Social Media and Employee Recruitment: Chasing the Run Away Bandwagon

Abstract

One particular area for which organizations have turned to social media is employee recruitment. Common uses of social media for recruiting include searching for candidates and screening job applicants; with 73 % of recruiters reporting to have hired through social networking sites (SNSs) and 93 % reporting intentions to review candidates’ social profiles. However, common as they are, the effectiveness of these practices in terms of delivering the intended results and recommendations regarding best practices are largely lacking from the literature. There is also a gap in the literature regarding how the addressees of these applications, namely candidates, view social media recruiting. This chapter will begin to fill this gap by discussing what recruiters are attempting to accomplish on SNSs, their perceptions regarding best practices, and whether or not these alleged best practices align with candidates’ perceptions about the utility of various SNSs in the job search process.