BUSS 5351: Talent Acquisition and Development

This page will assist you to find scholarly information and other resources to support your assessments.

Remember to read all the information on your course outline and course learnonline site related to your assessments to understand exactly what you need to do.

To find information you will need to think of keywords in your topic that you can use in your search.

1. Determine your keywords/search terms, and
2. Think of synonyms or alternative words for these keywords.

Here are just a few examples:

• recruitment, hiring, employment, job advertising
• job satisfaction, employee satisfaction, job fulfillment

Then think about how you can string together various keywords to form a search term, remember to:

• use quotation marks (PDF 276 KB) around phrases, e.g. "position description"
• connect terms using AND, OR, or NOT, (PDF 276 KB) e.g. employer OR workplace
• you can also truncate using * (PDF 301 KB) to search for different variations of a word, e.g. recruit* will search for recruit, recruitment, recruiters etc.

For more information and tips on planning your search:

• How to plan your search - PDF (276 KB)

  This resource explains how to combine and connect search terms using OR, AND, NOT.

• Study Help: Plan your search (2 min 25 sec)

  This video explains how to plan your search.

Searching the Library Collection

In the Library Collection, put together a search term based on your keywords:

Once you are happy with your search terms (it might involve some trial and error), you can then refine the results to make them more relevant by using the 'Refine my results' menu on the right.

One of the options is to choose to Show Only Peer-Reviewed Journals:

You can also refine by date to show more recent articles:

Once you've finished your selections, remember to Apply Filters:

You can also try searching databases that may contain additional material. Enter your search terms in Business Source Ultimate, or one of our databases that contain Human Resource Management content.

Learn how to search the library collection and databases effectively with the resources below.

How to search the library catalogue: 1 min 48 sec.

You will need to support your arguments with academic references. Academic references can also be referred to as scholarly sources or peer-reviewed (refereed). These can include journal articles, books, book chapters, reports, and other sources.  To find out more about academic references look at the resources below.

• How to find scholarly sources (PDF, 305 KB)

• Study Help: Scholarly sources explained (video, 2 min 22 sec)

Tip: When searching in the Library Collection you can filter your results to show only 'peer-reviewed'.

Research versus review articles

It is important to understand the distinction between two common types of scholarly articles.

Research articles demonstrate original research and are referred to as primary sources. Review articles, on the other hand, synthesise and analyse current primary research in a specific subject area. Review articles, including literature reviews, systematic reviews, etc, are referred to as secondary sources.

You may be required for your assignments to focus on one or both types of articles.

You may need to search for both published literature and unpublished (grey) literature.

Why search for grey literature?

Grey literature:

• introduces alternative perspectives
• may be the only source of information (where there is little published evidence)
• overcomes or minimises publication/reporting bias
• can be essential in emerging, changing or interdisciplinary research areas
• may find unique information not found elsewhere, especially in emerging research areas
• complements published research and fills in the research gaps
• can contain more local information

The Analysis and Policy Observatory (APO) is a research collection service with reports and up-to-date information on public policy development and implementation. Find full text research reports, papers, submissions, statistics and more. 

Want to know more? 

Explore the Grey literature and other sources guide. 

Do you need help with report writing? Here you can find examples of business reports.

This guide and video (2 min 53 sec) may assist you:

Managing your references

What do you do with all those references you have found? You can use a bibliographic management software to store, organise, and cite your references.

There are many free systems available. The Library supports the bibliographic management tool EndNote. EndNote automates citing your references and allows you to create and organise a library of references. For more information and to download the software, check out the EndNote Guide: