Social media is now a pervasive force on the Internet and, for good or for ill, millions of us have posted profiles of ourselves on such sites.
But for business, social media represents two kinds of challenges. The first is how your company should portray itself on these sites. The second is how your company should use these sites for recruiting and what and how much information should be used in recruiting and hiring candidates.
At the moment, it appears that most businesses are taking a very cautious approach to social media. Only about three percent of all companies use social media as their main source of job prospects, and a little less than 20 percent use it as one piece of their overall hiring process, according to Steve Williams, director of research at the Society for Human Resource Management.
Recruiters and other human resource professionals also report that only a fraction of their time is spent working with social media. It appears to be used mostly to find people who might be good additions to their companies. About two-thirds said they find out about job prospects through social media that they otherwise would not know about.
Social media experts advise companies to learn about social media before getting involved with it, especially working out the company’s social media marketing strategy.
When recruiters or other human resource staff members use social media to recruit, they need to be careful about the image they are projecting. If they come across as too aggressive, they might lose potential candidates, according to Rachna Jain, a social media consultant. Some social media experts advise a more subtle approach, such as talking about the state of the industry to try and engender interest in the company. Or the company can publicize its recent hires to show the talent it is attracting.
Another concern for companies with social media is how to use the information on the sites. If you are interviewing a candidate, you certainly would be tempted to check out his or her social media presence to see what you can find out. But this is where you have to be careful because of the mix of personal and professional information that tend to be on an individual’s site feeds.
If you do check out a candidate’s social media sites, you need first to verify that the information placed there by the candidate is true to avoid liability issues. You also have to watch out that you do not misuse the information. For example, if you let information about a person’s age, race or religion influence your hiring decision, you could open up your company to a lawsuit.
If your hiring managers use information they see on a candidate’s social media sites you need to be sure that any information found is relevant to the performance of the job. Company and HR leaders also need to be careful in determining where there is a legal, legitimate reason for disqualifying a candidate based on information from a social media site.
We’ve found here at Arrow Staffing that using social media (have you checked out our Facebook and Twitter pages yet?) is a great way to attract both client companies and candidates.
What about you? Has your company found social media helpful in attracting Inland Valley job seekers?
If you’d like more information on how our Ontario or Redlands staffing firm offices have succeeded with social media, just drop us a line. Don’t forget to ask us about our recruiting services, too!