Crowd recruiting: How it is changing the traditional talent acquisition space
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way businesses operate. Integration of technology to follow social distancing norms worked well for companies to keep their workforce aligned and active throughout the remote work period. Similarly, the accelerated use of technology in the past two years is playing a crucial role in transforming the traditional method of talent acquisition across industries.
In the present world, every organization looks for ways to make its business processes highly responsive and efficient. Likewise, it looks for the best tools to make the communication straightforward that do not depend on traditional ways and also goes for finding a new employee or team. To reinvent the conventional talent acquisition space, crowd recruiting also known as crowdsourcing leverages a large community of independent recruiters, staffing firms and industry professionals to complete the recruitment process.
Conventional recruitment methods
Traditionally, the approach of recruitment and hiring new talent was dependent on publishing advertisements in print media. Further, the advent of new media helped companies in posting their requirements on social media and professional networking sites that had a better reach as compared to traditional media. However, the approach of contacting the candidate never changed. It included going on multiple calls, interview rounds and other tests to evaluate the candidate’s competency.
The approach of communicating with potential candidates was extremely time-consuming and did not harmonize with the needs of new-age companies and startups. Futuristic companies rely on new tech-driven methodologies to get their hands on the best in the industry talent.
Crowd recruiting gaining momentum
Crowd recruiting is often recognized as the pooling of funds from a crowd of people. It works in the same way in the talent acquisition space that brings together a pool of seasoned individuals to achieve a common goal. For instance – Uber created a pool of car drivers and owners spread across different geographies. Forward-moving companies are integrating crowdsourcing in their talent acquisition processes for many reasons.
Access to a large pool of talent
With new avenues to approach the candidates, employer organizations are looking at unique ways such as social media networks to source talent. Unlike traditional methods such as cold calling, job posting and emailing, crowdsourcing provides access to a large pool of talent to the employer. Many HR tech startups are also coming forward with unique offerings in crowd recruiting and transforming the talent acquisition process.
Quality talent
Hiring the best and quality talent is one of the biggest challenges faced by employer organizations today. They struggle to find the right fit at the right time. With technology-driven crowd recruiting platforms, it has become easier to scout the best talent even for the roles that are harder to fill or require a highly specialized skill set. These platforms enable employers to connect with passive and qualified talent instantly.
Efficient hiring process
Hiring is an expensive process. It involves huge fees paid to recruitment consultants, job portals, online and offline advertisements, etc and costs several days of hunting and productivity of the team. The crowd recruiting platforms expedites the process of hiring as employer organizations instantly get the opportunity to explore a larger network to fill the role. In addition, companies have control over setting the project cost and hours as per their requirements.
Access to candidate’s references
Job references play a critical role when it comes to determining whether a person is a good fit for the new job or role. Usually, employer organizations ask candidates to share professional references that increase the chances of an employee getting hired. Through crowd recruiting, employer organizations can contact the candidate carrying good professional references that further saves the employer’s time in improving the process of candidate assessment.
Increased diversity
Inclusion of diversity in present work culture has become common in present organizations. Sometimes, hiring is done on the basis of employee referrals that could be biased. Furthermore, the involvement of an intermediary can influence the selection of a candidate. However, crowd recruiting is simply allocating the task of hiring to people in which HR can reach a broader range of talent and be open to assessing candidates belonging to different backgrounds.
What’s next?
Crowd recruiting is certainly gaining huge popularity in the talent acquisition space. Technology-based crowd recruiting platforms managing a massive pool of seasoned talent will bring more efficiency and optimize the hiring process. With its rapidly responsive nature, employer organizations are anticipated to amplify their reach at minimum expenses, review applications and hire in the least time possible.