E-Recruitment: The Cisco Way Cisco Systems is the leader in online recruiting. The San Jose-based, USS 8.5 billion technology leader experienced unparalleled growth, fueling its phenomenal economic performance with an e-recruiting system designed to bring in more than its fair share of the best talent available, From 1990 to 1997, Cisco rocketed from 250 people to more than 14,500 people in 55 countries. The company’s goal was to hire the small percentage of the top talent in engineering and business, The company’s website is carefully monitored and well-designed, and it serves as a benchmark for other ectuiting websites, Its other recruiting strategies include placing advertisements in newspapers and strategically placing cards in colleges to attract job seekers to its website, These recruiting pages are informative and user-friendly, Cisco Systems, whose site has been called “the venus fly trap of e-recruitment”, has an innovative approach to e-recruiting, which includes a shopping cart function for applying for numerous jobs, a ‘Make Friends @Cisco’ program, whereby a candidate can contact employees in similar roles before applying for a position, In addition, web site features an emergency escape key called “Oh No! My Boss is Coming”, to help would-be Cisco employees hide their job hunt from their current employers, There is a button which automatically brings up ‘The 7 Habits of a Successful Employee’, This feature was adopted by the company as research indicated that 90 percent of the applicants search for a new role while at work.At the front end of the recruiting process, Cisco carefully targets its message to the best candidates. Its recruiters hold focus groups to learn the work practices, social interests, hobbies, and lifestyles of the most successful engineers and managers at their company. Cisco then identifies the most popular and influential web sites on which to post recruitment ads in addition to posting positions on standard job-search Web sites. And, since most applicants are likely to visit the Cisco site during their work hours, the site has a facility that allows monitoring of not only the number of visits to its site, but also enables the company where the visitor works. The company gives visitors the opportunity to fill a shopping cart with job openings they are interested in, or join the “Make Friends” program, which connect them with a Cisco employee from the department in which they wish to work. It also has a Profiler tool that helps job seekers to update their resumes. Through its web site, Cisco is able to post hundreds of detailed job descriptions at a very low cost, and with great convenience for prospective employees. Jobs can be easily searched by title, job description, keywords, field of interest, and by location. Recruits can conveniently inform themselves of the relevant job definitions and skill requirements. Through a special “Hot Jobs @ Cisco” page, the company lists unique positions that it is especially eager to fill. But the Web site does more than simply list job openings. It also gives potential recruits a window to life at Cisco, making it easier for prospective employees to gain accurate information about the company and its way of working. For those who want even more information, the site’s “Make Friends @ Cisco” links applicants with Cisco employees, which makes it easy for them to talk about life at Cisco, about potential job opportunities, and about common interests. Cisco has successfully automated 70 percent of its recruiting process. At the same time, Cisco is building a database that predicts the qualities and characteristics that make a star Cisco employee. A major drawback of this website was that it put too much emphasis on the process, creating complex application procedures such as its Profiler. If job seekers did not fill out forms properly, they received error messages and had to repeat the process until they got it right.