PM World Journal Transition to Automated Online Talent Acquisition System Vol. IV, Issue XII – December 2015 by Dr. Debashish Sengupta, Prof Ray Titus www.pmworldjournal.net Case Study & Subhashish Sengupta, PMP © 2015 Debashish Sengupta, Ray Titus, Subhashish Sengupta www.pmworldlibrary.net Page 1 of 16 Transition to an Automated Online Talent Acquisition System in an IT Project-Based Organization: A Case Study Dr. Debashish Sengupta Alliance School of Business & Program Director Alliance Ascent College, Alliance University, Bangalore, India Prof. Ray Titus Professor of Marketing and Strategy Alliance School of Business, Alliance University, Bangalore, India Subhashish Sengupta PMP Pro & Project Manager Bangalore, India Evolution of Talent Acquisition The evolution of recruitment as a function has been fascinating. The traditional recruitment involved recruiting over long timelines and use of print advertising (post, spray and pray). Process superseded end-result and the idea was to ensure right headcount. Later recruitment saw the shift to online and e-recruitment. The offline post-spray-pray of recruitment advertisements was complimented with online post-spray-pray of attracting candidates. The traditional recruitment and online recruitment existed side-by-side. The next version of recruitment was a considerable advancement over the previous versions. While the older forms of recruitment focused on the active job seekers and aimed at attracting them, the newer version of recruitment focused also on the passive job seekers. The passive job seekers are those who are not actively looking for a change of job but are precious talent who can be converted. The newer version of recruitment also saw the recruitment going social or in other words, social media recruitment. The use of social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter saw recruiters connecting to professionals over social networks and attracting talent. The focus shifted from process to end-result. No more headcount is enough. Talent acquisition was the need of the hour. Today all these versions interestingly co-exist, although there is increasing shift towards talent hiring. Employer branding has become all the more important. The next shift of recruitment is even more transformational and aims for the very first time to convert recruitment from a cost centre into a profit centre. What many times is dubbed as the fourth version of recruitment or recruitment 4.0 believes in the power of the network. It involves crowdsourcing and Gamification. The traditional job boards and job agencies lose significance. The recruitment also looks beyond recruiting traditional employees to recruiting talent over the network who connect, do the job and disconnect. The process follows an open call format i.e. being open to virtually anyone in the world. The volunteering workers join, connect over the network and do the joď. This is kŶoǁŶ as ĐƌoǁdsouƌĐiŶg. This depeŶds oŶ ďuildiŶg aŶd ŶuƌtuƌiŶg a