It is not an overstatement to say that social recruitment is transforming the hiring process in industries across the globe. As increasing numbers of people join and frequently use social networking platforms, businesses are also recognising the opportunities being provided for connecting with potential future employees.
Here are some of the significant advantages associated with utilising social media recruiting tools as part of your hiring process.
Implementing a Proactive Hiring Process
As more people maintain a LinkedIn presence, businesses can adopt a more proactive approach and, connect with potential candidates directly. Candidates can be enormously receptive to this approach, which can help you to attract and retain top talent.
Additional Insight
Traditional CVs contain a small snippet of information about a person whereas social media accounts can offer valuable insight into a person’s work ethic, interests and personality. Additionally, many people are choosing to use their social accounts to display their professional work. giving employers further awareness of a person’s current abilities and future potential.
Streamlining The Recruitment Process
Social recruiting allows candidates to get a feel for the culture of your company before attending a face-to-face interview. When used correctly, this can help to save all parties valuable time by ensuring that only the most suitable candidates make it to the interview stage.
As well as many advantages, social media recruiting tools may also have some potential pitfalls to be considered.
Social Media Recruiting Tools And Privacy And Compliance
Although many recruiters don’t see the harm in locating the social media profiles of potential candidates, the associated privacy and compliance issues must be carefully explored before integrating this approach into your hiring process.
You may, for example, decide to make it an official policy to need verification of any piece of information acquired via the internet before it is relied upon to make any decisions. Some businesses choose to avoid looking at a potential candidate’s social presence until they have attended at least one interview. Doing so is likely to reduce the risk of being subjected to claims of discrimination as biases can arise even amongst recruiting teams with the very best intentions.
Inaccurate Information
If you decide to incorporate a social element into your recruitment process, it is important to have policies in place to account for the percentage of professionals who does not choose to maintain a social media presence to avoid discriminating against them based on their personal preferences.
Additionally, as many people have had active social platforms for some time, it is essential to consider that some of the available information might be inaccurate. We all change over time and, although you may, for example, find a poorly written article published three years ago, the author may now possess markedly improved writing skills.
Social media can enhance your recruitment process in significant ways but it should not be used alone because it has the potential to provide information that will incorrectly influence important decision-making processes.
