It’s Time to Take Crowdsourced Hiring Seriously

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few years about how we approach staffing in the new digital age and the era of the gig economy. While it’s not exactly a secret that online agencies are rapidly overtaking traditional firms, even these online firms are experiencing difficulties. As a result, staffing firms and recruiting professionals are asking themselves serious questions about where the industry is headed, and whether they can keep pace with the rapidly changing hiring landscape.

In industries like healthcare, where employers are experiencing critical shortages of qualified candidates, the need for change and innovation is even more apparent. For many staffing professionals, innovation can easily stop at moving our practices online. While online staffing may be able to reach a wider net of candidates, it can be more challenging to assess the employer’s’ needs, particularly when hiring at the executive level.

It’s time to consider how the staffing industry can not only use technology, but how they can harness technology to find better hires, faster. The answer to this dilemma may lie in adopting the practice of employee referral programs, also called crowdsourcing.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Temps’ use of human cloud services

What is crowdsourcing?

In the last few years, we’ve seen a surge in crowdsourced companies like Lyft, Uber, and Kickstarter. Crowdsourcing was first mentioned as a phenomenon in 2006, when it was explained as a method of breaking down the barriers between professionals and amateurs. Crowdsourcing is based on the idea of tapping into the collective knowledge of users in order to create a better experience for a company. After all, no one knows a product better than those who use it.

Further, crowdsourcing is also a way to reduce costs for hiring managers and employers by using a larger network of people to achieve a task.

How companies are using crowdsourcing now

At its simplest form, a crowdsourced program at a company is like an employee referral program. With a referral program, employees are able to earn money or other perks when they refer new employees to their company. There have been a number of studies that have examined referred employees’ performances in the workplace, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.

In fact, referred employees not only perform better at their jobs, they also stay with a company for longer, are able to pick up on tasks more quickly, and produce 25% more profit than their peers. With these kinds of statistics, it’s no wonder that referred employees are incredibly valuable to a company. In fact, these are the kinds of candidates we look for in our industry — the ones excited to learn and grow, and more importantly, excited to stay in a position for an extended period of time.

Why staffing should take a page from the referral program playbook

As professionals in the staffing field, it’s time to look at what’s working not just in our industry, but in other industries across the board. Other companies are using referral programs and crowdsourcing to find better talent, faster, and staffing should be doing the same.

Crowdsourcing combines the discernment of an in-person agency with the power of an online staffing company. It empowers like-minded professionals to reach out to their personal networks to help their connections find jobs. Essentially, it puts the power to find a great candidate into the hands of those who already know great candidates, saving employers time and money. It’s a more innovative, more thoughtful way of finding candidates, and it won’t be long until more companies in the industry begin to adopt this method.

MORE: Developing a social media marketing strategy

Matt Tant

Matt Tant
Matt Tant is a staffing industry veteran with more than a decade of experience. He is the founder of the IT staffing firm HCTec, and is currently the CEO and founder of Relode. He can be reached at matt.tant (at) relode (dot) com.

Matt Tant

Share This Post

Tweet

Recent Articles

One Response to “It’s Time to Take Crowdsourced Hiring Seriously”

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.