Recruiting in the Metaverse

Topic
This master’s thesis, titled «Recruiting in the Metaverse», examines the potential as well as the risks and threats of the Metaverse for large companies in shaping their recruiting strategies. The central research question is: «How can large companies use the Metaverse for their recruiting strategies?», which was answered with the help of an extensive literature analysis and ten experts in the field of Metaverse, digital innovation and digital recruitment.

Relevance
The results of this master’s thesis provide a comprehensive understanding of the potential of the Metaverse for recruiting strategies at large companies. The thesis identifies opportunities to optimize processes and highlights potential risks and challenges. It thus offers valuable insights for companies wanting to integrate the Metaverse into their recruiting strategies.

Results
The thesis has found that the potential of the Metaverse for recruiting depends on various factors such as existing recruiting processes as well as target group. In general, however, it can be said that today’s use of Metaverse technology in recruiting is used as a marketing tool and as a mean to strengthen the employer brand of a company. However, the Metaverse has the potential to be integrated in recruiting processes such as interviews and application as well as onboarding in the future. Yet, companies need to understand that the Metaverse harbors risks for both companies and private individuals such as cyber attacks and data privacy issues.

Implications for practitioners
-Companies are well advised to keep an eye on Metaverse technologies, their target audience and competitors' ventures, so that they can act quickly in case of certain market changes

-Should companies decide to become active in the Metaverse, they must familiarize themselves with the social and cyber risks of the Metaverse and implement certain measures to protect themselves

-At the moment, the metaverse is still largely used as a marketing measure and is not integrated in a sustainable way. Nevertheless, it makes sense to deal with the metaverse technologies

Methods
As the Metaverse itself and particularly recruitment approaches within the Metaverse have not been studied previously and are therefore rather poorly understood, the author has chosen an explorative research approach as well as an inductive data analysis for this master’s thesis. First, an extensive literature research has been conducted to analyze and explain the Metaverse as well as its importance for digital recruiting. For the second and empirical part of this thesis, and to empirically answer the research question, ten expert interviews have been conducted, analyzed and coded to gain valuable insight.