Social media has influenced our lives like nothing else in the past few years and have pervaded not only personal lives but has also great impact on businesses and its processes. More and more HR managers are using social media in their communication, recruitment and screening processes. A survey conducted on use of social media in background screening found out the following.
45% of employers use social sites to screen potential hires, of which the media used are as follows.
- 29% use Facebook
- 26% use LinkedIn
- 11% use blogs
- 7% use twitter
35% of employers discovered social content that caused them not to hire a candidate
- 53% – provocative or inappropriate photos or other information
- 44% – content about alcohol or drug use
- 35% – bad-mouthing previous employers, co-workers, or clients
- 29% – poor communication skills
- 26% – discriminatory comments
- 24% – lies about qualifications
- 20% – confidential information about a prior employer
As the use of social media as a recruiting tool matures, staffing and talent management companies are applying lessons learned and fine-tuning their social strategies to help close the still-considerable gap between hype and hiring results of these popular networks. These next-generation approaches go beyond creating LinkedIn or Facebook careers pages, tweeting out job openings and making online application processes as user-friendly or compliant as possible. Companies are increasingly using social media to reach out to passive candidates by sending out positive messages on their work culture etc.
Social media to be an effective recruitment tool in the hands of a recruiter should be used creatively by being used more as a marketing and branding medium rather than for pushing jobs to prospective candidates. Regardless of its many applications, social media recruiting is here to stay. What remains to be seen is whether new technologies and innovations can make it more of a comprehensive resource for corporate recruiters in the hiring game.
