Volunteers have long been regarded as an essential part of the staging major sport events both to encourage community participation and to contain labour costs. Major sport events often attract a large pool of applicants which exceeds the number of volunteer positions available. Selecting the best qualified applicants for available positions requires volunteer selection processes that are fair, effective, and efficient from both the volunteer and event organising committee perspectives. Using a Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) approach, the authors investigated factors that predicted the selection of applicants interviewed for volunteer positions from the perspective of a major sport event organiser. Using deidentified data from all volunteer applications (n = 53,234) for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, the authors identified a number of factors that predicted the likelihood of an applicant being selected for an interview for a volunteer position. SHRM principles were applied to volunteer selection decisions but in a limited way. The authors found some evidence of links between volunteer selection decisions and the overarching strategies of the Games. However, these decisions prioritised the shortterm goal of filling volunteer positions to stage a successful Games rather than longer-term strategic goals. The research contributes to better understanding links between major event HRM strategies and volunteer selection, identifying factors which predict volunteer selection, and possible limitations in the application of volunteer database management systems from a SHRM perspective.

Introduction

Major sport events, particularly those on an international scale (e.g., the Olympic and Commonwealth Games or FIFA World Cup), require the services of thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of volunteers. Event volunteers are expected to work over a relatively short period of time and often at high intensity. Deployment of volunteers at major sport events dates back to the 1948 London Olympic Games (IOC, 2019b). Since that time, major sport event organisers have recruited volunteers both to engage with local communities and to defray potentially prohibitive labour demands and costs involved in staging events. A critical and time-consuming process for major sport event organisers is the selection of event volunteers from what are often very large pools of applicants well in excess of the required volunteer labour force. For example, the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) attracted more than 53,000 applicants of which more than 20,000 were selected to be interviewed for 15,000 generalist and specialist volunteer positions (A. Noble, personal communication, 27 April, 2017). The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (IOC, 2019a) attracted 204,000 applications for an estimated 80,000 volunteer positions.