WebCruiter Research Quarterly - Q1 2008

The industrial firm Jotun began its first international trainee program in 2007. The recruiting process was a positive experience for over 800 candidates from 40 countries.

Jotun is one of the world's leading companies in the field of paint and powder coatings. The Group has 5,900 employees distributed among 67 companies in 35 countries and a total of 40 production facilities located in 25 countries. Jotun is one of Norway’s leading industrial groups.

When Jotun established its international trainee program in 2007, WebCruiter was chosen to provide the online recruitment solution.

The trainee program in 2008, conducted in Norway, China, Malaysia, and Dubai, was also handled using WebCruiter – this time fully integrated with DNV-certified personality, aptitude, and skills tests from cut-e.

HR managers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of their companies’ competitiveness in the labor market. Well educated and career-conscious applicants with strong job opportunities are turning the traditional recruiting process, where the employer was able to pick and choose among good candidates, on its head. When the job market is overheated as well, we are seeing an increasing amount of applicants with more choices.

One study performed in Australia by the recruiting agency Chandler Macleod in 2007, published in the Australian journal Human Resources, shows that companies need to realize that they are being evaluated as potential employers to the same degree that the job applicants are being evaluated as potential employees.

In 2008, the directives stipulated in EuroSOX, the EU’s answer to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the US, will be adopted into Norwegian law. These directives are similar to their American counterparts in that they are intended to strengthen accounting and auditing requirements, as well as management, administration, and oversight of ”companies serving the public interest.” The directives require that all business processes be documented and traceable.

The question is whether EuroSOX will also have implications for the recruiting process.

Publishing job advertisements in printed media is a process that requires a great deal of time and resources – even for companies that use efficient solutions for web-based recruiting.

”Few people realize the significant gain, financially speaking, that automating the publishing process can yield," says Pål Alexander Gaure of Papirfly, which supplies the JobAd job advertisement building tool.