Employee Sourcing and Recruiting in the 21st Century: Strategies for Attracting Human Potential in a Tight Labor Market

The setting for this Capstone was Global Telecom, a highly respected global player in the telecommunications industry, located in Cleveland, Ohio. Global Telecom is the fourteenth largest employer in the United States.This Capstone attempts to identify what technical and non-technical companies do to source and recruit qualified candidates in a tight labor market that Global Telecom might learn from. In today’s environment, most people who want to work, particularly in technical fields, already have jobs, creating a shortage of qualified applicants. This qualitative research presents content analysis from a survey administered online via email to recruiting professionals. The survey asked recruiting professionals about their organizational culture, diversity initiatives, budget, recruiting/marketing strategies, and Internet strategies.The review of literature discovered myriad recruiting/sourcing articles and models. In addition, the literature indicates the national unemployment rate continues at its lowest level in three decades. In many major metropolitan areas of the country, unemployment rates are lower that the Department of Labor reported rate of 4.1 percent.Data analysis of survey responses revealed three important themes:• Internet usage is rising in all companies and yields above average candidates• Traditional sourcing and recruiting tools continue to be valuable• The disabled, underrepresented, and foreign national candidate pools continue to be overlookedAnalyses of the survey responses were synthesized to reach conclusions, detail Internet recruiting strategies, and to recommend an operational plan focusing on organizational analysis, recruiter/client roles, tailoring sourcing and recruiting to client’s needs, and to becoming a change agent to insure sourcing and recruiting success.