Social Media Impact on Recruitment : investigating the Impact of Social Media on Recruitment Process through the opinions of Human Resources Managers and Job-Seekers

Abstract

Recruitment is an essential process within companies but also for job seekers. It helps companies recruit employees, the single most important and most challenging resource to manage in the company. For employees, it offers job and internship career opportunities. Today, social media-based recruitment is becoming an increasingly standard process used by human resources managers and job seekers. It allows many advantages and opportunities. Indeed, social media has become a crucial part of the recruitment process in today's society. To conduct this study, three research objectives were set up: to (I) Establish whether social media is generally helping in the recruitment process, (ii) to Determine what changes social media have brought to the recruitment process, and (iii) to Understand the risks and advantages for human resources managers and job seekers in using social media during the recruitment process. An inductive and multimethod approach was applied to collect and analyze qualitative data through two survey questionnaires and archival research. The respondent panel was composed of 23 people, three human resources managers, and 20 job seekers. The main results of this study show that social media support the recruitment process positively and negatively; indeed, for job seekers, they bring many advantages and opportunities; for example, they allow faster and easier communication with a potential employer (recruiting companies). However, there are still some risks and disadvantages of using social media in job seeking; for example, social media can give them access to false information. The result also shows that for human resources managers, social media brings advantages and opportunities as well as disadvantages and risks, but these are different from job seekers. Indeed, for example, for HR managers, the use of social media in the recruitment process will allow them to have more direct access to a broader pool of candidates and job seekers' profiles. Nevertheless,social media will also bring disadvantages and risks for human resources managers, which will be linked, for example, to a more time-consuming and demanding process of screening and analyzing a more significant amount of data. To conclude, social media are practical and valuable tools that can help job seekers and human resources managers in their task of matchmaking company need with the best candidates available. However, future research could focus on and further explore both risks and advantages resulting from the use of social media in the recruitment process and good and bad practices of managing them from job seekers and human resources managers' perspectives. Future research could also include other stakeholders like social media companies, recruitment agencies, and employer representatives other than human resources managers.