Introduction

One thing that is omnipresent evidently after God is social media. Only the almighty can compete with the reach of social media nowadays. From local to global and everything glocal in between, the scope and scale of social media have reached the point beyond no returns, especially, when Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn started operating in the United States.

From an individual to a provision store owner to from partnership firm to conglomerate to a film star and cricketer to doctors and accountants – no corner of the society has remained untouched by social media by now. And when the mass of talent is available on social media, why would talent hunters remain behind the curve, rather than not experimenting to create a successful impression on social media.

Head Hunting

“You can’t apply directly in the company for a job in Australia, you ideally send your application with the recruitment agency as they forward your resume to the appropriate company” said an Australian resident.

The role of recruitment agencies in India is also maturing with time. Recruitment agencies that were only concerned with revenue building are now emphasizing on tapping, recruiting, and holding on to top talent.

Forget about traditional tools even conventional digital tools such as recruitment websites have become outdated and secondary in the whole recruitment process of building a talent pool for corporate clients. Social media has been playing the most critical role today in tracing, tracking, screening, analyzing, and finally recruiting the bests in the business.

Why to recruit on Social Media?

The resume of a candidate was never enough to understand the talent of an individual. Hence, compared to traditional means, social media provides an opportunity to look at the candidate from a 360-degree perspective and personally.

Motive

• Reaching passive, but skillful candidates come easy
• It helps to showcase employer brand to build brand awareness
• Relatively quickens the interview and on-boarding process
• It helps spread the recruiting needs to the selected skill pool
• Access to personal quality and contact of the candidates

The scope of Social Media:

There is no doubt that social media has permeated not only in the private aspects of, but also in the professional spheres, too. Anyway, HR generalists were screening a candidate’s social media exposure in order to ascertain viability. However, in the hindsight, there is a lack of experimental facts to create a standard procedure of recruitments.

By adapting to social media companies get used to the ever-changing psycho-graphics of the skill pool. Besides, social media offers a free-of-cost recruitment service, which helps corporate to reduce HR costs. Keeping in mind the future, companies can rely more on referrals provided by the employees to hire greater talent for the company.

Social Media Recruitment benefits from a recruiter’s perspective:

Information Extent

As big as the pool of talent is, social media provides extensive information about the candidates, in order to gain a wide-ranging outlook of the talent.

Adverse information

Negative information about the candidate may help to scrutinize the overall outlook of the candidate, but it helps HR professionals in profiling the candidate with utmost accuracy for greater reliability.

Information Reliability

One of the major issues for HR professionals is the reliability of social media information about candidates. However, diving a bit deep into the source of information can reveal a truer picture that may help to build the trust without hosting inhibitions.

No Privacy Information

Recruiters are trained to screen candidates on Facebook and LinkedIn for verification. Social media makes it obvious for candidates to understand that their profiles will be scanned thoroughly.

Cross-verification

The most critical aspect is cross-verification of the information. Oftentimes, candidates provide misleading information in resume that does not match with their public profile. Thus, social media recruiting offers a cross-verification opportunity to ensure that only the right talent is recruited.

Information availability

Earlier it was impossible to get an inside view of the candidate and to know about their persona. With social media, personal information is easily available for recruiters to form an opinion about how well the candidate fits their bill.

Effective Screening

There is a mix of opinions among recruiters about screening. Nonetheless, HR professionals agree on the fact that social media information for those genuinely looking for a job is reliable and helps them to decide if qualifications and skills are worth considering.

Spoof Scanning

No matter how sharp of a HR professional you are, chances are that you may be fooled with information on social media. However, spoof scanning has become advanced as recruiters gain more experience in the fielf. The veracity of information has become easy to obtain.

Social Media Influence

Nowadays companies are focusing on “Employee being a brand Ambassador”. And rightly so if candidates have decent influence over their friends and netizens, he or she can become an effective tool to promote brand beyond usual means.

Conclusion

There is a possibility of HR professionals developing a bias or becoming prejudiced for many reasons because of the information flow on social media or simply become a victim of misleading information. Given these loopholes, recruiters are not fully convinced of blindly utilizing social media for recruitment and we agree to that!

On the other hand, recruiters are of the opinion that the concept is still in its infant and idealism stage and may take some time before it gets mature and SOPs emerge. Until then, limited but effective use of social media is an undeniable need for companies, as well as, agencies. To learn more about how you can use social media to your advantage in recruiting, our experts are here to help you!

Worldwide

3.773 billion internet users (10% growth from January 2016)

2.789 billion users are active social media users (21% growth from January 2016)

One of the fastest-growing recruiting trends in recent years has been social recruiting, using social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to source and recruit candidates. Recruitment through social media can offer many benefits to companies, as it allows them to reach a larger pool of potential candidates.

Compared to traditional tools, social media recruitments can generate a higher interest on the job posting as the announcement is seen by a great number of individuals. Another benefit of using social media is the low/no cost for placing the announcement for the vacant position, always compared to the high costs of announcements through media. The speed of response would also be a benefit of recruitment through social media, since the time for making the announcement visible to the public is really short, compared to traditional announcement placed in the newspapers, TV, radio or employment agencies. While levels of awareness and adoption continue to develop both for recruiters and job applicants, organizations must consider adding social media to their overall recruitment strategy to meet the goals of being cost effective, right on target, and strategic; remaining competitive; and sourcing top talent. Social media is a great tool for recruitment and it should be further explored by the business sector and HR professionals.