can someone outline the impact social media has had in the recruitment process specifically within the workplace. Has the impact been positive?? negative?? can you give pros and cons of social media in the recruitment process?? cheers
Re: help a brother out
Extremely positive. Recruiting and hiring is expensive. Social media saves you a ton of time plus gives you tenfold the exposure to potential talent pool and potential opportunities alike. Not to mention all this while being extremely cost effective.
Cons are that what someone does in their personal life impacts hiring decisions more, it has possibilities of abuse. There is more information that someone otherwise would not have access to, political or religious views, social life, personal preferences etc.
So in my view put the best foot forward and don't provide anyone with reasons to exclude you from the short lost.
Re: help a brother out
Good point, X2. Come to think of it, the social media recruitment has been more so a positive thing for the employers, ie saving time, money, etc., but as an applicant, it has in some ways seriously compromised our privacy. Especially when some employers started to request Facebook passwords (which is beyond unreasonable) and/or solely making decisions based on the content of a personal FB profile.
Fortunately, most reasonable hiring managers understand that a professional profile on LinkedIn + resume + an interview = a better predictor of success than a FB profile where the best of us go to slack off a bit.
Re: help a brother out
Its been positive for applicants too, U can see my endorsements, recommendations on Linkedin, influence level (which can be gamed) on klout and kred and peerindex, you can see my followers on twitter, get a better idea of what I bring to the table.
Smart candidates can make social media set them apart, not so smart ones can shoot themselves in the foot.
its not always abuse by employers either, like where they found pics of someone doing drugs or posts to that effect and all..and said no.
However recruiters are human and they have biases, One advise I got ages ago was that if the resume is not going to a hiring manager via internal referral and you have an idea of the hiring manager, take things off that may get a reaction. e.g. I was asked to remove the fact that I was the VP of a college fraternity because someone may have negative views or negative experience with fraternities and then that shadows my ability and fit etc. I mean some of it is taking things too far because if you have to be an automaton devoid of personality or walking on eggshells hiding who you are to get a role, then its probably not the place for you long term anyways, but then some level of curating self makes sense too.
Re: help a brother out
Agreed on 'it's only as good as we make it' as potential candidates. Reminds me of the quote, “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”
Again the responsibility and the onus is on us as applicants to have a clean google search - which isn't an easy task since a large proportion of the workforce today joined social media sites as carefree, hot-headed and sharped-tongued students!