Social Media: a Tool or a Threat for Recruiting

07 October 2013

Nowadays everyone agrees that Social Media occupy a very special place in everyday life. Numerous platforms were created in order to simplify human’s existence. It is true that people communicate and share life moments through Social Media, but they also do business with the help of these Social networking profiles.

Modern recruiting and staffing is done through Social Media as well. But is it good or bad trend for recruiters? Here we will discuss both, positive and negative features of Social Media recruiting, have a closer look at some major websites and expand on the future of recruiting.

First of all, Social Media is a great tool for finding and recruiting qualified employees. You can personally reach out to the potential job seekers. It is unquestionable fact that nearly every person in the world uses Social Media, so why not hire somebody with the help of it? Moreover, it is one of the best ways to show your own personality. Head hunters are not visible personally on different recruiting platforms, such as Bullhorn or BranchOut, whereas Social Media allow you to express yourself and show how authentic you are as a recruiter. Facebook or LinkedIn profile will tell you a lot about the person you want to hire and vice versa. People usually tend to write honest information about them. But it is not always a true fact. And that’s when negative features of Social Media come into play.

A potential threat to recruiters lays in the fact that there is a high percentage of “white lies” on Social Media. People can write whatever they like and no one actually checks their identity. From personal experience, I can state that actually LinkedIn does the most rigorous background check among Social Media. Another disadvantage of the Social Media recruiting is the gap that emerges between you as a recruiter and your potential client. This gap appears when a recruiter has no time to be devoted to every potential employee. Unfortunately, being over busy is a huge drawback of recruiter’s job, as you are just unable to provide every client with sufficient time. But all this threats are manageable.

To my mind, Social Media recruiting is very productive way of finding the right candidates instead of just waiting for them to pop up at your office desk. Social Media have a lot of useful applications that benefit and facilitate recruiter’s life. Let’s take a closer look at some major Social network websites and their beneficial features for recruiters.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are top three platforms that have the highest ratings and are the most useful for recruiters. On Facebook you can search for specific person, or target specific region or field of desired job. Groups are very popular on Facebook, so first of all you should join relevant groups. Another valuable source for recruiting is LinkedIn which is actually a website for professional networking, so if you are not there, you are a sinner of recruitment. A big plus is that you can actually post your jobs there and people will see it immediately. Twitter is also very popular tool for recruiting as it allows you to write short sentences that state exactly what you are looking for. But remember to be a person, not a robot who constantly repeats what he wants, it actually drives people nuts.

Social Media expand and infuse into everyday life with a frantic pace. Job interviews, resumes and even working are done with the help of Internet. Mastering Internet resources may bring you a lot of advantages and it can for sure make recruiter’s job easier.

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