'Crowdsourced' Recruitment Gaining Momentum, but Hurdles Remain: Experts

Mumbai: Recruitment through the online community, also known as 'crowdsourcing', is slowly gaining momentum in India and is expected to grow by 25 per cent in the next few years, according to industry experts.

The term 'crowdsourcing' is defined as the process of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers, TeamLease Services, Business Head - RPO, Recruitment Services, N Shivakumar told PTI here.

As a cheaper alternative, he said, 'crowdsourcing' was introduced in the country in 2009 and is also used for building a proactive strong candidate pipeline like a virtual bench of candidates for the anticipated and existing requirements.

"In India, the growth has been at 15 per cent year-on-year until 2016 and is expected to grow at 25 per cent for the forthcoming years," he added.

This recruitment method is used by sectors like airlines, engineering, banking and financial services, automotive, internet and e-commerce mainly for their niche segments, he said.

However, he said, of late there has been a trend of various requirements which are generic in nature also being published on online platforms.

Further, Shivakumar said confidential positions as well as low-end roles may not be filled through crowdsourcing, which is a major hurdle for this method.

Echoing this view, CIEL HR Services CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra said, "Often employers are not sure about the candidates recruited through crowdsourcing because there might be understanding gaps for the role, sometimes confidential positions cannot be shared with all people."

Glut of candidates can also pose problems for employees and since there are other people involved in the process, information sharing can be a hurdle as sharing of information may not always be linear with multiple stakeholders involved in the process, he added.

Further, he said, 'crowdsourcing' cannot be termed as a game changing alternative in the field of recruitment. "However, it can reduce hiring time and improve the efficiency of the whole process," he said.

Recruitments done through crowdsourcing can be both permanent and temporary in nature, he added.