The Internet’s ever-growing popularity and ever-advancing technology have changed the way we do just about everything, including an employee search, searching for jobs, applying for positions, and hiring new employees.
The early days of online recruitment saw the introduction of vocational sites and job boards devoted exclusively to connecting those looking for employment with those looking to employ.
Monster, Careerbuilder, and their ilk seemed to be ushering in the golden age of online hunting and hiring. Then, the new kid came to town — social media.
Social Media for Hiring
The “social” part of social media is nothing new as far as the recruiting world is concerned. One of the best ways to find quality candidates has always been to get referrals from existing employees, and this is an inherently social activity.
However, with the advent of social media and social technologies, employers can amplify this social reach exponentially, allowing employees and non-employees alike to share job opportunities with ease and enabling companies to have direct contact with a massive audience of potential job seekers. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter — currently the three most popular social media destinations for recruiting — have enabled companies to increase their hiring reach from hundreds or thousands of candidates to hundreds of thousands.
For the past few years, social media recruiting has been touted as a game-changer and the be-all and end-all of recruiting’s future. Currently, 55 percent of American jobs can be found on at least two social networks at a time, and 73 percent of human resources and recruiting professionals claim to have hired applicants via social media. Considering that 92 percent of companies state they use or intend to use social networks for recruiting, it would seem the predictions of social media recruiting’s inevitable takeover are indeed coming to pass. However, this trend is not the candidate-finding miracle its bandwagon hypes it up to be.
Social Media Employee Search — The Pitfalls
While social media recruiting is an, arguably, easier and possibly cheaper way to find prospective employees than the more traditional methods, it still has some potential flaws that merit careful consideration and overall caution.
Poor Demographic Representation
According to David Wilkins, Vice President of Taleo Research, sites like LinkedIn and Facebook may not offer accurate representations of the available talent aggregate. Only 5 percent of African Americans and Hispanics use LinkedIn. That is less than half of the entire African American population in the US and barely a quarter of the entire Hispanic population. Too much of a focus on hiring social media-sourced talent could cause a company to run the risk of attracting affirmative action inquiries or false accusations of discrimination. Race, however, is not the only focus that can draw cries of discrimination.
Potential Legal Risks
Diane Pfadenhauer, president of Employment Practices Advisors, warns that perusing a candidate’s Facebook account prior to making a hiring decision could pose a lawsuit risk: “You may find something [on their Facebook profile] that is a protected characteristic like their religion or sexual orientation — something that is not visually apparent. Even if you don’t use it as a basis for employment, people may accuse you of that.” In an era that often focuses on the protection of the individual from corporations, a candidate rarely has to prove a potential employer’s discrimination; instead it becomes the company’s responsibility to prove a lack thereof, which will cost the company time, money, and possibly reputation.
Limited Perspective
Aside from the potential for legal trouble, social media recruiting has another major flaw that needs to be addressed, the limited view of a candidate reflected in their social media profiles.
As the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2012 reveals, recruiters can be turned off by a candidate’s use of profanity, alcohol intake, or posts of a sexual nature as revealed by the candidate’s social media page(s). However an employer may view this content on a personal level, such posts do not realistically reflect a potential employee’s ability to effectively and successfully hold the position the recruiter is looking to fill. A conscious or subconscious censure on the part of the recruiter can interfere with his or her ability to objectively determine whether the censured candidate possesses the needed skills and qualifications.
Poor Predictivity
Finally, an employee search on social media only addresses a small part of the overall challenge of finding and hiring the right people — which is filling the top of the candidate “funnel.”
While easy and affordable access to a wide range of talent seems like any hiring manager’s dream, it does nothing to address the decision-making process that occurs once people have applied nor does it ensure you make the right hire at the end of the day.
You can find yourself swamped with resumes and then face the difficult challenge of deciding who really has what it takes to succeed in the job (and statistics show that about half the time, companies tend to get this decision wrong).
The Solution
This is not to say that social media cannot act as a valuable recruiting tool. As previously noted, engaging and sharing career opportunities through social media sites can significantly swell the talent pool in a relatively cost effective manner, but employers will still need a way to efficiently sift through that pool, especially considering its now larger population. The key to successful hiring lies not just in how many applicants can be brought into the funnel but in the ultimate quality of hire that results.
It takes more than just a profile, a tweet, or a status update to discover a clear fit!
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