Recruitment in a Crowdsource Environment: An Exploratory Investigation

Abstract

We conduct an exploratory study to investigate recruitment practice in the context of nonstandard project-based jobs in a crowdsource environment, where organizations utilize contributions from online internet communities of users to fulfill needs services or ideas. Crowdsourcing platforms have become omnipresent in today’s globally connected marketplace, and have become important sources for specialized talent in a variety of idea-driven job tasks and projects. Employing novel techniques associated with text-mining and natural language analysis, our findings suggest that factors associated with both inducements, and the amount and structure of information contained in the job advertisement posting influence a range of aggregate variables that include the size and quality of the applicant pool. Results are discussed both in terms of their implications for how talent is sourced in such virtual environments, as well as how current knowledge of recruitment can be expanded to accommodate nonstandard jobs.