The role of social networking in HR recruitment

1Jacob Mathew Pulikotil, 2Dr. K. Anandanatarajan, 3Dr. Sheela Srivastava1Holy Grace Academy of Management Studies, 2Annamalai University, 3Holy Grace Academy of Management studies

1jacobpulikoden@gmail.com2professorkanand@gmail.com3sheelasrivastava@gmail.com

#Holy Grace Academy of Management Studies Kuruvilassery P.O., Mala, Thrissur dist.

Kerala – 680732, Indiaholygraceacdy@rediffmail.com

Abstract: Social media is widely used by people and organizations. People are using the benefits of social media in variety of ways, be it marketing or promotions or entrepreneurships. Many organizations and employers use social media to advertise and recruit new employees. There are a lot of websites which are dedicated to recruiting employees through social networking.  These websites strategically promote jobs through corporate and personal profile pages.  Social recruiting also is a cost-effective way to find qualified candidates and an ideal way to boost employee referrals. The reason is because many social networks are free, practically everyone uses them already, and they’re a good means for showcasing a brand. Social media or social networking provides greater visibility of potential opportunities for candidates who are not actively searching for a job. At the same time, recruiting or assessing potential recruits using social media can exclude people who do not have access to these facilities. Moreover employers also can discriminate people based on color, caste and creed. This study focuses on the use of social media networks for Human resource recruitment and the problems associated with its use.

Introduction

Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are making it possible for an organization to share information among employees, in a new way on the Web. In February 2010, Facebook had 400 million active users (Owyang 2010). Facebook jumped ahead of Google by claiming 7.07 percent of U. S. traffic compared to Google’s 7.03 percent in March 2010 (Maximumpc.com 2010). Facebook reached 29.9% of global Internet users versus 22.4% for MySpace. MySpace continues to be the most profitable social network, having about $1 billion in revenue versus $300 million for Facebook (Ostrow 2009). Twitter, a site that allows users to post only 140 characters at a time, has stabilized to roughly 20 million users (Gross 2010). Internationally, social networks have a high percentage of reach among Western Europe’s Internet audience. There were 282.7 million Internet users in Europe as of December 2008, 200 million of whom visited a social networking site. According to ComScore, the market reach is highest in the United Kingdom, with 79.8 percent, followed by Spain with 73.7 percent, Portugal with 72.9 percent, and Denmark with 69.7 percent (ComScore 2009). Russia is the fourth largest social networking market in Europe, behind the United Kingdom, Germany, and France (FreshNetworks Blog 2009). Not surprisingly, social networking is becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace. Social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the most powerful tools available to recruiters today. Facebook has more than 500 million members and regularly surpasses Google in site visits per day.1 LinkedIn has increased its number of registered users from roughly 40 million in 2009 to more than 100 million in 2011.2 As usage continues to skyrocket, more businesses are recognizing the fact that high-quality candidates can be reached faster and at lower cost using social networks than traditional recruiting methods. Social networks can give recruiters a competitive edge in locating and engaging the best candidates available to reach your company’s recruiting objectives.

A recent survey indicated that 46 percent of IT professionals believe online social networking (OSN) is a valuable business tool, and of those, thirty-one percent indicated that it was crucial to business. Moreover, 85

percent of those surveyed, even those who question the usefulness of social networking, acknowledged that employees are using social networks at work (Perez 2009). Another survey indicates that between 25 to 30 percent of companies with 500 or more employees have adopted some form of social networking (Leader-Chivee et al. 2008). The benefits to employers of corporate social networking are many. According to Leader-Chivee et al. (2008), “corporate adoption of social networking, while new, is already showing enormous benefits. By offering employees the tools and technology to reach out and connect with one another, organizations can facilitate a collaborative corporate culture, while benefiting from a wide range of improved efficiencies, in everything from sourcing and recruiting, to on-boarding and learning programs, to improved alumni, diversity, women’s and retiree communications. Many process improvements may be found through efficient social networking programs and organizational connectivity. “Moreover, OSN is becoming increasingly popular because of internal brand building, finding, unlocking and engaging hidden employee intellectual capital, enhancing employees’ motivation and satisfaction, and developing products and offerings faster regardless of the organizational design (Communitelligence.com 2009). The software helps businesses find people and information, understand relationships, create a common culture, enhance friendships among customers, improve knowledge management, facilitate recruiting and retention of younger workers who actively participate on social networks, and keep former employees in the loop (CIO Insight 2009). However, as is often the case when technology rapidly advances, it can also lead to employees spending increasing amounts of time involved in social networking.

Objectives of the study

The objective of the study is to find out:

1. How can social media be used effectively in the recruitment process? 2. What are the tools available to recruit via social networking?3. What are the benefits associated with recruitment through Social networking sites?

Review of Literature

Recruitment: The strength of a company is based on the quality of its employees. Thus the role of HR is to bring the best employees to its stable so that the organization becomes productive. HR is playing an increasingly important role in businesses today. The objective of HR is to see that they recruit the right candidate for the right job. HR professionals have responsibility for recruiting and retaining talented employees too. Recruitment is the process of generating a pool of qualified applicants for jobs. According to Fajana (2002), human resource planning deals with the systematic and continuing process of analyzing a firm’s human resource needs under mutating conditions and developing workforce policies suitable to the longer-term effectiveness of the organization. It is a vital part of corporate planning and budgeting procedures since, human resource costs and forecasts both affect and are affected by longer-term corporate plans.

Planning involves the forecasting of human resource needs in organizations and designing appropriate actions such as recruitment, training and career development based on identified needs. Planning is carried out within the goals and general policy framework of the firm or agency. It is also affected by public policies, changes in technology and availability of manpower.

Human resource planning involves a complex task of forecasting and planning for the right numbers and the right kinds of personnel at the right places and at the right time to perform activities that will benefit the organization in accomplishing its objectives and in helping its members to satisfy their needs. Human resource planning will be successful to the extent that it properly coordinates each of enumerated elements and it is essentially the fitting of resources to business needs in the longer term or shorter term as the case may be.

Human resource planning is a vital ingredient for the success of the organization in the long run. There are procedures to be followed by an organization which ensures that it has the right number and kind of people at the right place and time to enable achieve its objectives.

The main functions of human resource department are: human resource planning, selection and recruitment, training and development, career planning, transfer and promotion, risk management, performance appraisal, etc.

Armstrong (2009) states that recruitment and selection process come in four stages: defining requirements, attracting candidates, selecting candidates and placing them on the job. Correspondingly, Robertson and Smith (2001) support Armstrong’s viewpoint and added personality assessment to the lists guided by tests and interviews, the British Psychology Society (BPS) (2007) concludes that the ability tests measure the capacity for: verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, spatial reasoning and mechanical reasoning.

Boxall and Purcel (2003) observe that many organizations including the well resourced still imagine that recruitment is all about attracting young workers fresh from schools or after only a few year in the labor market. However, according to Pilbeam and Corbridge (2002) recruitment and selection extends to attracting suitable candidates, eliminating unsuitable candidates and converting the successful candidates to an effective employee.

Types of Recruitment:

a) Internal Recruitment: Many organizations have a policy of filling up a position above the entry level through promotion and

transfer. By filling vacancies in this way, an organization can capitalize on the investment it has made in recruiting, selecting, training, and developing its current employees. There are many advantages from recruiting form within and it has been observed that such policies contribute to overall growth and success of the organization. Promotion is used as a reward for past performance and intended to encourage the employees to continue their efforts in that direction. The promotion from within policy also provides other employees an opportunity to develop and take up higher roles. This results in overall improvement in the morale of the employees and their commitment towards the organization. Schwab, (1982)

In the case of hiring, it is important that maximum numbers of potential applicants are reached. The employers’ can increase their efforts with respect to search extensiveness by using more than one recruiting sources to reach different pools of potential applicants. In a study one of the important aspects of recruitment was the message the organization gives to the prospective candidates through various communications channels such as advertisements, website, targeted web advertisements etc. In these cases the messages becomes important. Binning and Barrett (1989) Organizations who take a decision to communicate with prospective candidates should give clear with regards to what to convey and how to convey so that the information provided to the candidates are real. In order to decide on giving the information the firm should look at all the aspects including the impact on its image. Thus, making informed decisions about the optimal presentation of organizational and employment-related information requires basic research on candidate reactions to realistic messages varying on different dimensions. Promotion from “within” is generally recognized as a foundation of good employment practices, and it is the policy of many organizations to promote from within the organization wherever possible to fill up a vacancy. The effective use of internal sources requires a system for locating qualified candidates and for enabling those who consider themselves to be qualified. The Human resources information system with the use of information technology has made it possible to create a database of each employee containing their qualifications, experience within the organization. Another important tool for internal recruitment is organization’s ‘Intranet’ The web-based portal of the organization which can be accessed only by the employees of the organization. The interested employees can then apply for the job as per policy of the organization.

b) External RecruitmentIf there are no suitable candidates available in the organization, the organization have to go for external

recruitment. According to Herriot, (1989) Anderson and Ostroff, (1997) the relationship between an employee and an organization begins much before the person joins the organization. The relationship begins at the first point of contact between the person and organization. With the emergence of the World Wide Web and associated technologies, the first point of contact is, normally at the organization’s website or other web-based employment advertisement Cober et al., (2000). The internet has and its technologies have revolutionized many aspects of business operations, similarly these technologies offer tremendous potential for recruitment, selection and socialization processes also. However, with these potential benefits there are also some possible consequences. The internet is becoming popular for its ability to provide suitable hi-tech, customized recruitment messages to virtually infinite number of people at relatively little cost. This aspect makes it even more important. External sources of recruitment include: Educational and training institutes, Executive search agencies, Employment exchanges, casual callers, labour contractors, placement agencies, employee referrals, advertisement in media, online recruitment, advertisement on the website etc.

C) Online RecruitmentParry and Tyson (2008) studied the user of online recruitment in UK for a period of 6 years. They

conducted a survey of HR managers. In their study they observed that out of the organizations surveyed only a quarter used commercial web sites. Therefore, while Internet recruitment was used by a significant proportion of the recruiting population, the results were not in line with the predictions made in mid 1990. Their results did not show a large increase in the number of organizations using corporate or commercial web sites over the past four years. However, given the fact that online recruitment was first introduced around 1995, it is presumed that the growth in the use of these methods was greater prior to 2000. Interestingly, however, almost half of the organizations surveyed expected to increase their use of both corporate and commercial web sites during the next year, suggesting a longer-term trend towards the expansion of Internet recruitment in the future. This suggests that they are seeing online recruitment as being a successful method in the future, thereby creating an upward trend in its overall use. However, many current non-users of online recruitment do not appear to be converting to the method, meaning that the number of organizations using it grows more slowly. Of those organizations that did use either online recruitment method, just under a quarter found the method successful. Only 40 per cent of current Internet recruitment users and about a fifth of non-Internet recruitment users expected to reduce their use of other recruitment methods because of their use of Internet recruitment.

Sylva and Mol (2009) observed in their study on e-recruitment which was conducted on 1360 applicants who used online method of application. They noted that: (1) applicants reported generally favorable reactions to the web-based procedure used by the organization. (2) Ranging from most to least important, efficiency, user-friendliness, process fairness, and Internet, selection image were identified as determinants of applicant satisfaction. Summarize the key results, it was found that: (1) Applicants reported generally favorable reactions to the web-based procedure used by the organization. (2) Ranging from most to least important, efficiency, user-friendliness, process fairness, and Internet selection image were identified as determinants of applicant satisfaction.

d) Recruitment using Social media Social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the most powerful tools available to

recruiters today. Facebook has more than 500 million members and regularly surpasses Google in site visits per day. LinkedIn has increased its number of registered users from roughly 40 million in 2009 to more than 100 million in 2011. As usage continues to skyrocket, more businesses are recognizing the fact that high-quality candidates can be reached faster and at lower cost using social networks than traditional recruiting methods. Social networks can give recruiters a competitive edge in locating and engaging the best candidates available to reach the company’s recruiting objectives.

The number of employers using social media for recruiting candidates is rapidly rising.  2011 survey results showed that 56% of respondents cited using social media to search and communicate with job applicants. In 2008, an even fewer 34% reported using social media for HR purposes. In comparison to the 77% who utilize social media for their recruiting efforts today, we have witnessed quite a spike in social media recruitment activity. HR professionals have shifted focus to social media for recruiting purposes for a few reasons:

• Ability to recruit passive job applicants who might not otherwise apply (80%)• Ability to target job candidates with specific skill sets (69%)• Increase employer branding and recognition (67%)

In fact, four out of five HR professionals are using social media as a recruitment tool primarily for its ability to attract candidates who would not typically apply. Social media sites have become such an important piece of the recruiting puzzle that they are being integrated into applicant tracking processes. This automation allows recruiters to automatically post job openings to social media sites, mine candidates through their social profiles, report on the success of each channel in providing the best candidates, as well as granting candidates mobile access to job openings and applications.

With that being said, studies have reported that HR professionals prefer some social media sites over others:

• LinkedIn (94%)• Facebook (54%)• Twitter (39%)• Professional or association sites (29%)

According to the new infographic report from Intricate, more employers are using social media to find talent and potential employees than ever before. The infographic, ‘Social Media and the Effect on Employee Recruitment,’ which is based upon statistics from the Jobvite 2012 Social Recruitment Survey, indicates that 92 percent of U.S. companies have used social media networks in 2012 as part of their recruitment efforts.   Additionally, 7 out of 10 employers have successfully hired a candidate through social media. The infographic also takes a look at the top social media sites for recruitment over time.  Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn tops the charts (it is, after all, designed for business networking).  Linkedin is followed by Facebook and then Twitter, with YouTube and Google+ also on the radar.

Organizations are creating their own profile pages on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter; and recruiters are tapping their own private Facebook and LinkedIn networks to reach out to prospective candidates. LinkedIn recently announced its new enhanced Company Pages function that allows users to ‘recommend’ the company to their followers. This is of course very similar to Facebook’s ‘like’ button, and it highlights how the social media sites are now beginning to compete for ‘employer branding’ space. With the arrival of social media, professional relationships have been democratized. Recruitment experts agree that it’s now much easier for employers to gather data about potential candidates through social media sites. Checking a candidate’s credentials through his or her profile on social media sites is a global trend, and one which is shared by SMEs and multinational companies and across all levels of employees. This, as some experts suggest, creates a more diverse applicant pool in a very cost-effective way. 80% of companies use social media for recruiting and 95% of those companies are using LinkedIn for that purpose (research conducted by lewishowes.com) In 2010, 83% of employers were using or planning to use social networks for hiring, 46% planned to spend more on social recruiting and 36% spent less on job boards (Jobvite, 2010).

Tools for recruitment through Social networking: With the advent of social media and cloud applications, there are various tools for human resource

recruitment. These tools vary from automated applicant responses to upgraded versions of old recruitment standbys. The tops tools used are given below: a) Resumator: is a social networking tool that helps hiring managers to know about job listings and who are viewing the postings. Resumes can be posted through Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter and the tool will track the candidate’s postings. It also sends automated email replies when resumes are received and when a candidate must be declined. It also has a Twitter-like "What Makes You Unique" feature, where applicants describe, what sets them apart in 150 characters or less. This enables it to get a sense of the candidate's personality.

b) Jobvite: Jobvite is a SaaS platform that delivers a seamless and social recruiting process before, during and after the interview. It allows employees to company’s open jobs and sends targeted invitations to referral of employees through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Once referrals get into the recruitment process, the referring employee can track the interview process. The tool also matches prospective candidates with job listings based on matches found in their social profiles, providing a way to find qualified "passive" candidates whom necessarily are not looking for a change.

c) LinkedIn Talent Pro: This can be used by all who has a LinkedIn account. Account holders can get up to 15 notifications per day. Talent Pro finds a match among candidates according to the job specifications and role. Candidate searches are based on job-related keywords can yield targeted results.

d) BranchOut: BranchOut makes it easy to connect with prospective employees in other Social networking accounts and find out the personal experience with potential candidates. BranchOut can help reveal helpful contacts in social networks and lead employers to potential candidates.

e) InternMatch: InternMatch is a recruiting service solely focused on part-time or unpaid internships. InternMatch provides lots of free advice and templates that can help organizations to be more successful in recruiting and managing a college intern effectively.

f) Face book: Facebook profiles enable companies to create separate “Career Center” Facebook profiles, providing a dedicated resource for job seekers. Alternatively, Facebook offers the option to run a  jobs RSS feed, as well.

Smaller companies that have neither the volume of employment opportunities nor the resources to maintain an extra channel or feed, can integrate their jobs via a standalone page, linking the job seeker back to their website’s Careers section.

g) Twitter: Twitter has created a dedicated “Careers” Twitter account to showcase available positions in organizations along with details of company culture. The site offers a 140 character job description and certainly allows for a job title and a link to the position description to attract candidates.

Benefits of recruitment through social networking sites: There are several benefits associated with social media recruitment. One of the advantages is that

candidates can be searched geographically and found with higher accuracy than before improving recruiting effectiveness. Because of social media’s high usage rate and immediate response time, available jobs can be filled quicker, lowering vacancy rates. This enables the right person to be at the right time at the right place. Moreover, Social media recruitment has a low cost with high Returns on investment (ROI). Another advantage is that the users are mostly college students, creating a great way to attract fresh talent for entry level positions. Social media also gives easy access to prospective candidates faster at the same time enable the company to attract talent versus competitors. Social media also Increases the employer’s brand visibility online and establishes a leading-edge image for the brand. Open positions will be seen and read by a larger number of qualified candidates. Social media also offers diversity, social channels offer diverse results and recruiters are able to filter by a wide range of demographics and career level to match their needs. Social recruiting also improves Referral Improvement by helping HR manger’s to review a candidate’s resume, co-worker recommendation, review skills, previous job profiles and professional references for credibility to ensure that the hire is a good move. Moreover since a majority of the people who use the social media are tech savvy and the generation that is predicted to provide a new dimension to the way businesses function, recruiting through the social media is likely to attract them at least for the entry level positions.

At the same time, social recruiting is not without problems. One of the problems is the lack of complete information or no guarantee for the available information. Information can also be inaccurate. Moreover a person who communicates to friends on Facebook is not the recommended way to assess their business communication skills. Hence companies must follow a rigorous process of assessing people for qualities relevant to on the job performance.

Conclusion

As more firms begin to step into social media networks, different employers will find the best practice methods of recruiting for their particular field. Social media was once just a personal thing; nothing more than fun and games and making friends.  Nowhere is this truer than in the broad field of human resources.  Unlike individuals, businesses have been slow to embrace social media as an organizational practice.   But the last decade has proven the punch of platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others.  Only a few years ago, scores of employers hired personnel who were active users of social media.  HR departments are stepping up their use of technology in order to find talent and manage the talent they have.   That means they need professionals internally to increase employee engagement, and those who work externally to hunt down the right job candidates.   Employers are instead realizing that they need to work more closely with the experts in order to get their hiring right first time – not making the mistake of investing a significant amount of time and resource into social media and not getting a return on their investment. The social media sites also recognize this, and new tools are becoming available all of the time that allow recruiters and employers to work together to take advantage of social media hiring.

There is no doubt that social media has improved the recruitment process by making it more open and democratic; increasing the visible talent pool from which to engage and recruit. Having an intimate knowledge of someone’s capabilities or knowing who the best person for a role is, however, can only be gained through personal knowledge of an individual and of a particular industry sector.

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