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LinkedIn And Facebook In Flanders: The Influences And Biases Of Social Networking Sites In Recruitment And Selection Procedures

Vanessa CastelynsHogeschool-Universiteit Brussel

This study investigates whether Flemish recruitment and selection-professionals use LinkedIn and Facebook during their recruitment and selection procedures, and to what extent. 712 respondents, from various sectors and from organizations of various sizes, responded to an online questionnaire. Descriptive analyses indicate that LinkedIn and Facebook have become extra tools for recruiting applicants, to find additional information about them and to decide who will be invited for an interview. Flemish R&S-professionals do, however, use LinkedIn and Facebook in a different way, both for recruitment as for selection. Finally, it is shown that while R&S-professionals claim profile pictures on Facebook are useless signal on personality dimensions like emotional stability and agreeableness, they do tend to recognize signals of extraversion and maturity, risking that common selection biases are occur even before the first interview.

WORDS OF GRATITUDE

There are a few persons I would like to thank because without their help it would have been a lot harder to achieve the same goals and objectives. First of all I would like to thank Federgon (Ann Cattelain and Sandrine Renson), HR.Square (Jos Gavel and Hilde Vereecken) and Voka (Sigrid de Bie) for their cooperation. Further, I would like to thank all the respondents for their obliging collaboration. Last but not least, I would like to thank Ralf Caers for the coaching and the continuous assistance as my tutor and for the trust he has put in me.

Selection procedures have yet been widely researched, both from a normative (Van Hoye & Lievens, 2007; Wanberg et al., 2000; Braddy et al., 2003) as a descriptive point of view (Dubois & Pansu, 2004; Galanaki, 2002; Rooth, 2009). Theory states that employers should only take into account information that is related to future performance on the vacant job. But empirical research indicates that decision makers are often influenced by other factors, such as age (Nelson, 2002; Weiss and Maurer, 2004; Lahey, 2008), gender (Swim et al., 1995; Harvie, Marshall-McCaskey, and Johnston, 1998; Riach and Rich, 2002), sexual orientation (Weichselbaumer, 2003; Drydakis, 2009), race (Cesare, 1996; Neumark et al., 1996; Pager, 2003), obesity (Klesges et al., 1990, Roehling, 1999; Swami et al., 2008) and facial attractiveness (Luxen and van de Vijver, 2005; Tews, Stafford and Zhu, 2009). With the rise of social network sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, individuals are broadcasting information about themselves on the internet at a more rapid rate and to a higher extent. This information may also be visible to the organizations to which they apply. Social network sites therefore hold the risk of introducing biases into the selection process even before the first interview is held.

In this article, we seek to extend knowledge on how Flemish employers are influenced by social networks, and how they are used. We test our hypotheses in a field study of Flemish professionals involved in the recruitment and selection of applicants (R&S-professionals), using nonparametric tests. The article proceeds as follows. We commence by presenting the literature on biases during the selection and recruitment procedures. Special attention is given to e-recruiting and social media. Next, it is explained in the method section how data is collected using a self-constructed and validated questionnaire. Afterwards, the results are provided and discussed. Policy implications and directions for future research form the article’s ending.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR

Social networking sites (SNSs) are on a rise. Yet unknown in 2003, Facebook and LinkedIn have rapidly grown to respectively more than 300 million (Facebook, 2009) and 10 million (LinkedIn, 2009) users in 2009. Facebook alone counts for 47,000 college, high-school, employee and regional networks, takes care of 600 million searches and enables more than 30 billion page views a month. LinkedIn adds by ranking 52nd of sites attracting the most members (Alexa, 2009) and by counting for a billion page views a month (LinkedIn, 2009).

Social networks serve two main purposes: (1) to connect friends, share personal information and meet new people; (2) to connect professionals, share knowledge, experiences and plan future career steps (Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels, 2009). Social networking sites thereby visualize individuals’ networks, foster connection sharing, social capital generation and effective communication (Donath, 2007; Ellison et al., 2007) and offer opportunities to create new content and new connections (Breeding, 2009; Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels, 2009). The latter, however, does not yet drive people to join, as most users are prone to stay in contact with the friends and acquaintances they already have, rather than meeting new people (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). While Facebook is focused mainly on the first purpose of social networks, with users sharing pictures and personal information (Papacharissi, 2009; Dutta and Fraser, 2009; Kelly, 2009), LinkedIn fosters the second one. Here, individuals long to market their skills, competences and work experience and to connect to professionals in their or similar fields of expertise (Dutta and Fraser, 2009). So while both networking sites contain information on many individuals, the nature of this information is rather different. It is this online centralization of information drawing attention from the industry, curious about whether

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social networking sites may facilitate or improve applicant recruitment and selection (King, 2006; Robert and Roach, 2009).

The internet has changed the recruitment process before (Anderson, 2003; McManus and Ferguson, 2003). By creating a website with a vacancy section, employers can for example make their external and internal job boards more accessible (Galanki, 2002) and more visible, to a broader audience as well. Moreover, information about the organization can be provided to potential applicants at a lower cost (Braddy, Thompson, Wuensch, and Grossnickle, 2003) and may also alleviate inaccurate negative information from company-independent sources which cannot be controlled (Cable and Turban, 2001; Van Hoye and Lievens, 2007). As the usability of the website is found to affect applicants’ perception of the job (Cappelli, 2001) and its informational content to determine the perception of the organizations’ image (Rynes, Bretz, and Gerhart, 1991; Turban, Forret, and Hendrickson, 1998; Turban, 2001) and values (Braddy et al, 2003), it is important to design this website well. When constructed properly, applicants have a more accurate perception of person-organization fit, which in turn makes organizations more attractive (Judge and Cable, 1997; Turban and Keon, 1993; Turban et al., 2001) and leads to higher job satisfaction, more effective employment results and higher organizational commitment (O’Reilly, Chatman, and Caldwell, 1991; Saks and Ashforth, 1997). This form of passive recruitment can be copied to Facebook using group or fan pages, with the advantage that changes can be highlighted directly through members’ home pages. Another form of passive recruitment that can be formalized by social networking sites is the technique of referrals. Organizations use referrals because it simplifies information gathering on the qualifications of the applicants and lowers recruitment and monitoring costs (Finneran and Kelly, 2003). Referrals are also found to perform better given the referrer’s presence (Castilla, 2005; Fernandez et al., 2000), less likely to quit (Devine and Kiefer, 1991; Taylor, 1994) and to have longer tenure on the job (Simon and Warner, 1992). Employees of the organization may hereby spread vacancies to their friends or professional connections using their profile page on Facebook or by an email to all their LinkedIn-connections, thus broadcasting on a larger scale. As individuals are found to be highly selective on those they refer to their organization due to reputation effects (Burt, 2001; Finneran and Kelly, 2003; Casella and Hanaki, 2008), the added value of social networks could, however, be rather limited. Finally, the visibility of ones network to outsiders, both on Facebook as well as LinkedIn, facilitates organizations’ active recruitment efforts. By analyzing their employees’ networks, names of potential applicants can be quite easily found. More qualitative information is, however, yet to be obtained from the owners of these networks themselves.

As with recruitment, social networking sites may also affect decision making in the selection phase. Search robots like Google already handed organizations’ the opportunity to screen their applicants on the internet, searching for personal information that could be added to the information available in paper cv’s (Roberts and Roach, 2009). Whether this strategy creates added value, however, yet remains under debate. Research has long indicated that interviewers are sometimes biased in their hiring recommendations, drawing conclusions based on information unrelated to effective performance on the job at hand (Shannon and Stark, 2003; Dubois and Pansu, 2004; Purkiss et al., 2006). Frequent biases in selection interviews are decisions based on age (Perry, Kulik, and Bourhis, 1996; Hirsch et al., 2000; Maurer and Rafuse, 2001; Nelson, 2002; Weiss and Maurer, 2004; Lahey, 2008), gender (Hackman et al., 1992; Morrison et al., 1994; Swim et al., 1995; Harvie, Marshall-McCaskey, and Johnston, 1998; Riach and Rich, 2002), sexual orientation (Black et al., 2003; Blanford, 2003; Weichselbaumer, 2003; Drydakis, 2009), race (Cesare, 1996; Neumark et al., 1996; Kawakami et al., 1998; Riach and Rich, 2002; Pager, 2003), facial attractiveness (Luxen and van de Vijver, 2005; Tews, Stafford and Zhu, 2009), facial maturity (Zebrowitz and Montepart, 1990; Zebrowitz, Tenenbaum, and Goldstein, 1991), obesity (Klesges et al., 1990; Klasen, Jasper, and Harris, 1993; Pingitoire et al., 1994; Roehling, 1999; Swami et al., 2008; Rooth, 2009), handicap

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(Kalick, Zebrowitz, Langlois and Johnson, 1998), tattoos (Seiter and Hatch, 2005) and applicant name (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Fryer and Levitt, 2004; Smith et al., 2005; Fernandez and Fernandez-Mateo, 2006; Cotton, O’Neill and Griffin, 2008). Applicants are thereby stereotyped, believed to have the same desirable and undesirable traits as other members of that group (Lippman, 1998). Problematic in the selection phase, social networking sites also allow many of these biases to occur even before the first interview has taken place. Organizations often use the paper cv’s to reduce the number of applicants to be invited for an interview (Lievens et al, 2002). Online information about the applicant may now be added. On Facebook, most personal information is shielded from unconnected users by standard, but profile pictures are not. So unless applicants explicitly shield their profile picture, screening may be biased, and may result in a lower probability of being invited. Social networking sites may thus aggravate the situation, as suitable applicants are no longer able to compensate a possible bias with a positive performance in the selection interview. LinkedIn, on the other hand, heightens the risk of guilt-by-association errors to occur (Caers, 2008), as applicants’ networks are explicitly visualized.

Besides recruitment and selection, social networking sites may also affect retention policies (Cappelli, 2001). Users unwilling to change jobs will pass information about the vacancy to those they are connected with (Calvó-Armengol and Jackson, 2004). Once connected, employees may thus be better informed about job opportunities elsewhere. Moreover, they become more visible to competing organizations in search of staff and are more easily pinched away.

Finally, it should be noted that the impact of social networking sites may not yet be similar in different parts of the world, due to internet availability and literacy limitations (Hargittai, 2007), which also may allow demographical biases to arise.

SAMPLE & PROCEDURE

The data for this research is collected by means of a self-constructed questionnaire, based on recruitment and selection literature and piloted by 3 professionals. The time required to participate was estimated below 8 minutes.

The population targeted by this research is the entirety of Flemish professionals involved in the recruitment and selection of applicants. To reach as many R&S-professionals as possible, we cooperated with HR.square, Voka and Federgon. HR.square and Voka promoted the research in both their written and electronic newsletter. Federgon-members were only informed by email. Reference to the research included an invitation to participate, a link to the online questionnaire and contact information. As the newsletters are not exclusively sent to R&S-professionals, respondents were explicitly informed to only participate if they met the R&S condition. If not, respondents were asked to forward the questionnaire to their HR-department. The research was mentioned in four HR.square newsletters as a reminder, Voka submitted a reminder once. To increase the number of respondents, a mailing list of 2320 email addresses was created by the author herself, searching the internet for R&S-professionals and through job sites. Furthermore, two existing mailing lists were used: (1) a list of 2000 email addresses containing all business connections of the EHSAL Management School (EMS), and (2) a list of 6644 email addresses containing alumni of EMS’ post-graduate program on HRM. Circa 350 addresses were bounced, 50 were added using information in the automatic out-of-office replies. All emails from respondents requesting (future) information or commenting on the research received a response within 12 hours. Data was collected in February and March, 2010. Respondents participated voluntarily and did not receive payment for their participation.

We received a total of 712 questionnaires, of which 411 (57.7%) were completed. Tables 1 and 2 present a descriptive analysis of the database. Respondents come from different industries

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(Table 1), and while commercial services and the government are well-represented, none of them has a dominant weight in the database. The database is also well-balanced concerning the size of the organizations respondents are working for (Table 2), with SMEs (<50 employees) and large organizations (>250 employees) representing respectively 39.5% and 33.1%. The majority of respondents (71.3%) work for a for-profit organization (Table 3) and 71.8% of organizations have recruited less than 20 new employees in the past year (Table 4). The latter figure is reasonably high due to the presence of SMEs, with 85.2% of such businesses having attracted no more than 5 new employees (Table 5). More than half of large organizations in the database have attracted at least 30 new staff members in the past year. 58.4% of respondents have a LinkedIn-account, of which 29.1% are heavy users (daily use or at least every two days). 63.9% of respondents have a Facebook-account, of which 51.2% are heavy users (Table 6 and 7).

RESULTS

We first checked the statement that individuals use LinkedIn, and not Facebook, for professional purposes (Table 8).

Table 8 – The professional purposes of LinkedIn and Facebook

LinkedIn UsersNo LinkedIn

Users Facebook UsersNo Facebook

Users

Making professional appointments 45.7 46.2 5.8 92.5

Establish new business contacts 78.4 17.2 7 9.3

To be informed on friends’ career developments 82.3 11.8 32 59.9

Developments in other organizations 57.5 29 19.7 77.9

Table 8 clearly is in support of this statement. Although there do appears to be heterogeneity in how LinkedIn is used for making professional appointments, nearly 46% of respondents stating to use it and nearly as many not to use it, less than 6% would use Facebook to do so. LinkedIn is also more often used to establish new business contacts (78.4% compared to 7%), to be informed on friends’ career developments (82.3% compared to 32%) or on developments in other organizations (57.5% compared to 19,7%).

Concerning recruitment, respondents were first asked how frequently they used some popular recruitment instruments to communicate their vacancies (Table 9).

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Table 9 – The most popular recruitment instrument used by Flemish HR-professionals(1)

Never(2)

Seldom(3)

Occasionally(4)

Often(5)

Always (4) + (5)

Google 40.6 15.2 19.8 15.2 9.2 24.4

LinkedIn 22.7 16.2 25 19.9 16.2 36.1

Facebook 43.5 23.1 17.1 10.2 6 16.2

Corporate website 9.7 5.6 8.8 18.1 57.9 76

Online Ads 6.9 3.2 11.6 30.6 47.7 78.3

Printed Ads 25 23.6 26.4 16.7 8.3 25

Selection Agency 30.1 18.1 24.5 18.5 8.8 27.3

Employment agency 38 19 22.7 13 7.4 20.4

Job fairs 41.2 22.7 21.8 11.1 3.2 14.3

Table 9 clearly marks online job advertisements (78.3%) and the own corporate website (76%) as the recruitment instruments that are most frequently used. Surprisingly, LinkedIn already comes third, significantly outranking older instruments like selection or employment agencies, job fairs and even job advertisements in printed media. Communicating vacancies through Facebook clearly is a less popular recruitment strategy, with nearly 44% of respondents stating it is never used. These results should be interpreted with care. Instruments like selection agencies and job fairs are rather expensive and may therefore not be used by many SMEs while they are used by large organizations. The striking difference between printed and online job advertisements may also indicate respondents are working in organizations that are already more involved in e-recruitment than Flanders’ average.

Elaborating on this topic, respondents were asked whether LinkedIn and Facebook were used for active recruitment purposes (i.e. actively searching for potential applicants). Results indicate the use of LinkedIn in this case is quite heterogeneous (Table 10), with nearly 46% of respondents stating it is used and as many stating it is not. Facebook is clearly not frequently used for active recruitment, with 82.5% of respondents disagreeing with this statement. Both social networks are in this respect also mainly used for active external recruitment, as only 5.4% and 2.3% of respondents state to respectively use their LinkedIn and Facebook-account for active internal recruitment (Table 11). Concerning selection, respondents were asked whether they used LinkedIn and Facebook to find additional information about applicants they had to interview and to decide which applicants would be invited for an interview or not (Table 12). Two thirds of respondents admit using their LinkedIn-account to find additional information about the applicants, while Facebook is only used by 44%. Interestingly, information searching on social network sites is not only mainly meant to improve the quality of the selection interview. 26.4% and 14.5% of respondents claim to use respectively their LinkedIn and Facebook-account to decide who will be invited for an interview in the first place (Table 13).

As we expected both social networks to be used for information gathering, we also asked respondents whether they believed these networks could help to put an individual in a good (or better) perspective. As expected, a large majority of respondents (79.3%) agree that LinkedIn can help to promote oneself when references to trainings and professional experiences are posted on the LinkedIn- account (Table 14). In contrast, nearly the same majority of respondents believe Facebook

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will not help. Remarkably, 36.8% of respondents state that you indeed improve the image others have of you when you show on your LinkedIn-account that you know many people (Table 15). In contrast, only 7% of respondents state Facebook can help doing that. Knowing many individuals in your professional life thus appears to mean something different then knowing many in your personal life. Searching for a potential guilt-by-association error, we also asked respondents whether one could promote himself by showing that he/she has important or powerful friends (Table 16). Surprisingly, 40% of respondents agree with this statement. 84.2% of respondents state that having powerful Facebook-friends will not help to promote yourself. Again, there appears to be a difference whether you know someone professionally or personally. Popular media have suggested LinkedIn-users to accept everyone who requests to be added to your network, even when you barely know these individuals. When all users would follow this strategy, the size of the network and the importance of the connections would be a very weak signal. We asked respondents whether they believed one should follow this rule. Results indicate nearly 3 out of 4 respondents advice not to accept someone you do not really know (Table 17), protecting the perceived quality of the signal.

Focusing on Facebook, it was investigated what content decision makers would evaluate when applicants’ Facebook-accounts are publicly available (Table 18).

Table 18 – The extent of HR-professionals checking available Facebook-accountsFrequency Valid Percent

Do not check Facebook 34 20

Check only profile picture 6 3.5

Check profile picture and information below ‘info’ 24 14.1

Check all available information 106 62.4

Total 170 100

62.4% of respondents admit to check all available information in that case. Only 20% would not look at these Facebook-accounts, 80% would at least have seen the profile picture. Unlike what is argued in popular media, a large majority of respondents (95%) refrains from sending a friend request to applicants when the Facebook-account is not publicly available (Table 19).

As it is likely some R&S-professionals see an applicant’s profile picture, we investigated the signals these decision makers believe to notice. The majority of respondents, respectively 70%, 68% and 61%, do not believe a profile picture tells something about the applicant’s reliability, emotional stability or agreeableness (Table 20). In both cases, only a small minority believes in a correlation, 1 out of 5 has doubts. However, a remarkable 40.6% of respondents believe the profile picture provides a signal on extraversion and 42.3% see a correlation with maturity (Table 21). Concerning the relationship between an applicant’s profile picture and healthy life style, intelligence or whether he/she likes to show off, it is apparent that while a majority disagrees with the statement, around 1 out of 4 respondents still has doubts on whether this is true or not (Table 22). A majority of respondents (58.3%) does not believe that applicants with leadership capacities have a different profile picture than other applicants, claiming leadership capacities cannot be deducted from a picture (Table 23). Also, 25% doubts whether it is true or not. Finally, the majority of respondents (53.4%) disagree serious applicants have more serious profile pictures.

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Table 24 – The policies in Flemish organizations concerning LinkedIn and FacebookLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Valid Percent Frequency Valid PercentAsk to put vacancies on SNS 35 21.6 15 9.3

Ask to put no vacancies on SNS 4 2.5 3 1.9

Compel to put vacancies on SNS 1 0.6 0 0

Forbid to put vacancies on SNS 2 1.2 9 5.6

No policy concerning SNS 120 74.1 135 83.3

Total 162 100 162 100

Given that social networks are used by R&S-professionals, we investigated whether Flemish organizations have developed a policy for the use of social networks in recruitment efforts. We asked whether respondents were asked to put vacancies on LinkedIn or Facebook, asked not to, obliged to or forbidden to do so. For both Facebook and LinkedIn, Flemish organizations in general do not yet have such policies. The majority of respondents, respectively 74% and 83%, state their organization does not specify anything on this matter (Table 24). Only 21.6% of respondents are asked to put vacancies on their LinkedIn-accounts, less than 10% to put in on their Facebook-accounts. In contrast with some recent research (De Morgen, 2008; De Standaard, 2010), a large majority of respondents (82.1%) is allowed to use social networks during work hours, only 26.5% should wait for a work break and 50% may even use it for personal purposes (Table 25).

Table 25 – The extent to which Flemish HR-professionals allow their employees to use LinkedIn and Facebook during the working hours

Frequency Valid Percent

Allow to use SNS 39 24.1

82.1Only for professional purposes 51 31.5

Only during the work break 43 26.5

Do not Allow to use SNS 29 17.9

Total 163 100

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CONCLUSION

This study shows LinkedIn and Facebook, although used differently, are used by Flemish decision makers in both SMEs and large organizations during recruitment and selection processes. In the recruitment phase, LinkedIn is more often used than Facebook, the latter considered less professional as the former, to communicate vacancies to the outside world and to actively search for potential applicants. Concerning selection, both LinkedIn and Facebook are used by many respondents to increase the volume of information available for the selection interview and for a minority of decision makers to decide on invitations to a first selection interview. Information available on SNSs may thus affect applicants’ success of being invited. Decision makers do value the information on LinkedIn differently from information on Facebook, marking the benefit of LinkedIn to promote ones training and work experience. Despite this view on LinkedIn, most professionals admit they would look to all information on Facebook if it is publicly available. The hypothesis that SNSs may allow often cited biases to occur earlier in the selection process is supported, with decision makers stating to be able to draw conclusions on personality dimensions and behavior from applicants’ profile pictures. This research thus highlights the importance of an increased awareness among applicants on the effects of their social network accounts on their application success, both in a possibly positive and negative sense, and of anti-bias interviewer training. Organizational policy making should then be able to contribute to the success of recruitment and selection efforts in the social network era.

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APPENDIX

Table 1 – The division of the respondents over the different industriesFrequency Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Food and Agriculture 7 1.7 1.7

Textile and Clothing 2 0.5 2.2

Manufacturing Industry 32 7.8 10.0

IT 24 5.8 15.8

Building Industry 20 4.9 20.7

Retail Trade 8 1.9 22.6

Hotel and Catering Industry 7 1.7 24.3

Transport and Logistics 13 3.2 27.5

Financial Industry 19 4.6 32.1

Government 47 11.4 43.6

Commercial Services 95 23.1 66.7

Social Services 33 8.0 74.7

Cultural Industry 7 1.7 76.4

Others 97 23.6 100

Total 411 100.0

Table 2 – A summary of the sizes of the representing organizationsFrequency Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

0 – 10 62 15.1 15.1

10 – 20 48 11.7 26.8

20 – 30 29 7.1 33.8

30 – 50 23 5.6 39.4

50 – 100 44 10.7 50.1

100 – 150 31 7.5 57.7

150 – 200 23 5.6 63.3

200 – 250 15 3.6 66.9

>250 136 33.1 100

Total 411 100

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Table 3 – The division of the respondents based on profit and non-profitFrequency Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Profit Organizations 293 71.3 71.3

Non-profit Organizations 65 15.8 87.1

Government 53 12.9 100

Total 411 100

Table 4 –The number of hired employees during the past year

Frequency Valid PercentCumulative

Percent

0 – 5 169 41.1 41.1

5 – 10 76 18.5 59.6

10 – 20 50 12.2 71.8

20 – 30 30 7.3 79.1

30 – 40 23 5.6 84.7

40 – 50 11 2.7 87.3

>50 52 12.7 100

Total 411 100

Table 5 – Number of new hired employees during the last year (SMEs versus Large Organizations)SMEs (<50 employees) Large Organizations (>250 employees)

Frequency Percent Frequency Percent0 – 5 138 85.2 9 6.6

5 – 10 18 11.1 16 11.8

10 – 20 5 3.1 16 11.8

20 – 30 1 0.6 19 14

30 – 40 0 0 16 11.8

40 – 50 0 0 9 6.6

>50 0 0 51 37.5

Total 162 100 136 100

Table 6 – The respondents who have an account and the ones who do notLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Cumulative Percent Frequency Cumulative PercentAccount 417 58.6 447 62.8

No Account 295 41.4 253 35.5

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Total 712 100 712 100

Table 7 – The Usage of LinkedIn and FacebookLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Cumulative Percent Frequency Cumulative PercentDaily users 47 19.3 81 33.2

Least every two days 24 29.1 44 51.2

Weekly users 69 57.4 65 77.9

Least every two weeks 40 73.8 22 86.9

Monthly users 64 100 32 100

Total 244 244

Table 8 – The professional purposes of LinkedIn and Facebook

LinkedIn UsersNo LinkedIn

Users Facebook UsersNo Facebook

Users

Making professional appointments 45.7 46.2 5.8 92.5

Establish new business contacts 78.4 17.2 7 9.3

To be informed on friends’ career developments 82.3 11.8 32 59.9

Developments in other organizations 57.5 29 19.7 77.9

Table 9 – The most popular recruitment instrument used by Flemish HR-professionals(1)

Never(2)

Seldom(3)

Occasionally(4)

Often(5)

Always (4) + (5)

Google 40.6 15.2 19.8 15.2 9.2 24.4

LinkedIn 22.7 16.2 25 19.9 16.2 36.1

Facebook 43.5 23.1 17.1 10.2 6 16.2

Corporate website 9.7 5.6 8.8 18.1 57.9 76

Online Ads 6.9 3.2 11.6 30.6 47.7 78.3

Printed Ads 25 23.6 26.4 16.7 8.3 25

Selection Agency 30.1 18.1 24.5 18.5 8.8 27.3

Employment agency 38 19 22.7 13 7.4 20.4

Job fairs 41.2 22.7 21.8 11.1 3.2 14.3

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Table 10 – LinkedIn and Facebook used for active external recruitmentLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Valid Percent Frequency Valid PercentDisagree 46 24.7

45.7106 61.6

82.5Rather disagree 39 21.0 36 20.9

Disagree/Agree 16 8.6 3 1.7

Rather agree 36 19.445.7

23 13.415.7

Agree 49 26.3 4 2.3

Total 186 100 172 100

Table 11 – LinkedIn and Facebook used for active internal recruitmentLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Valid Percent Frequency Valid PercentDisagree 103 55.4 82.3 121 70.3 89.5

Rather disagree 50 26.9 33 19.2


Rather agree 6 3.2 5.4 3 1.7 2.3

Agree 4 2.2 1 0.6

Total 186 100 172 100

Table 12 – LinkedIn and Facebook used for additional informationLinkedIn Facebook


27.460 34.9




52 30.244.2

Agree 50 26.9 24 14.0

Total 186 100 172 100

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Table 13 – LinkedIn and Facebook used to make a first selectionLinkedIn Facebook


60.8108 62.8




16 9.314.5

Agree 18 9.7 9 5.2

Total 186 100 172 100

Table 14 – The importance of trainings and professional experiencesLinkedIn Facebook


10.398 57.3




24 14.014.6

Agree 26 14.9 1 0.6

Total 174 100 171 100

Table 15 – The importance of knowing many peopleLinkedIn Facebook


42.5110 60

88.3Rather disagree 51 29.3 41 24



11 6.47

Agree 9 5.2 4 0.6

Total 174 100 171 100

20

Table 16 – The importance of knowing important or powerful friendsLinkedIn Facebook


40.8107 62.6




17 9.910.5

Agree 11 6.3 1 0.6

Total 174 100 171 100

Table 17 – The importance of accepting requests (LinkedIn) of unknownFrequency Valid Percent

Disagree 60 34.574.2

Rather disagree 69 39.7

Disagree/Agree 9 5.2


Agree 9 5.2

Total 174 100

Table 18 – The extent of HR-professionals checking available Facebook-accountsFrequency Valid Percent

Do not check Facebook 34 20

Check only profile picture 6 3.5

Check profile picture and information below ‘info’ 24 14.1

Check all available information 106 62.4

Total 170 100

Table 19 – The extent of HR-professionals sending friend requests in case of unavailable Facebook-accounts


Send always a friend request 2 1.2

Only, when no other information is available 7 4.1

Never send a friend request 162 94.7

Total 171 100

21

Table 20 – The correlation between the profile picture and Reliability, Emotional stability and Agreeableness,

Reliability Emotional stability Agreeableness

FrequencyValid

Percent FrequencyValid


PercentDisagree 59 36.2

69.950 29.4

68.245 26.5

61.2Rather disagree 55 33.7 66 38.8 59 34.7

Disagree / Agree 41 25.2 35 20.6 39 22.9


15 8.811.2

25 14.715.9

Agree 3 1.8 4 2.4 2 1.2

Total 163 100 170 100 170 100

Table 21 – The correlation between the profile picture and Extraversion and MaturityExtraversion Maturity

Frequency Valid Percent Frequency Valid PercentDisagree 34 20

42.934 20.9




58 35.642.3

Agree 7 4.1 11 6.7

Total 170 100 163 100

Table 22 – The correlation between Healthy life style, Intelligence and ‘Likeliness to show off’Healthy life style Intelligence ‘Likeliness to show off’

FrequencyValid



PercentDisagree 43 26.4

60.856 34.4

69.240 24.5

52.1Rather disagree 56 34.4 47 28.8 45 27.6

Disagree / Agree 43 26.4 39 23.9 32 19.6


16 9.812.9

42 25.828.3

Agree 2 1.2 5 3.1 4 2.5

Total 163 100 163 100 163 100

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Table 23 – The correlation between Leadership capacities and Seriousness profile picturesLeadership capacities Seriousness profile pictures


58.342 25.8




34 20.923.4

Agree 3 1.8 4 2.5

Total 163 100 163 100

Table 24 – The policies in Flemish organizations concerning LinkedIn and FacebookLinkedIn Facebook

Frequency Valid Percent Frequency Valid PercentAsk to put vacancies on SNS 35 21.6 15 9.3

Ask to put no vacancies on SNS 4 2.5 3 1.9

Compel to put vacancies on SNS 1 0.6 0 0

Forbid to put vacancies on SNS 2 1.2 9 5.6

No policy concerning SNS 120 74.1 135 83.3

Total 162 100 162 100

Table –25 – The extent to which Flemish HR-professionals allow their employees to use LinkedIn and Facebook during the working hours


Allow to use of SNS 39 24.1

82.1Only for professional purposes 51 31.5

Only during the work break 43 26.5

Do not Allow to use SNS 29 17.9

Total 163 100

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