Internet revolution has brought in drastic changes in the way people communicate with each other. Social media comprising of web based and mobile technologies have transformed communication in to a social interaction for generating value for their users. This highly interactive medium has now become an inevitable part of human life, influencing all walks of life. From its initial intentions of interconnecting personal networks, social media influence diverse fields like business networking, marketing, recruiting etc. With the widespread reach and influence, organizations have now started to explore the possibilities of social media in recruitment processes. This benefits companies with its cost effective and convenient way compared to the traditional approaches like job boards, newspaper ads, job site ads, etc.
According to a 2011 survey on social media recruiting conducted by Jobvite, a social media recruiting company:-
- Over 89 % of the organizations are planning to recruit through social media- an increase from 83 % in 2010.
- 55% of the respondents are planning to increase their spending on social media recruiting
- Referrals, direct sourcing and social networks were the top rated external sources for quality candidates.
- LinkedIn was the most used social media for recruiting with 87% of the survey respondents using it.
- Facebook comes next with 55% and Twitter with 47%.
The survey underlines the changing social media trends in the recruiting industry. Social media connects people in a better way compared to the different media. Statistics reports reveal that around 2 billion people, all over the world are accessing social media, with over 135 million members on LinkedIn, 175 million users on Twitter and 500 million active users on Facebook. The large user base offers an attractive platform for employersto select the skilful candidates through transparent recruiting procedures.
Small to large enterprises are viewing social media as an effective tool for finding the right candidates for their job openings. This helps the recruitment industry in a greater way along with the traditional means of accessing employees like job boards, campus recruitment, referrals, job sites, and internal transfers. Small enterprises also benefit heavily from social media as frequent advertising on paid job sites and print media have become rather expensive. Social media offer employers opportunities to advertise positions free of cost in these channels. Employers can easily validate and choose their desired candidates from a specific group matching their job requirement. For example, employers can access Mainframe professionals in LinkedIn from an exclusive group for Mainframe professionals named “Mainframe experts network”.
Students and young professionals are the driving force for social media. They can stay informed about industry pulses, maintain an online professional identity and network with people having the same area of interest. A well-maintained online professional identity along with good network can help users in finding a desirable job of their interest area. Professional networking opportunities in social media offer productive referral engagements for the members.
Social media can be considered as an emerging medium of recruiting, but not the silver bullet solution. Substantial efforts should be taken to optimize social media for using it as a critical instrument in recruiting. Job seekers should keep an eye on better utilizing the positive outcomes of social media for their professional as well as personal networking. Communication revolution and internet revolution have drastically changed the way people communicate with each other and do business. Changing roles of social media are examples example for this. The revolution in recruitment industry has just begun only. We have to wait for the future to analyse the huge potential or the perils with social media.
Let us analyse in our next blog, how the various social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc influence in job recruitment.
