Abstract

Already in 2002 Agarwal and Ferratt forecasted that talent shortage on the IT labor market will not cause a transient problem. They are proved correct, six years later the problem is not only existent but also worse. Recruiters in companies are more and more forced to break new ground to hire the needed number of IT professionals. The increasing usage of IT in particular Web 2.0 in recruitment therefore offered new opportunities to approach potential talents more focus oriented. An example for this growing opportunities is the virtual world Second Life. We conducted an empirical survey with almost 10.000 jobseekers (including over 700 degree holders in Computer Science and Information Systems) to explore the use of virtual communities as a support for the IT-staff recruitment. Combined with an exploratory single case study with IBM Entwicklung GmbH (IBM Research and Developement Germany) we brought evidence that virtual worlds might be a vital source to recruit IT-professionals in times of talent shortage.

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