Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment: Current Knowledge, Unanswered Questions, and Future Directions

Abstract

There is disagreement in the academic literature regarding the use of social media in selection and recruitment. To get a sense of the degree of disagreement, we conducted a qualitative survey of 13 experts in this domain. Results of the survey revealed four principle challenges for researchers and three principal challenges for practitioners in this area. Almost all experts recommended against the use of social media in selection at this time due to measurement issues, legal issues, and others, but approximately half stated that their recommendation could change in the future depending upon pending research. Several experts stated that the use of social media in recruitment was less risky than in selection and recommended it explicitly. All but one expert recommended adopting an interdisciplinary approach. From our results, we highlight four priorities for future research, involving the identification of useful information from social media, strategies for acting on that information, fairness and ethicality, and international implications.