Searching for talent: The information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals

Recruitment professionals perform complex search tasks in order to find candidates that match client job briefs. In completing these tasks, recruiters have to contend with many core information retrieval (IR) challenges, such as query formulation, refinement and evaluation. However, despite the similarities with more established communities of information professionals such as patent lawyers and healthcare librarians, this community has been largely overlooked in IR research. This article presents results of a survey of recruitment professionals to understand their information-seeking behaviour and their needs regarding IR systems and applications. The findings are discussed in the context of the recruitment industry as a whole and are moderated by insights from professional recruiters.