Barrier-free E-recruitment: Recruiting Disabled People Online

Barrierfree-recruitment.com is an interactive demonstration of what your organisation needs to do to achieve barrier-free e-recruitment for everyone. It has been produced by the Employers' Forum on Disability and with the support of the London Development Agency.

This unique website reflects the common features of careers pages used by both private and public sector employers. While these features are drawn primarily from UK websites, the principles of best practice e-recruitment are the same around the world.

E-recruitment, or online recruitment, is growing fast. Recent research estimates that by 2004, 44% of recruitment spend in the UK will be allocated to e-recruitment¹. In 2002, 36% of internet users or an estimated 6.3 million people sought jobs online a 50% increase on 2001.²

E-recruitment systems can range from a simple website which includes information on the company and current vacancies, to a more complex system that enables you to apply online, make speculative applications and get job alerts, as well as take online tests.

E-recruitment can be convenient, fast and easy to use. It enables jobseekers to find out about and apply for many more jobs. When done well it cuts costs and simplifies the process for HR, recruitment and line managers.

Yet, the processes which many companies use can exclude disabled people a key talent pool for any diverse employer.

1.3 million disabled people in the UK are excluded by inaccessible and badly designed e-recruitment websites
Inaccessible websites are anticipated to affect similar proportions of the population worldwide, including an estimated 7.4 million in the United States, 5.9 million in Europe and 91.5 million worldwide
Many more, up to 386 million people worldwide (including 6.9 million disabled people of working age Britain), are excluded by discriminatory e-recruitment processes; including CV sorting, discriminatory evaluation and inaccessible html email
Others, including those who speak English as a second language, may also face exclusion

McKinsey & Company, working with business and public sector employers, recruitment agencies, IT specialists and disabled people, completed a detailed analysis of the barriers caused by e-recruitment.

McKinseys provided The Employers' Forum on Disability with the practical solutions which now underpin this website.

This site features three main sections:

PLEASE NOTE: This website is a demonstration site. GlobalConglomorate is not a real company and you cannot apply for these positions. If you are looking for work please visit the useful links section of this site.

For further information on the business case for employing disabled people, please visit
http://www.employers-forum.co.uk/www/csr/sttn/index.htm

The Employers' Forum on Disability commissioned AbilityNet to design and build this site. It has been developed following the latest web accessibility guidelines, including those on e-recruitment websites produced by Macromedia.

References

¹ Forrester 2000
² Guardian Media Group