Is Social Networking an Effective Recruitment Strategy?

On the social circuit people work or interact with different mindsets. Let us see how these affects the social networking arena.

Psychology of the Recruiter or Head Hunter:

• Recruiter assumes that connecting to an online or social media group will give him an easy access to a wide pool of talent
• Further assumption is that communities or groups having similar background are more receptive to link to one another

To get a further understanding on this let us also consider the thought process that goes in the minds of people who are joining these networking sites.

Psychology of the People joining Social Media sites:

• They want to keep their existing social connections alive. It is been found that most of the people socialize online to retain and strengthen their relations which are offline.
• To build on their social capital and connections. Social capital refers to the value individuals can extract in terms of information, personal connections, interests etc from their online buddies or connections. Very few individuals have been found investing in building social connections to talk about career prospects or to tap upon any employment opportunity in the future. Here I am not mentioning sites like LinkedIn or Recruting Blogs which are solely dedicated for professional interactions.

What seems on the most of the social arena is that people are more interested in sharing their life activities to an outer world rather than networking with others which prevents them from exploiting other possibilities of social networking.

What can be figured out from this kind of behaviour of usage is:

• Individuals network size is quite small in comparison to their overall connection strength.
• Men respond to an average of seven postings where as women to ten.
• At one time men often email or chat with not more than 4 while women can interact with six.
• An account holder's ‘friends' are seldom from the same profession or background
• Most account holders are protective about friends in their core group.
• Since the basic purpose of joining social networks is to keep in touch with offline friends and acquaintances, information shared or exchanged is personal. Account holder profiles too seldom mention professional details and even if they do, those details are not enough to assess an individual's professional competence or calibre. We are also unable to judge his performance or knowledge in that particular field.

The observation above forces us to rethink on the benefits of social networking in the professional arena. However what can be concluded from here is that we are going to face lot of challenges in using it as a complete recruiting tool.

Shady sides of Social Networking Arena:

We seldom find individuals on the social arena talking about their professional qualifications or career interests. We care able to locate where an individual is working however getting information beyond that is not possible. A recruiter then uses the available information to shortlist candidates. There are at times when he has rejected candidates because in their photographs they were not looking good or were involved in drinking and partying. In such a case the likelihood of rejecting a good candidate is pretty high. The real danger in this is that someone will include or exclude a candidate for no good reason.

How Do You Verify Online Details Of Candidates?

Assuming that a recruiter has finally shortlisted few candidates based on his assumptions and information provided on a networking site. The challenge lies here is on the verification of information collected to assess an individual's background. There are very few resources like LinkedIn to rely upon to confirm the details shared by an individual in his profile. It is advisable to be more cautious on relying on social media at this point.

Recruiters need to really work hard on totally relying on social media to be the best solution for sourcing and recruitment for organizations. There has to be a certain change in the information shared at these sites which can be utilized by potential organizations or recruters for their benefit.