TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract The Internet and social media have fundamentally transformed the ways in which individuals find jobs. Relatively little is known about how demand-side market actors use online information and the implications for social stratification and mobility. This study provides an in-depth exploration of the online recruitment strategies pursued by human resource (HR) professionals. Qualitative interviews with 61 HR recruiters in two southern US metro areas reveal two distinct patterns in how they use Internet resources to fill jobs. For low and general skill work, they post advertisements to online job boards (e.g., Monster and CareerBuilder) with massive audiences of job seekers. By contrast, for high-skill or supervisory positions, they use LinkedIn to target passive candidates – employed individuals who are not looking for work but might be willing to change jobs. Although there are some intermediate practices, the overall picture is one of an increasingly bifurcated “winner-take-all” labor market in which recruiters focus their efforts on poaching specialized superstar talent (“purple squirrels”) from the ranks of the currently employed, while active job seekers are relegated to the hyper-competitive and impersonal “black hole” of the online job boards.
VL  - 33
SN  - 978-1-78973-585-7, 978-1-78973-586-4/0277-2833
DO  - 10.1108/S0277-283320190000033006
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0277-283320190000033006
AU  - McDonald Steve
AU  - Damarin Amanda K.
AU  - Lawhorne Jenelle
AU  - Wilcox Annika
ED  - Steve P. Vallas
ED  - Anne Kovalainen
PY  - 2019
Y1  - 2019/01/01
TI  - Black Holes and Purple Squirrels: A Tale of Two Online Labor Markets
T2  - Work and Labor in the Digital Age
T3  - Research in the Sociology of Work
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 93
EP  - 120
Y2  - 2024/04/24
ER  -