The recruitment and selection is the major function of the human resource department and recruitment process is the first step towards creating the competitive strength and the strategic advantage for the organizations. Searching for, and obtaining, potential job candidates in sufficient numbers and quality, and at the right cost, for the organisation to select the most appropriate people to fill its jobs.

Selection is the process of gathering information for the purposes of evaluating and deciding who should be hired, under legal guidelines, for the short and long term interests of the individual and the organisation.Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job at an organization or firm. Companies are now looking out for new ways of giving themselves a competitive advantage. New product, new image & new marketing idea are some of the ways this can be achieved but enlightened and successful companies look towards their people to provide the leading edge.

Recruitment is a process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment.The process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applications from which new employees are selected. Recruitment is an important tool in an organization's HR kit to make organization competitive in today's global market. The right recruitment strategies hold the key for success for any organization. The objective of the recruitment process is to obtain the number and quality of employees that can be selected in order to help the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives.

With the same objective, recruitment helps to create a pool of prospective employees for the organisation so that the management can select the right candidate for the right job from this pool. Human resource management or managing “people” includes several activities. Today acquiring and retaining the employees is the biggest challenge. Thus staffing is a vital activity.

Staffing facilitates the supply of employees. These employees are needed to fulfill the Organizational goals and objectives by their effective and efficient erformance.And recruitment is a logical step in this staffing process. Recruitment is the process of creating huge pool of potential candidates.

It attracts the prospective employees and stimulates them to apply for job. The function of it mainly concentrates on two aspects. First is discovering the sources of manpower to match the job description and job specification. Another is to pull the application of potential candidates to make the selection process successful.

The process is generally carried forward by the recruiters.Recruitment before nineteenth century was based on the apprenticeship system. Apprentices were not the employees of the Organization, but after completion of apprenticeship they were absorbed in the company. Compared to apprentices the skilled and qualified candidates were more desirable. Thus the lack of efficient apprenticeship gave birth to the trend of recruitment process in the middle of nineteenth century. The traditional method of recruitment has been revolutionized by the emergence of the Internet.

In the past few years, the Internet has dramatically changed the face of HR recruitment and the ways organizations think about the recruiting function. In the coming years, digital recruiting and hiring are expected to continue their explosive growth. Presently, e- recruitment has been adopted in many organizations either from large organizations to small size companies. Most organizations are already using e-recruitment to post jobs and accept resumes on the Internet, and correspond with the applicants by e-mail.

It brings the benefits to the organizations.Recruitment acts as a link between the employers and the job seekers and ensures the placement of right candidate at the right place at the right time. Using and following the right recruitment processes can facilitate the selection of the best candidates for the organisation. In this is competitive global world and increasing flexibility in the labour market, recruitment is becoming more and more important in every business.

Therefore, recruitment serves as the first step in fulfilling the needs of organisations for a competitive, motivated and flexible human resource that can help achieve its objectives.E - Recruitment is the process of personnel recruitment using electronic resources, in particular the internet. E-recruitment is the latest methodology most business organizations adopt for finding suitable candidates. According to Flippo " Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective employees and stimulate and encourage them to apply for jobs in the organization.

" Companies and recruitment agents have moved much of their recruitment process online so as to improve the speed by which job candidates can be matched with live vacancies.Using database technologies, and online job advertising boards and search engines, employers can now fill posts in a fraction of the time previously possible. E - Recruitment is also known as “Online recruitment”, it is the use of technology or the web based tools to assist the recruitment processes. E-recruiting, embracing the term web-based recruiting can be described as any recruiting processes that a business organisation conducts via web-based tools, such as a firm’s public Internet site or its corporate intranet.We use the terms online recruitment, Internet recruitment, and e-recruitment interchangeably. We are living in the computer age and organizations are beginning to increasingly depend on the Internet for all types of business activities including online recruitment of candidates – more popularly referred to as E-recruitment.

The human resources departments are taking advantage of the advancing technology and deploying web-based tools for inviting and comparing resumes. The term e-recruitment means using information technology (IT) to speed up or enhance parts of the recruitment process.It ranges from the applicant interface for advertising vacancies and making job applications, to the back office processes, which allow a liaison between human resources (HR) and line managers to set up a talent pool or database of potential recruits. Many big and small organizations are using Internet as a source of recruitment. They advertise job vacancies through worldwide web. The job seekers send their applications or curriculum vitae (CV) through an e-mail using the Internet.

Alternatively job seekers place their CV’s in worldwide web, which can be drawn by prospective employees depending upon their requirements. There is growing evidence that organisations are using Internet technology and the World Wide Web as a platform for recruiting and testing candidates. E-recruitment is the latest recruitment trend and is increasingly being adopted by small and large corporate as well as placement firms. As recruitment get more and more challenging by the day, most HR managers and executives are on the lookout for ways shorten recruitment cycles.Most of them have moved away from manual recruitment processes and adopted e-recruitment that is backed by the latest technology to streamline and simplify all recruitment related activities. Adopting e-recruitment is a good way of empowering your recruitment process and recruiters with the latest and the best in recruitments.

It not only helps you manage recruitment but also improves the efficiency of your system and considerably reduces the cost involved in the entire recruitment procedure. There are a number of e-recruitment options available.Recruitment software, candidate tracking applications, ERPs, job portals, etc. is the most commonly used e-recruitment methods. The most preferred of these methods is deploying recruitment software that takes care of the recruitment cycle right from sourcing candidate profiles till the candidate finally joins the company. Using internet prospective applicants could search for positions in which they were interested.

Contact with employers directly is viable. Feasibility of email overruled the use of telephone, fax or mail and the companies started accepting application through email.Today Organizations have their own sites or job postings are given in the placement sites. Again the candidates can visit the sites, post resume, contact the company directly without any delay. All these are just one ‘click’ away.

E-recruitment is a tool for many employers to search for job candidates and for applicants to look for job. Recent trend of recruitment is e-recruitment or the internet recruitment or on-line recruitment, where the process of recruitment is automated. The automation began in 1980 but was systematized in 1990 with the release of Restrac’s initial product.E-recruitment simply means the recruitment process through internet. Many business enterprises are using Internet as a source of recruitment. They advertise job vacancies through the worldwide web.

Quite often, the job seekers also place their curriculum vitae (CV) on the various job sites where prospective employers may pick them for a personal interview. It is reliably reported that over 18 million resumes are currently available online across the world and this figure is steadily increasing. In today's world e recruitment has become an indispensable tool for the recruiting manager.To get the best out of this emerging medium it is essential that it is used to complement the traditional means of recruitment Growth and relevance of this medium are dependent both on the accessibility of net to people as well as ability of job portals and other networking sites to differentiate and offer value added services both to the prospective employer and the candidates. The terms online recruitment, e-recruiting, cyber recruiting, or Internet recruiting, imply the formal sourcing of job information online.The first references to online recruitment appear in articles of the mid-1980s (Gentner 1984; Casper 1985), while systematic reference to the online recruitment in the human resource journals begins almost a decade later, in the mid-1990s, when IT companies and universities begin to use the Internet extensively( Galanaki E, 2002).

When looking for a job, the Internet may be a source of help for some, as websites such as Irantalent. com and agahjobs. com in Iran offer free job searches and resume posting.In recent years, job recruitment websites have undergone considerable growth and the number of job seekers who conduct job searching over the Internet has increased (Tong 2002) This increase may be due to the added convenience provided by e-recruitment websites. Job seekers are able to view multiple openings and post their resumes for businesses to view without leaving the comfort of their homes. E-recruitment websites are designed as a powerful medium that brings employers and job seekers together and allows them to interact in a fast, efficient, and effective way.

For job seekers, an e-recruitment website provides a unique opportunity to explore constantly updated employment opportunities through an extensive database of jobs. Job seekers can then post their resumes online and announce their availability to potential employers. For employers, e-recruitment delivers a convenient, low cost, and efficient solution by providing direct access to a continuously expanding database of resumes. In general, the recruitment service provided on these websites is free for the job seekers, who can enjoy the service once they have become members of that website.