Recently, I read an article about crowd-sourced recruiting. As the leader of the crowd-sourced recruiting, LinkedIn successfully provides the solution on recruitment and users’ information services. All of top 500 companies began to use crowd-sourced recruiting since 2002. After LinkedIn was launched in the market successfully, more and more companies increased investment in social media channels, and decreased the spending on recruitment fairs. Companies are willing to use internet and outsource vacancies, in order to find creative ideas and employees. Crowdsourcing applications help companies save much time and cost during the recruitment procedures. Because, interviews, online tests, interview recordings, training are all automatically managed by software.
Benefits from crowdsouced recruiting:
1.Candidates stand out: Candidates are better placed to make sure they stand out from the crowd, by sharing their ideas and applying their skills to a problem you set
2.Organizations stand out: Organizations can stand out as a recruiter, demonstrating innovative and open thinking
3.Live assessment: Seeing candidates in action and applying their skills to a task you set enables you to assess them based on a real-life scenario, rather than just a list of qualifications and an interview
4.Multi-tasking: Not only can a recruitment challenge bring you the next bright hire, it can also solve as a brainstorming exercise to generate news ideas and fresh perspectives on a problem you’re facing
5.Not just the usual suspects: A new and more open recruitment process, placing more emphasis on ability to complete a task, gives you a risk-averse way to consider strong and viable candidate who may have something incredible to offer but may be otherwise overlooked due to not fitting the standard form
6.Fun! Recruiting through a Challenge should be much more fun (and a learning experience) for both the candidates and the recruiting organization
However, recruiting systems are not always stable, which result in candidates reject by recruiters accidentally. Therefore, talented person might drain to other companies. So, what do yo think of crowdsourced recruiting? Were you suffered from recruiting system problems? What other disadvantages exist in crowdsouced recruiting?
Reference:
http://www.innocentive.com/blog/2013/06/24/crowdsourcing-as-a-new-way-of-recruiting/
http://www.asiata.com/News/Info/201212/10023
http://www.domarketing.org/html/2011/observe_1216/1744.html
http://www.webrecruit.co.uk/crowdsourcing/
Well as all things run and made by man I believe that this system is far from perfect.
I base my opinion on the fact that the interviewees are given one task through which you base an entire evaluation of a person, which in a way is not enough. Especially because some people work better in a real life situation or in a team. In addition, the task given to the interviewees can be their exact specialty in that field and could overlook other flaws in their line of work. I also think that you can evaluate a person better while in person than through a computer program.
However, I believe that a combination of regular interviews and crowdsource recruiting could yield the best potential employee. The only disadvantage would be the costs and time consumption, but when you look at the long term potential the disadvantage is rather small.
There are definitely some disadvantages to crowdsourced recruiting.
Firstly, as the main bulk of crowdsourced recruiting occurs online, there is the issue of confidentiality. Many people are not keen to post their details and personal information on the internet due to security reasons. Some candidates may not want to take the time or may not be confident enough as there’s always the possibility that their online application system may operate slowly or lose information during the submission process.
Secondly, crowdsourced recruiting can be viewed as somewhat impersonal. Without the opportunity for the employer to hold multiple in-person interviews, it can be difficult to determine if the candidate will be a good fit for the company and its culture. The candidate may also have a hard time gauging whether the company is the right place for her.
Thirdly, crowdsourced recruiting sites might not have sufficient relevant information about the company, its mission and method of operation. This might lead to the “wrong” type of people applying for the job, a lack of skill set or a mismatch of interests.
Lastly, since gathering, compiling and analyzing responses from a large audience size is a tedious and critical task, companies will not be able to use crowdsourcing to recruit employees for jobs which require immediate closure and urgency.