for further studies and research on e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia, and which might include applicants' perceptions and views on e-recruitment, as well as those from human resources professionals.

Word count: 20,487

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10 Appendix
A. Questionnaire

Part A: This part inquires about demographic information. It is help us to classify the data the obtained. 1) Your gender: Male Female

2) Your age within the group: <25 25- 34 35- 44 >44

3) Your nationality: Saudi Other (Please Specify):

4) Your educational level: School certificate Diploma

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Bachelors degree Master PhD

5) Your career level in the human resources field: Staff Managerial Executive

6) You have been working in the human resources field for: 0-2 years 3-5 years 6-8 years >8 years

7) You are working in a: Small company Medium company Large company

Part B: 8) Channels you use to announce your job vaccines and to generate a pool of candidates are: Newspapers advertisements Walk-in candidates

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Company website Job portal websites Recruitment agencies and head-hunters Career Fairs Internal job posting Employee referrals (e.g. employees recommend external candidates for job vacant positions) Transfer employees between company departments. Employees promotions Outsource companies Other

9) Would you support the implementation of e-recruitment solutions in your organization? Yes No

10) I think full e-recruitment concepts offer: Function of posting jobs and receiving job applications only. Function of online assessment only (for example: psychometric, numerical and verbal tests) Function of online interview only (for example: video conference or interview questionnaire) All of above None of above (Please Specify):

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11) We would like to know your perception and views on the following factors that might have negatively influenced e-recruitment implementation in Saudi Arabia?
1 Strongly agree 2 Agree 3 Neutral 4 Disagree 5 Strongly disagree

Management style of HR managers High cost of e-recruitment systems E-recruitment systems are not compatible with existing systems E-recruitment systems are not providing advantages over traditional recruitment methods Complexity of e-recruitment systems to staff, in terms of difficulty to understand and use it Staffs inequality of skills to deal with computer Slow Internet connection Online security risk Online privacy issue Low candidates-acceptance Low credibility of e-recruitment among applicants High cost of maintenance and upgrading Low vendor support e-recruitment requires reengineering for organizations processes E-recruitment needs overtime working hours to implement it

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Absence of top management support and commitment Employees resistance against organizations change Inadequate financial fund Insufficient training sessions for recruitment teams Applicants are not familiar with this tool The lack of knowledge and understanding of e-recruitment concepts within human resource communities. Language Barrier; due to most e-recruitment systems interfaces having been designed in the English language, which is considered as an obstacle for other language speakers. Receiving huge numbers of unqualified applications via online. Increases the discrimination against specific groups, such as disabled people and old people Poor IT company infrastructure

12) Do you support the implementation of the online interview concept in Saudi Arabia? Yes No, please state the reasons

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13) Have you used the online interview method before, either as a recruiter or as a job applicant? No Yes, what is your perception about it?

14) I think online interview is uncommon in Saudi Arabia due to Low information obtained during the online interview (for example; if recruiters apply the online interview via questions send to candidates to answers it; as result, the recruiters will loss candidates body language and vocal tone) Low level of computer literacy among job applicants in Saudi Arabia. Poor IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia All of the above None of above. Please state your opinion.

15) Do you support the implementation of the online assessment concept in Saudi Arabia? Yes No, please state the reasons:

16) Did you use online assessment methods before, either as a recruiter or as a job applicant? No Yes, what is your perception about it?

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17) I think online assessment is uncommon in Saudi Arabia due to Cheating issues; whereas, recruiters are unable to know who is completing the test. Human resources professionals concern about probability of assessment as questions can be copied by competitors or shared among applicants. Low level of computer literacy among job applicants in Saudi Arabia. Poor of IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia All of above None of above. Please state your opinion:

18) How often you use the following Job portal websites?
1 Always 2 Frequently 3 Sometimes 4 Rarely 5 Never

Bayt.com Gulftalent.com Monstergulf.com Naukrigulf.com

19) To what extent has your company benefited from these job portals to meet its recruitment needs?
1 Excellent 2 Above Average 3 Average 4 Below 5 Extremely Average Poor

Bayt.com Gulftalent.com Monstergulf.com Naukrigulf.com

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20) What is your evaluation of the following job portal websites and what are your recommendations to improve their services in the future?
Bayt.com Gulftalent.com Monstergulf.com Naukrigulf.com

21) Do you think there are others factors that have influenced the adoption of e-recruitment in Saudi Arabia and are not mentioned above? No Yes,

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