WHAT IS CROWDSOURCING?

The word “Crowdsource” was apparently firstcoined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 in an article for Wired magazine, it is very much associated with “Web 2.0” ways of doing business where the internet moved from being a very large notice board to users generating much of the content.

In essence “Crowdsourcing” means applying the thought of a large number of people to solve a problem or inform an issue. A good starting point for anybody wanting to see what is out there in terms of crowdsourcing".



CROWDSOURCING IN RELATION TO RECRUITMENT?



Actually we would argue that in relation to recruitment crowdsourcing isn’t new! For many years executive search firms have at the start of each new assignment set their researchers the task of speaking to lots of industry insiders to get their views and steers on who they might subsequently approach as candidates – i.e. consulting “the crowd”. But of course that wasn’t really crowdsourcing as we view it in 2009 because the “crowd” was small and restricted to who that search firm either already knew or could get to know fairly quickly.



There needs to be quality control over referrers and their referrals. Lots of poorly networked or irrelevant referrers are pointless and allowing / encouraging referrers to spray out lots of messages to “potential candidates” is just spam and will get the business a poor reputation.



Confidentiality in relation to employers,referrers and candidates is really important. Sometimes employers don’t want to identify themselves, sometimes referrers won’t want to be identified in their referrals and referrers should never be able to see the progress of a candidate’s application (and indeed whether they even made an application).



WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN CROWDSOURCED RECRUITMENT?



If you are an employer considering recruitment using a crowdsourcing / referral platform that you may want to think about these points:



• Does the provider have a critical mass of referrers in areas that are really relevant to us / this appointment?

• Quantity can be good but quality is always more important. Is my employer brand going to be damaged by referrers spraying

around messages about our vacancy to people who aren’t relevant and will probably view it as spam?

• Is appropriate confidentiality going to be maintained?

• Is the reward to the successful referrer meaningful?

• Am I going to get better access to appropriate candidate pools and / or save money and / or save time?