Employer Attractiveness through Social Media

In a highly competitive market scenario, being able to attract high-quality human resource is considered as a true competitive advantage for an organization. One way of doing so is via online recruitment, a method of attracting job seekers via internet. In this regard, corporate websites have gained popularity in the last decade, making it essential for employers to grab the opportunities it offers in terms of reaching potential candidates and attracting them to apply for a given job position. The effectiveness of corporate website facilitates the companies in differentiating themselves from their competitors, which in turn leads to overall organizational attractiveness. However, on a contrary, recent study on e-recruitment suggests that there has been a decrease in the use of corporate websites by employers since late 2007 due to the paradigm shift towards social networking sites. One of the main reasons for this changing trend can be attributed to the features of social networking sites which enable the recruiters to maintain constant connectivity and long term conversation with the job seekers. Furthermore, the advantage of using social networking sites lie in the ease of identity sharing, which can be utilized by the employers to develop and effectively communicate their own organizational identity. In this regard, a survey conducted by Jobvite revealed that around 92% of employers in USA are currently using or planning to use social media recruiting, 43% of recruiters who use social media recruiting saw an increase in candidates' quality, 73% have successfully hired a candidate through social media recruiting, and 31% of recruiters using social media recruiting have seen a sustained increase in employee referrals. Additionally, Facebook officials declared the presence of more than 500 million users and 1 million companies and entrepreneurs from around 180 countries across the globe (www.facebook.com) followed by LinkedIn which has more than 75 million professionals exchanging information, ideas, and opportunities with each other (www.linkedin.com). Similarly, a large number of Indian organizations have implemented social media recruiting due to the escalating usage of social networking sites by the job seekers throughout their job search process. 

According to a survey conducted by Ma Foi Randstad in 2011, 82% of Indian job seekers are extremely focused on using the social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to reach their employment goals quickly and more efficiently, 87% use the social media to find information about an organization's work culture, 75% track movements and events of their favorite companies to update themselves and prepare for job interviews, and 75% would hesitate joining a company, if their current employees have given negative reviews about the company. These figures suggest that social media platforms are no longer restricted to recreation purposes, but are extended to serve the organizations as an appropriate cyberspace to promote and connect themselves with current and prospective employees. Organizations use their Facebook profiles to announce job openings, LinkedIn to search for potential applicants, and advertise on blogs, Twitter or YouTube regarding the events and activities undertaken by them. Moreover, social media has also created the opportunity for organizations to enhance their image as an employer due to these sites being most commonly used by students, job seekers, and professionals. Accordingly, the popularity of promoting an organization through social media has provided opportunities for Human Resource (HR) professionals to get involved in activities beyond their traditional HR tasks. Recruitment becomes more interesting and efficient by tweeting a job opening or head hunting through vast number of Linked profiles. It also facilitates employees to blog about their experience of working in an organization, which further may lead to enhancement of the organizational image followed by increase in the number of applicants interested in that company. Furthermore, recent studies have found that social media has not been used solely to disseminate information about job openings or attracting the potential candidates, but employers have also started screening the candidates through different social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. As the existent literature maintains that social media usage by employers have elevated in the last few years, equipping organizations with the power of sharing information, networking, and identity building, studies are warranted to explore the linkage between social media and different HR practices. Additionally, organizational attraction has been frequently measured in the e- recruitment context, but studies measuring the same in social media recruitment context are still at premature stage. Besides, although research has been conducted to understand the perception of job seekers about internet recruitment, there is paucity of research which uncovers the perception of job seekers about social media recruitment and selection process as a whole. Consequently, objective of the current study is to gain insights into job seekers' perception about social media recruitment and selection process and the influence it has on the overall employer attractiveness. Since, qualitative research design is considered as a suitable approach to study perception and feelings shared by a homogeneous group of individuals, the present study takes up a phenomenological approach to uncover the underlined perception of job seekers in India.