The Rise of Social Media Recruiting: Opportunities and Challenges

Social media recruiting has significantly evolved over recent years, serving as an essential tool for recruiters aiming to attract and engage potential candidates efficiently. While it offers substantial benefits by allowing companies to reach a vast pool of applicants and communicate directly with them, it also presents challenges such as the reliability of information and intense competition among firms in similar industries. This assignment will explore these dynamics, requiring students to analyze the impact of social media on recruitment processes and consider how recruiters can leverage this tool while mitigating its inherent drawbacks.

Running head: Social media in recruitment and selection
Human resource management
Social media in recruitment and selection

Social media in recruitment and selection 1
Introduction
Recruitment is one of the most critical aspects of human resource management in any
organization. Recruiting is the process of hiring the right people for the right job and at the right
time. It is a core function of human resource management and involves attracting, shortlisting,
selecting and appointing suitable candidates for the job (Khammuang, 2014). Recruiters have
been using various tools to reach out to the right candidates. There are a number of recruiting
agents who bridge the distance between candidates and recruiters. Most organizations provide
newspapers and website advertisements if they are looking for employees. Job hunt portals are
also gaining ground among various recruiters as it brings together a large number of candidates
and recruiters on the same platform. Increasingly, many organizations have started using social
media as a tool to recruit for their businesses. Social media recruiting has its pros and cons but is
now definitely gaining impetus among recruiters (Nothelle, 2014). This report throws light on
the increasing awareness and usage of social media recruiting among various organizations.
Creative social media tactics used in recruitment
Instagram stories
Instagram stories are a newly added feature by Instagram where whatever the users post gets deleted in
24 hours automatically. Organizations and recruiters can use Instagram stories as a way to update users
about job openings. The pictures they post can help candidates gain awareness about the organizational
culture. Stories can also be put about the recruitment process showcasing the number of applications
received and interviews conducted. Keeping candidates aware all the time would get them interested in
for the job and because the stories get deleted in 24 hours, recruiting organization can upload as many
stories as it wants and it would not unnecessarily occupy the entire page like Facebook.
Snapchat
Most organizations have not yet used Snapchat as a tool to get candidates. Firstly, the company must
make an active Snapchat page and ensure it gets followers by placing there snapcode on every
promotional material possible. Once the snap page gets followers, the organizations can use Snapchat

Social media in recruitment and selection 2
stories to make people aware of job openings, job descriptions, their expectations from the candidate
and interview procedures etc.
Sell your product
Selling your product while attracting candidates is an extremely creative way to brand the organization
and increase awareness. For example, if Zomato is hiring, then it can advertise its jobs and for every
candidate referred by a user, Zomato can add $10 in their Zomato account to be used on their next
purchase. Flipkart, myntra, amazon and other shopping websites can do the same and offer discounts to
users to refer candidates for suitable job openings.
Benefits of social media recruiting
Increased job visibility
Every time a recruiter posts about a job prospect on social media websites like Facebook or
LinkedIn. Both the websites have millions of active users and hence it becomes easier for
recruiters to reach out to a large number of candidates using a single platform. Other than 1.5
billion active users, there are various pages on Facebook which are designed specifically for
recruiters to post jobs. LinkedIn on the other hand, has 467 million active users (Kaplan, 2010).
Organizations have their own profiles and a separate ‘jobs’ section allows users to apply to
sundry opportunities available. Every candidate can filter from available jobs based upon their
preferred location, expected salaries, profile and industry.
Placing and promoting jobs on social media websites is sure to increase the visibility of the job
and help recruiters reach out to a much larger audience using a single platform. It has been noted
that greater the visibility of the job on social media, greater are the number of candidates who
apply for the same. This in turn leads to overall efficiency in recruiting.
Improved quality of hire
59% of recruiters believe that candidates sourced from social media are better quality candidates
as compared to other tools. Using social media, allows the recruiter to filter candidates and target

Social media in recruitment and selection 3
them based on their demographics, interests, skills, work history and even peer group (Joos,
2010). LinkedIn is specifically beneficial for approaching and attracting candidates based on
their work history. On the other hand, twitter and Facebook are better tools to hire candidates
based on their interests and social circle.
Organizational culture is one of the most crucial aspects of any employee’s work life. The
companies have an option of promoting their organizational culture through social media and
hence the employees become more aware of the same while applying for the job (Schiller, 2013).
Some organizations believe in posting about their office parties and informal culture while others
post about the strict discipline and professionalism they entail. This makes it easier for
candidates to filter the organizations before applying for jobs.
More referrals
Referrals are the most efficient way to recruit as the person referring is already employed with
the company and hence has a deeper sense of ownership as compared to recruiting agents.
Whenever there is a job opening in any organization, employees are urged to share the details of
the same on their Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and even Instagram pages. These shares gain
traction among likeminded peers of the employee (Wichelmann, 2013). Hiring through referrals
entails a higher level of trust and dependency on the candidate. It also makes the process of
interviewing and selection smoother for the employee.
Reduced cost of hiring
Although it is a myth that social media recruiting is free, it is not. But most job portals and hiring
agents are expensive while social media promotions are not. In fact creating a page or profile for
an organization is practically free of cost. The interested candidates will follow the page and gain
awareness about the company. Social recruiting is hence the most efficient way to reach out to a
larger audience at much lesser cost (Barnes, 2011).
Engagement
Social recruiting is the best way to engage with candidates and other eminent people of the
industry. Unlike other recruiting tools, social media recruiting is a two way communication and

Social media in recruitment and selection 4
enables firms to make candidates aware about the brand. Organizations often continue to post
details about their culture and upcoming events on social media even when they are not hiring.
This way, the audience is aware about the firm and hence leads to a higher TOMA (Top of the
mind awareness) score (Qualmann, 2010). Therefore, whenever the firm has an opening,
candidates would be better aware about the organization and can hence make an informed
decision.
Besides websites like Facebook and Twitter, GlassDoor is also used as an efficient tool to engage
interested candidates. GlassDoor is used as a tool where currently recruited or previously
employed people of the organizations share their experiences about their work. These reviews
are unbiased, not monitored by the organization and hence provide a clear picture to candidates
about the organization.
Reservations against social recruiting
Recruitment is not the primary purpose on social media
Social media recruiting is still a budding trend, however, it is not the primary purpose for social
media users. LinkedIn is a comparatively better tool in this regard but Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram are primarily used by people to connect with other and build, develop and establish a
social life. Therefore it gets increasingly difficult to target the right people who are genuinely
interested in getting a job (Madia, 2011). Simply put, if a particular organization has over 50000
followers, only 10% of them would be sincere candidates.
On the other hand, recruiting agents and publishing advertisements on company websites and
newspapers is a better way to connect to the right candidates. Hence this takes much lesser time
as compared to social media recruitment.
Excessive unnecessary information
Social media is filled with excessive details about the individuals most of which are not related
to their work life. It has also been noticed that a lot of information people upload on their social
networks describe little true knowledge about them and hence cannot be used by recruiters. Most
of the youth and their facebook, Instagram or twitter pages are occupied with parties, friends,

Social media in recruitment and selection 5
economic or political opinions and pictures of their family. None of these are important to
recruiters and hence it becomes difficult for the employer to shortlist candidates solely based on
their social media profile.
Information not reliable
The information available on the social media websites are not reliable. There is no way of
knowing if the information is correct. Secondly the data or information available may not be
practically useful. Thirdly, there is no way of using the information available on these social
media websites in legal matters. For example, if an employee has specified his interest in
computer programming on his LinkedIn page, whereas upon joining, he shows no competency
on the subject, there is no way to use this information legally. This is the reason, the recruiters
need to spend an increasing number of hours upon background checks of candidates.
Competition
The biggest issue of being present on social media is the excessively high level of competitors on
the platform. Nothing on social media is a secret. Any new marketing strategy adopted by a
business for social media recruitment can be immediately imitated by other firms of the same
industry. Unlike website advertisements, recruiting agents and newspaper ads, recruitment on
social media involves a much higher bargaining power for the candidates (Doherty, 2010). There
are various firms on the same platform awaiting to attract candidates of the same industry.
Therefore it becomes increasingly difficult to recruiters to gain an advantage over others and
market their jobs.
Conclusion
Social media recruiting has been gaining ground over the recent years and has been increasingly
used by various recruiters to attract, select and appoint candidates for their business. Recruiting
is one of the most crucial aspects in the functioning of any business and this is why recruiters are
coming up with efficient and innovative ways of reaching out to candidates. This is also a
brilliant medium to make candidates aware about the organizational culture and peers before
joining the firm and assist them in making an informed decision.

Social media in recruitment and selection 6
Social media provides a platform for many recruiters to reach out to a much larger audience as
compared to recruitment agents, website ads and email marketing. It is an engaging way of
recruiting employees who can communicate with the recruiter on these platforms. However, this
recruitment tool comes with cut throat competition and this is why it is imperative that recruiters
remain on their toes and continue to come up with innovative ways to market their organizations
and available jobs.

Social media in recruitment and selection 7
References
Barnes, N. G., & Lescault, A. M. (2011). Social media adoption soars as higher-ed experiments
and reevaluates its use of new communications tools. Center for Marketing Research.
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, MA.
Doherty, R. (2010). Getting social with recruitment. Strategic HR review, 9(6), 11-15.
Joos, J. G. (2008). Social media: New frontiers in hiring and recruiting. Employment relations
today, 35(1), 51-59.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and
opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), 59-68.
Khammuang, M., & Lee, Y. J. (2014). Social Media Recruiting.
Madia, S. A. (2011). Best practices for using social media as a recruitment strategy. Strategic
HR Review, 10(6), 19-24.
Nothelle, T. (2014). Social Media Recruiting. Bachelor Thesis. Hochschule für Wir-schaft und.
Qualman, E. (2010). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do
business. John Wiley & Sons.
Schiller, M. L. (2013). SOCIAL MEDIA RECRUITING.
Wichelmann, K. (2013). Social Media Recruiting.