January 2019 RSN904: Social Media Recruitment and Selection Analysis

This report provides a critical analysis of social media's influence and biases in recruitment and selection, focusing on the context of the Maldives. It begins by highlighting the labor crisis faced by Maldivian businesses and the failure of traditional recruitment methods. The report then explores the rise of e-recruitment and social media recruitment, particularly through platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, as strategies to overcome these challenges. It discusses the advantages of these approaches, such as cost-effectiveness and wider candidate reach, while also addressing potential biases and challenges, including limited internet access in the Maldives. The report concludes with recommendations for firms to adopt a balanced approach and offers strategies to improve recruitment outcomes. The research draws upon various academic sources to support its arguments and recommendations.

SOCIAL MEDIA
RECRUITMENT
AND SELECTION
INFLUENCES AND BIASES

INTRODUCTION
 The wicked problem of labor crisis is
adversely affecting the business or the
organizational prospects of the different
firms.
 Derous, Pepermans and Ryan (2017)
have noted that the traditional
approaches to recruitment and selection
had failed to meet the increasing labor
demands of the business firms.
 The HRs and firms are turning towards
the methods of e-recruitment and social
media recruitment to hire new
employees

MALDIVES: AN OVERVIEW
 Maldives, an Asian island nation, is located
to the south of the nation of India in the
Indian Ocean (Maldivesinfo.gov.mv, 2019).
 Maldives has a land area of only 286 sq.
km
 Maldives is known for its picturesque
beauty which is one of the major reasons
for the large number of Asian and
international tourists that the nation gets
(Maldivesinfo.gov.mv, 2019).
 Ladkin and Buhalis (2016) have stated that
despite the geographical and political
challenges that the nation faces, it had been
able to make a significant advancements in
terms of trade and commerce.

BUSINESS WORLD OF
MALDIVES
 Tourism and hospitality industry forms
the backbone of the national economy of
the concerned nation.
 Maldives is home to some of the most
reputed business firms of the world like
“Allied Insurance Company”, “Maldives
Gas Pvt. Ltd”, “Fuel Supplies Maldives
Pvt. Ltd”, “Lafarge Maldives Cement Pvt.
Ltd”, “STO Hotels and Resorts Pvt. Ltd”
and others (Maldivesinfo.gov.mv, 2019).
 One of the major problems that these
firms and their HRs face is their inability
to hire the right number of kind of
employees.

LABOR CRISIS IN
MALDIVES
 According to Maldivesindependent.com
(2019), although the unemployment
rate of the nation is 5%.
 There are more than 70,000 new job
openings in the concerned nation for
which the firms cannot get suitable
candidates (Maldivesindependent.com,
2019).
 The usage of traditional recruitment and
selection processes by the firms have
failed to resolve the labor crisis faced
by them.

RECRUITMENT AND
SELECTION
 El Ouirdi et al. (2016) have noted that
one of the most important job roles of
the HRs in firms is to recruit new
candidates.
 The HRs for recruiting candidates
generally conduct interviews with the
candidates who had responded to the job
advertisements placed by them in the
traditional media tools like newspapers,
radio, television and others (Jeske &
Shultz, 2016).
 The use of this approach had failed to
meet the ever increasing labor needs of
the modern firms

CHALLENGES OF TRADITIONAL
RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
 Traditional recruitment and selection used by the HRs takes
a significant amount of time as well as other resources of the
firms.
 The firms fail to get the kind of candidates that they are
looking for
 Maldivian business firms like “STO Hotels and Resorts Pvt.
Ltd”, “Fuel Supplies Maldives Pvt. Ltd” and other in the
past used despite investing a significant amount of capital
for placing advertisements in the newspapers, magazines,
radio, television and others failed to get adequate number of
employees (Maldivesindependent.com, 2019).
 This in turn adversely affects the business or the
organizational prospects of the firms in a significant manner
 This can be explained on the basis of the fact that the overall
performance of a firm depends on the individual
productivity of the employees (Sameen & Cornelius, 2015)

E-RECRUITMENT AND SOCIAL
MEDIA RECRUITMENT
 As opined by Kissel and Büttgen (2015),
the usage of e-recruitment and social
media recruitment strategies can be seen
as an attempt on the part of the firms to
overcome the short-comings of the
traditional recruitment process.
 The extensive usage these strategies can
be seen as an attempt on the part of the
firms to adjust to the recent
developments within the business world.
 Majority of the international firms are
using these strategies to overcome the
labor crisis that they are presently facing

E-RECRUITMENT AND SOCIAL
MEDIA RECRUITMENT (CONT….)
 Roth et al. (2016) have stated that the use of
these strategies requires the firms to place job
advertisements over the online job portals
 The HRs have the option the view the profile
of the candidates and check their
qualification and after that arrange for the
interview
 Firms like “STO Hotels and Resorts Pvt.
Ltd” and others are resorting to the usage of
these strategies for the hiring the right kind
of employees
 Two of the most important media platforms
in this regard are Facebook and LinkedIn

LINKEDIN
 HRs related to the Maldivian firms
related to the tourism and hospitality
sector like “STO Hotels and Resorts Pvt.
Ltd” and others are extensively using
LinkedIn to advertise job vacancies.
 The candidates have the option to apply
to these job advertisements and checking
their expertise the HRs can contact them
 This actually saves a lot of valuable time
and resources of the firms and enables
them to get qualified professional
employees

FACEBOOK
 Facebook is another important media
platform which is being used for the
recruitment of employees in Maldives and
all over the world
 Just like in LinkedIn, the HRs need to place
job advertisements over here also or else
they have the option to create a fan pages
wherein they can advertise the job openings
 The HRs can analyze the expertise and
qualification level of the candidates who
have applied from the details that they have
offered over their profile or in the resumes
that they send via mail.

SHORT-LISTING OF
CANDIDATES
 The HRs conduct the short-listing of
candidates by going through their
online profiles or the resumes that
they have sent to them via email.
 The HRs also have the option to
directly call up the candidates who
match the eligibility criteria of the
job designations for which they are
hiring
 On the basis of the eligibility of the
candidates interviews are being
scheduled