Employer Attractiveness through Social Media

Social Media

"Social media is defined as 'a group of Internet-based applications build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content". Perdue noted that the enormous growth of social media, especially in terms of users, carries many implications for transforming businesses; encouraging the organizations to be engaged in more and more activities via social networks. In the United States alone, 86% of the top 100 companies use at least one social media platform, and websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have become one of the prime sources for attracting and acquiring job applicants. Nevertheless, social media has also reduced the efforts on the part of applicants and allows them to apply for a job position by a few mouse clicks. Consequently, recruitment firms have also began to use social media as a tool for searching desired candidates, making it worthwhile for the job seekers to have presence on these websites.

Social Media Recruitment

Use of social media to communicate about the job openings and attracting the potential candidate to apply for a given job position is what constitutes of social media recruitment. In this regard, Smith and Kidder suggested that companies should make use of social networking sites to enhance their organizational identity. The authors further stated that in contrast to the corporate website, which generally provides background information, an organization's Facebook page offers variety of options like creating and publishing calendar of events that can be viewed by all the users. Such events may include recruitment, on-campus interviews, corporate social performance, or any other event that an organization may wish to host. Furthermore, Facebook pages are completely free, which reduces the burden and cost of constantly updating and maintaining the organization's website. Similarly, LinkedIn offers great opportunities for the HR professionals to recruit from the numerous profiles, followed by Twitter and YouTube, which allows public relation departments to communicate and promote their organizations by making use of the free advertisement space. Moreover, since social networking sites are informal source of recruitment, it is likely to provide positive, negative, and more detailed information to prospective employees than the formal sources, which in order to attract job seekers, may contain the positive aspects only. Additionally, the existent literature suggests that people trust social media, trust the people in their network and not only do they seek and share opinion but "they also act on the opinion they receive". The true power of social media in terms of recruitment lies in the trust that is built into an employer recommendation from one acquaintance to another which is lately termed as the 'word of mouse'. Although, the benefits of social media could be of major interest for companies willing to establish an image of attractive employer, it involves a risky environment where employers need to be transparent and honest while communicating with the job seekers; failing which may deteriorate an employer's image in the job market. Resultantly, developing an understanding of job seekers' perception about social media recruitment is relevant in the present digital scenario and the current study is one of the pioneers in this realm.

Social Media Selection

With the visibility of personal information on the social media platforms and usage of these information by employers for personnel screening and selection has led to the emergence of digital social contract, a new proactive transparency expectations from organizations to workers. The employers have reported to be using the online information to evaluate job candidates during personnel selection. Another study by Caers and Castelyns reported that employers review the personal information on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn for screening the candidates, which in turn, creates the risk of selection biases even before the first round of interview. The privacy concern within social networking sites and violation of online privacy by the employers for personnel screening and selection has been a noteworthy agenda for research in the last decade. However, what influence the social media selection may have on attractiveness of an employer is a question yet to be addressed in the literature from job seekers' perspective. The present study, therefore, takes up the lead to bridge this gap by examining the perception of job seekers about social media recruitment and selection and the resultant impact on the overall organizational attraction.