The use of social media impacts our lives in many
ways. There are so many sites at there that sometimes it is hard to weed
through them. This also pertains to
recruiting and hiring. Even with what we
learn with a degree in HRTD we need to branch out and use what is called social
media outlets. There are both advantages
and disadvantages for using social media sites for hiring and recruiting. With tools such as Google and popular social
media sites an employer can gather a lot more information on a candidate that
what a paper resume would ever tell. Thanks to social media it is easier for
jobseekers to connect with opportunities that meet their specific
abilities. Seems that no one uses the
newspaper anymore. Employers can target
specific candidates through social networking.
LinkedIn is a very popular one and this save companies’ time and money
by not having to advertise and sort through hundreds of resumes.
Some of the disadvantages are that employers have to
be careful about what information they are accessing through a candidates
social media profile. They also need to
keep in mind that their social media profile does not always give the best
overview of a potential employee and may miss out on a great employee by
looking at the little picture. We had
something similar to this happen here in Pocatello last fall. Someone saw a picture of a coach they didn't
like. They went to the school board and
demanded she be let go. It didn't matter
that she was an awesome coach and was an amazing example to her team, someone
saw something on Facebook and that was all it took to start legal action. They didn't look at the big picture.
I want to share an experience I had this last week with social media and recruiting. We have been trying to recruit for one last VISTA worker in our department. My boss has been trying for a couple of months with no success. We are on a deadline and last thursday he asked me to try to do some recruiting for this position. He was stumped as to what to do. I got on Facebook and went to a page where people are looking for employment and posting for employment opportunities. I had four responses within an hour. I started the interview process today and end tomorrow because of the deadline. But I will say that in one day on social media, I found more qualified candidates than the boss did in traditional ways...networking, old databases and an ad in the paper...over a two month period.
I did check out their Facebook pages and although I wasn't thrilled with what I saw, I didn't see anything that was really offensive. I had to stop and realize that what is on their Facebook page doesn't necessarily reflect their buiness side. I had to stop and wonder what a perspective employer would think if they went to my page. My Facebook page is purely personal and although it does reflect my personality it show nothing about my professional side. I had to keep that in mind and go into the interviews not thinking about what I saw on their pages.
This experience has truly reinforced with me the value and the power of social media. There are so many people out there looking and these days, everyone relies on technology and social media. Even the boss was amazed and how quickly I had good candidates. I need to get him up to speed on social media. It is the way of the future and a very efficient way. Really excited to learn more on social media. I can truly see the value in it and how it could make my job in the future much easier. #techhrd
That is a great example of the power of social media in recruiting prospective employees! I think that it is easy to continue to advertise jobs the way it's always been done, but if we want to recruit more effectively, we need to evolve and utilize social media as the tool it can be. I also agree that we shouldn't judge someone's professional attributes by their personal social media page. I think we should take it into consideration but be aware of the big picture.
ReplyDeleteKathy,
ReplyDeleteI have been a recruiter and i used the internet to seek out potential candidates. It is an amazing tool and I hope more people use it as a way to find employment and hire personnel. I went on LinkedIn the other day and found a job in Las Vegas that really interested me; I was able to click on apply for job and my linkedIn information was sent directly to the employer. I have been teaching people how to compile a resume for many many years; often teaching them to compile multiple resumes for different positions. This is time consuming and sometimes daunting but the one touch operation through LinkedIn is simple, easy, and I think that if more employers used it, they would have a great selection of candidates from across the world. I liked your post, thank you for sharing.
Hello Kathy,
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting information. Thank you for taking the time to type all of that out. It's really cool what avenues the these websites have created for us that we may have never found elsewhere. On the other hand, it's scary what people can get into abusing these avenues.
Aby