Online Marketing

Social Networks as a Recruitment Tool

For years the popularity of social networking has sky rocketed. Who isn’t on Facebook? Do you know at least one professional who is on LinkedIn?

As these networks expand, more and more job seekers as well as employers are using social networking platforms as recruitment tools in the hiring process. Candidates use these tools to learn about an organization and organizations use these tools to learn more about candidates.

As of 2010, over 200+ million active users are on Facebook and over 39 million are on LinkedIn.

When the numbers of social networking users are this extreme and employers begin using these networks to make decisions about potential job seekers, employee-related legal issues can arise.

According to a survey of 3,169 hiring managers done by careerbuilder.com, 22 percent of candidates are screened using social network sites.

Samples of information recruiters are using that could impact their hiring decision:

Pros:

• Professionalism
• Good communication skills
• Confirmed qualifications

Cons:

• Drinking and/or drug photos
• Poor communication skills
• Provocative photos
• Lying about qualifications

In some cases the excitement around Facebook and LinkedIn overshadow the fact that use of these sites for recruiting and hiring carries with it many legal obligations. To keep social media from being mixed up into legal issues it’s imperative that recruiters use the right tools and are not violating federal anti-discrimination regulations.

Recruiters cannot ask personal questions based on personal and protected information. All recruiters should treat every candidate the same and put all job seekers through the same process and apply the same selection criteria.

If candidates and recruiters alike can follow the basic etiquette for using social media as a hiring tool, a world of possibilities can be delivered.

© 2010 WIZULTS – Marietta Web Design.