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The Role of Social Media
on Talent Search and Acquisition:
Evidence from Contemporay
Literature
ABSTRACT
Objective: The main objective of this paper is to explore/investigate the role of social media in
searching and acquiring the talented employees and the appropriate rationales behind and ways
of using the social media for such purposes with due advantages and risks involved.
Methodology: This paper uses the literatures published from 2010 to 2019 to highlight the re-
search on social media inluence on searching talent for organizations. For due purpose, Scopus
and ResearchGate databases have been utilized to search the papers using the keywords such
as social media, social neworking sites, online recruitment & selection, candidate screening,
hiring, human resources management and talent search.
Journal of Intercultural Management
Vol. 12 No. 1 March 2020 pp. 92–137
DOI 10.2478/joim-2020-0034
Md Sajjad Hosain
Business School, Sichuan Universiy,
Sichuan, China
sajjad_hosain@yahoo.com
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6086-0067
Ping Liu
Business School, Sichuan Universiy,
Sichuan, China
liuliple@163.com
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6086-0056
93
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Findings: Although social media is geting popular among employers, they are not utilizing this
plaform as the main rather as seconday sources. LinkedIn is the most preferred source among
the employers for searching and acquiring talents.
Value Added: The paper is expected to contribute to the existing literature through an in-depth
literature suvey as well provide some proper guidelines for the HR professionals to conduct
eicient search and recruitment.
Recommendations: The authors have provided some action recommendations based on the
literature suvey such as (a) the recruiters should make proper reliabiliy and validiy tests of
the information collected through social media, (b) organizations that intends to use social
media information need to develop a proper and transparent social media policy and user
codes of conduct, (c) the codes of conducts should be linked to the training manual of the HR
professionals who involve in talent search and acquisition, (d) organizations should use social
media for searching talents more than screening/selecting, (e) social media should be used as
a seconday instrument rather than the sole one; and () organizations/hiring professionals
should focus only on job related information and professional social media (such as LinkedIn).
Key words: social media, social media recruitment, hiring professional, organization, human
resources, recruitment & selection
JEL Codes: J23 Labor demand, L86 Information and internet sevices
1. Introduction
The modern organizations have been transformed into digitally intercon-
nected and streamlined networks from the traditional time consuming and
boring manual operations. The latest addition in this digitalization process
is the inclusion of using social media in dierent areas of business such as
marketing, operations, advertising, communicating and so on. Particularly in
the areas of HR, social media is getting popularit y from the inception of 2000s.
The practice of using social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter for
hiring purposes is getting more and more popular among the hiring profes-
sionals. However, the questions have risen whether the social media is truly
dependable for screening and selecting employees? If yes, how they should
be utilized keeping the purpose of organizations served and satisfying the
94
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
candidates? What might be the consequences if that social media utilization
is not appropriate? There are many more related questions which are yet
to be answered. As still today, the academic literatures and organizational
guidelines are not adequate in this area, there is a lack of transparent and
satisfactory replies for all the questions raised above.
In a study conducted by Statista (2015), it was revealed that one in every
four people has a Facebook account. Therefore, it is not surprising why social
media are getting so popular among the organizations to serve their own
purpose or as a source of massive information. Although, social media can
serve as the source of searching talents by providing necessary information,
such use might also pose some hidden, potential risks such as misuse of
information, legal and ethical considerations, as well as candidates’ percep-
tion of privacy, fairness and ethics.
Social networks such as LinkedIn, Face book, Twitter, and Google+ can
supply recruiters a vast collection of information about potential candidates.
Many large companies with strong and active web presence constructed their
brand not only on their own corporate website, but also on these social media
sites providing a widespread reach whereby companies can additionally share
information about their businesses and the available job opportunities with
interested job seekers. Many of these rms using social media by including
special job posting pages which make it easier for the tentative applicants to
locate those jobs that interest them. Thus, social media is helping in making
a potential bridge between candidates and recruiters.
More recently, corporate social media pages have proved to be eectual
advertising media with several benets over conventional job advertising
media. As the unemployment rate is high in many countries due to various
reasons, majority of job seekers today have at least one social network
prole. Today employers denitely turn to social media for recruitment as
they understood that they can reach a larger number of skilled job seekers.
However, it is an elementar y idea that all those who involved in this electronic
world and particularly, those who intensively use and utilize social media are
95
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
fully conscious of the risks and benets of such exposure (Melanthiou et al.,
2015). In fact, a more methodical exploration of the benets and pitfalls of
social recruitment and the role of social media during the hiring process will
discard some light on the reasons behind why companies choose to or not
to utilize, this contemporary method of employee search.
2. Literature suvey
The origin of human resource management (HRM) has its ancestry dates
back to 1800s resulting from Robert Owens’ development of “welfare to
work” which called for the requirement of improving the working atmosphere
for stas (Deadrick & Stone, 2014). Between 1900 to 1970s, HRM widened
encircling the age of Fredrick Taylor that emphasized to increase production
eciency. Throughout this phase, HRM was evident as related to relationship
movement. The primary theory behind HRM was largely connected to the
welfare, safety, and psychology movements (Kaufman, 2014).
In fact, HRM in current period, it is established and accepted as com-
bination of approaches that signicantly increase the success of overall
business. Human resources management is currently dened as policies,
processes, and systems concerning the inclusion of employee performance
to the overall company strategy (Noe et al., 2014). The sub-functions of
HRM include recruiting & selection, training and development, performance
appraisal, reward systems, and compensation & benet, even preparing
and executing manpower policy. One of the important functions of HRM is
to search and recruit the talented workforce for appropriate organizational
positions to ll in. Recruiting objectives dier from the lling empty positions,
type of candidates required, and time required to ll each and every position.
Recruiting strategy of an organization consists of whom, where, and how to
recruit. The subsequent steps include the authentic recruitment activities
and the results in comparison to the objectives.
96
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
2.1 Recruitment
With the overall HRM expansion in terms of extents and topics, the particular
aspect of recruiting and its subsequent procedures of screening and selecting
have evolved as well. For example, from the 1950s to 1980s approximately 75%
of applicants were connected through newspaper advertisements (Hebberd,
2017). At the end of the 19th century, a number of web-based recruiting sites
such as careerbuiler.com, hotjobs.com, and monster.com were launched
creating the pathway for online job seekers tremendously which increased
from 6% in 2002 to 96% in 2006 (Hebberd, 2017). The contemporary level of
recruiting mostly comprises of internet, which has become the top source
for recruiting till 2012; including more than 90% of employers using SNS for
screening purposes and 97% of recruiters use LinkedIn for hiring purposes
(Hebberd, 2017). The digital age in organizations should be included with
attention leading to the need to notify employers of the diverse aspects of
the incorporation of the internet sites (including social media) used in the
recruiting, screening, and selecting processes (Villeda & McCamey, 2019).
Any organization utilizing social media as part of their recruitment attempt
should consider the general consequences on the organization and its hiring
strategy. With the amplication in global competitive rivalry, organizational
eectiveness is determined by its ability to attract talented personnel. As
an element of the fundamental attainment of human capital, HR hiring of-
cers must successfully complete the procedure of recruiting and selecting
upcoming competent human resources. Recruitment and selection are two
complicated functions in which organizations look for prospective employees
who match the organization’s requirements. Recruiting is simply a process
of attracting talented job candidates to a company (Lussier, 2015). Selection
is the process of choosing the best-qualied candidate from the pool of
recruited applicants (Lussier, 2015). It is the rst step of hiring a candidate
where the organization should be extremely cautious and selective in nding
the right future working partners for organizations.
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The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
2.2 Selection
The second step of hiring is selection that can be termed as the process of
choosing the best-qualied candidate from the pool of recruited applicants
(Lussier, 2015). During this process, there is an appraisal to decide appli-
cants’ work-related knowledge, skills and abilities (ISO 30405: 2016), as well
as the hard and soft skills. Another important part of selection is candidate
screening dened as the procedure of reviewing applicants’ strengths and
weaknesses, in order to make an adequate selection decision. The conven-
tional screening process focuses on a person-job t (person and organization
t) dened as the knowledge, skills, and abilities (also known as KSAs) job
applicant that develop the potentiality of suciently performing a job. The
technique used in selecting applicants diers depending on the nature of
job and organization’s culture.
In practice, the selection process begins with an evaluation or testing
the information presented on a resume/CV and focusing on the visual form
of the resume including legibility, professionalism etc. The screening pro-
cess continues with a search for contradictory information, asymmetrical
employment record and complementary clues that might indicate a certain
applicant is well matched (or not) for the job opening. After the initial resume
screening, top matched candidates who best t with the job requirement
are selected for an interview or some other standardized tests depending
on the organizational hiring policy. Even those tests should not be used as
exclusive screening tools; they can provide objective information about the
job candidate. On the other hand, Youngman (2017) reported that the validity
of personality tests is still inconclusive. According to him such tests should
be used with utmost caution recommending for employers to control a test
that has been validated with the procedures indicated by the Equal Employ-
ment Opportunity Commission. Moreover, any identical tests used must be
pertinent to job qualication, administered, and recorded consistently for all
job candidates in order to reduce the discrimination suit by the job applicants.
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Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
These are merely several most common conventional measures used in
the recruiting, screening and selecting process. Employers (HR) should and
can acclimatize this process to their specic needs according to the specic
job requirements or company policies. Further argument is that although
traditional methods of hiring have been successful for many years, they
are not free from limitations that could lead employers to look for additional
methods. For instance, time to announce a job opening with conventional
methods takes time; whereas, by using a web-based platform to recruit can
automatically inform hundreds of potential applicants immediately about
a vacancy leading the process of hiring to become for ecient. Furthermore,
some conventional methods overlook to think applicants’ time availability that
can be overcome if job opportunities are posted on the web and applicants
are able to get the ideas of jobs and apply on their own convenient time.
2.3 Social media
In many previous papers “social media” and “social networking sites” were
used interchangeably, each of them carries a specic meaning. Social media
is powered by Web 2.0 allowing the connections among individuals through
industrial devices; therefore, social networking sites, social shopping, so-
cial playing, and social positioning are all elements of social media (Haag
& Cummings, 2013). On the other hand, social networking sites (SNS) are
those online platforms in which individuals can mechanically produce an
account, acquire friends, and share information (Haag & Cummings, 2013).
These social media accounts are very familiar now not only for individuals
but also many organizations are using them as a platform of advertising and
for other dierent purposes like job advertising, online selling platforms etc.
It has been anticipated that as of 2013, U.S. companies paid over $5 billion
for social media adver tisements, and by 2018, that number was predicted to
increase up to $15 billion (Zhu & Chen, 2015). The rst social media site was
launched in 1997 with the creation of Sixdegrees.com that permitted users
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The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
to have a custom-made online prole and a list of friends. Later especially
after 2004, many types of social networking sites have begun operation
and till today, some of the most popular are Facebook, Twitter, and Linke-
dIn in terms of hiring tools.
2.4 Social media in hiring process: Literature
suvey
For numerous years, organizations have used jobsites such as Careerbuilder.
com in their recruiting practice, leading to the attraction of job seekers from
more than 100 career sources. According to Nessler (2014), Careerbuiler.
com has been successfully reduced the cost per hire by 70% due to a de-
cline in travel costs and has also reduced by 60% time taken for employers
in hiring. Electronic recruiting is the blend of the Web with the process of
recruiting human capital (Melanthiou et al., 2015). Companies now have
their own social media pages for recruiting job applicants (Melanthiou et
al., 2015). For example, companies are now creating and opening their own
Facebook pages and using those pages as advertisement tools to assist
getting talent (Andrews, 2012). Moreover, there is a boost in social media
usage by HR professionals with the intending to nd ‘elaborate job applicant
information’, and to screen and select the best-suited applicants (Brown &
Vaughn, 2011). According to Facebook authority, a new feature is in progress
that would assist companies to their direct job postings (Take the Work out
of Hiring, 2017). In addition, according to Facebook’s ocial webpage, job
posts are now linked to the Facebook Business Page from where job seekers
can see new jobs available through the Jobs bookmarks on Facebook or on
the Marketplace (Job posting on Facebook, n.d.). Social media thus serve as
a lead to forward followers (job seekers) to organizations’ personal website
where they can learn about job vacancies (Spellmann, 2018). Having such
a substantial gure of account holders, recruiting through Facebook gives
employers a much wider diversity of opportunities and challenges.
100
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
According to previous research, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most
popular social media hiring sites (Melanthiou et al., 2015). According to a study
per formed by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), on 541
HR specialists, 95% admitted that they use LinkedIn as a recruiting tool; while
58 % reported they use Facebook, and 42 % said that they use Twitter (Zide
et al., 2014). An investigation aimed to HR managers to recognize what type
of technology they were using in their department and for what reason, con-
cluded that in North America technology was becoming more widespread
for hiring job applicants especially mid-level stang (Villeda & McCamey,
2019). Furthermore, although interviewers reported a higher quantity of
job applicants, the quality was likely to stay unchanged or even lower. The
use of social media for hiring varies in dierent countries depending on the
availability of internet connection and the usage of social media. For example,
89% of the U.S. has access to the internet, 91% in Canada, 71% in China,
67% in Mexico, 39% in Kenya, and 25% in India (Pew Research Center, 2018).
In addition, according to Pew Research Center (2018), wealthier counties
such as U.S., Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and Canada have
a higher utilization of internet compared to developing countries such as
India, Tanzania, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya etc. Social media usage diers
in dierent counties, for example, U.S (69%), Canada (68%), and Russia (66%)
have higher usage compared to India (20%), Kenya (30%), and Indonesia (26%)
(Pew Research Center, 2018). However, in recent years, developing counties
are observing an increase in the use of internet and social media from 42% in
2013 to 64% in 2018 (regarding internet usage) and 34% from 2013 to 53% in
2018 (regarding SM usage) (Pew Research Center, 2018). Considering those
statistics as the use of social media in hiring process, it is assumed to occur
more likely in developed counties rather than developing ones. Therefore,
the authors would like to raise the following research questions based on
the literature survey.
Research question 1: What is the role of social media in attracting and
hiring talented candidates?
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The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Research question 2: What are the motives and risks of using social
media in searching and acquiring talents?
This paper uses the literature published from 2010 to 2019 to highlight the
research on social media inuence on searching talent for organizations. For
the same purpose, Scopus and ResearchGate databases have been utilized
to search the papers using the keywords social media, social networking
sites, online recruitment & selection, candidate screening, hiring, human
resources management and talent search. The motivations behind using
those two research networks are that they are the leading search engines to
get scientic articles. They provide meta- information and have the highest
probability to be within the title, abstract and keywords. Although, Google
Scholar is one of the largest storages of scientic and academic papers, I have
not used that as it is very dicult to limit to search keywords within the items.
After the initial search with the keywords, 619 articles were detected.
After removing the articles which were published before 2010, the number of
papers stood to 434. Finally, those ar ticle were removed from consideration
which did not include social media or social networking for hiring (recruitment
& selection), rather the themes were too general or too specic such as
online recruitment & selection, inuence of social media in HRM, internet in
HRM, branding through social media, social media background check, social
media marketing etc. After nal screening, the number of articles was 477.
The ltering technique we used has been depicted on Figure 1. After that,
the abstracts and information have been gone through and the titles, author
name (s) and years of publication have been identied on Table 1:
102
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Figure 1. Searching and iltering technique of literature
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
Table 1. Literatures selected for this paper
Author(s), Title and
Publication Year
Contents/Findings Source
Juusola, T. (2010).
Recruitment & social
neworking: The future
for international
recruitment agency
A move towards executive search is an appropriate
strategic position for IRA to adopt. However, that
it is necessay to continue monitoring trends in
the current economic, social and technological
areas.
Thesis for
Degree Program
in International
Business, Lahti
Universiy
of Applied
Sciences
Smith, W. P., & Kidder,
D. L. (2010). You’ve been
tagged! (Then again,
maybe not): Employers
and Facebook
Facebook’s own policies suggest that an
organization may face legal challenges if it
considers an applicant’s Facebook page as pat of
the selection process. Just as impotantly, there
are ethical issues—in paticular, an individual’s
right to privacy—which must be considered.
Organizations are encouraged to develop
guidelines regarding the use of social neworking
sites in the application process, based on the
practical, legal, and ethical issues covered.
Business
Horizons, 53(5)
103
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Abel, S. (2011). The role
of social neworking
sites in recruitment:
Results of a quantitative
study among German
companies
Facebook is deined as a social-oriented site,
not oten used for recruitment now, although
companies predict that Facebook will gain more
impotance within the next three years.
Master Thesis,
Business
Administration
Track: Human
Resource
Management,
School of
Management
and Governance
Universiy of
Twe nt e
Davison et al. (2011).
Friend or foe? The
promise and pifalls of
using social neworking
sites for HR decisions
Many managers and HR practitioners are using
social neworking websites to make impotant
HR decisions such as recruiting, selecting, and
terminating individuals.
Journal of
Business
Psychology, 26
Dennis, C. M. (2011).
Legal implications of
employee social media
use
The law relating to use of social media issues are
still developing, but couts are likely to rely upon
principles established well before the advent
of social media. Employers must be cognizant
of the risks inherent in the use of social media
among their employees and the potential liabiliy
issues throughout the employment relationship,
from pre-employment, to employment, to post-
employment.
Massachusets
Law Review,
93(4)
Loy, B. E. H. (2011).
Employer use of
Facebook as a tool
in pre-employment
screening of applicants:
Beneits and ethical,
legal, and privacy
implications
Using Facebook as a tool in the pre-employment
screening of applicants can oer employers
a fast and eicient way to get information about
prospective employees that could preempt
negligent hiring decisions.
Master of
Ats Thesis,
Organizational
Leadership,
St. Catherine
Universiy
Hoogen, E. (2012). The
Role of social media
in recruitment and
selection processes
Organizations should actively recruit via SNSs, but
not to use SNSs for checking a job applicant during
the selection process.
BSc. Thesis,
Management
Studies &
Education and
Competence
Studies,
Universiy of
Roterdam
Kluemper, et al. (2012).
Social Neworking
Websites, Personaliy
Ratings, and the
Organizational Context:
More That Meets the
Eye?
SNWs may provide useful information for
potential use in organizational research and
practice, taking into consideration various legal
and ethical issues.
Journal of
Applied Social
Psychology,
42(5)
104
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Madera, J. M. (2012).
Using social neworking
sites as a selection tool:
The role of selection
process fairness and job
pursuit intentions
Perceived fairness and job pursuit intentions of
applicants are lower for an organization that use
social neworking websites as a selection tool
than an organization that does not use social
neworking websites as a selection tool.
International
Journal of
Hospitaliy
Management,
31(4)
Slovensky, R., & Ross, W.
H. (2012). Should human
resource managers
use social media to
screen job applicants:
Managerial and legal
issues in the USA
Using SNWs to screen applicants offers beneits
to organizations in the form of gaining a large
amount of information about applicants, which
may be used to supplement other information
(e.g. a resume). It may also help a irm address
“negligent hiring” legal concerns. However, other
legal considerations as well as issues petaining
to information accuracy, privacy, and justice
argue against using such information.
Info, 14(1)
Willey et al. (2012).
Candidate screening,
information technology
and the law: Social media
considerations
IT depatments, human resources and legal
counsel will increasingly need to work together to
develop the organization’s social media policies.
Issues in
Information
Systems, 13(1)
Broughton et al. (2013).
The use of social media
in the recruitment
process
Social media in recruitment would make greater
use of these ypes of tools in the future.
Prepared for
Acas by
Institute for
Employment
Studies
Fowler, K. M. (2013).
Scanning social
neworking sites as pat
of hiring process
According to the screenshots taken from the
applicants’ Facebook proiles and rated ive
personaliy, it was found that there was no
relationship beween available information and
hiring.
PhD Thesis,
Faculy of
the Graduate
School, Angelo
State Universiy
Iddekinge et al. (2013).
Social media for
selection? Validiy and
adverse impact potential
of a Facebook-based
assessment
Facebook ratings did not contribute to the
prediction of criteria such as job peformance,
turnover intentions and actual turnover beyond
more traditional predictors, including cognitive
abiliy, self-eicacy, and personaliy. Futhermore,
there was evidence of subgroup dierence in
Facebook ratings that tended to favor female and
white applicants.
Journal of
Management
Pritchard, M. (2013).
How social recruitment
requires students to
manage a responsible
digital footprint
Considering the extensive internet usage of
Generation Y students, it is imperative for
cooperative and work integrated learning practices
and programs to suppot students in cultivating
a responsible digital footprint. It is recommended
that sensitization commences at freshman (irst
year) orientation and that it extends to curriculum
content, policies and campus awareness
campaigns.
Refereed
Discussion
Paper, 18th
WACE World
Conference on
Cooperative &
Work Integrated
Education, June
24 -27, 2013,
Durban, South
Africa.
105
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Kluesner, K. E. (2013).
Fairness perceptions
of screening social
neworking sites for
hiring decisions
Higher levels of privacy invasiveness and less
serious levels of the legitimate business concerns
found resulted in lower fairness perceptions
indicating potential issues employers may
encounter as they atempt to balance their
legitimate business concerns with applicants’
privacy concerns.
Thesis, Degree
of Master
of Ats in
Industrial and
Organizational
Psychology,
Middle
Tennessee State
Universiy
Ollinton et al. (2013).
Online social neworks:
an emergent recruiter
tool for atracting and
screening
The connector role is identiied as a speciic
atraction mechanism that recruiters use to create
numerous weak ties, where some are so weak
that they barely constitute ties at all. Branding,
transparency and data speciiciy are three
mechanisms recruiters use to strenthen these
ties when peforming the atracting and screening
functions.
Personnel
Review, 42(3)
Reicher, A. (2013). The
background of our being:
Internet background
checks in the hiring
process
At least, a ith to a quater of employers uses
internet search engines or social neworks to
screen candidates at some point during the hiring
process, suggesting a taxonomy of three dierent
approaches to internet information gathering.
Berkeley
Technology Law
Journal, 28(1)
Roth et al. (2013). Social
media in employee-
selection-related
decisions: A research
agenda for unchated
territoy
Organizational practice has outpaced the scientiic
study of SM assessments in an area that has
impotant consequences for individuals (e.g., being
selected for work), organizations (e.g., successfully
predicting job peformance or withdrawal), and
sociey (e.g., consequent adverse impact/diversiy).
Journal of
Management,
20(10)
Roulin, N., & Bangeter,
A. (2013). Social
neworking websites
in personnel selection:
A signaling perspective
on recruiters’ and
applicants’ perceptions
Recruiters and potential applicants (students and
graduates) both perceive professional SNWs (e.g.,
LinkedIn) as a potential antecedent of Person-Job
it information and personal SNWs (e.g., Facebook)
as a potential antecedent of Person-Organization
it information. When evaluating the same SNW
proile, recruiters and potential applicants focus
on dierent sections of the proile (e.g., recruiters
focus more on job-related information), but they
tend to infer similar personaliy traits.
Personnel
Psychology,
12(3)
Sameen, S., & Cornelius,
S. (2013). Social
neworking sites and
hiring: How social media
proiles inluence hiring
decisions
LinkedIn is a widely used SNS for screening
candidates and hiring professionals consider
professional qualiications, organizational it
and communication skills to be the major
determinants of selection or rejection of
candidates.
Journal of
Business
Studies
Quaterly, 7(1)
106
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Stoughton et al. (2015).
Examining applicant
reactions to the use
of social neworking
websites in pre-
employment screening
Social neworking website screening caused
applicants to feel their privacy had been invaded
which ultimately resulted in lower organizational
atraction. Applicants low in agreeableness had
the most adverse reactions to social neworking
website screening. Futhermore, screening again
caused applicants to feel their privacy had
been invaded, resulting in lower organizational
atraction and increased intentions to litigate. The
organization’s positive/negative hiring decision did
not moderate the relationship beween screening
and justice.
Journal of
Business and
Psychology
Tecassala, V. (2013). The
use of social neworking
sites as a tool for
employers in screening
job candidates during
the recruiting process:
The ethical dilemma.
Irish perspective
There is no speciic legal restriction regarding
the searching of candidate’s information online
as anything online is considered to be publicly
accessible. However, there are some equaliy
legislation in place to ensure that when employers
or recruiters conduct such social neworks
checks on candidates, they do not intefere with
candidate’s right to privacy, neither their decision
on not to hire the individual should be based on
information found on social neworking proile.
MSc. Thesis in
Management,
National
College of
Ireland
Lorenz, B. (2014). If
I do not like your online
proile, I will not hire you!
Companies require that their oices will search
out information, ask around for background
information or ind other sources if they are not
allowed to do that. This at the same time might be
violating peoples’ rights to privacy.
Conference
Paper, Institute
of Informatics,
Tallinn
Universiy
Nikolaou, I. (2014).
Social neworking web
sites in job search and
employee recruitment
Job seekers still seem to use job boards more
extensively than SNWs. The association beween
LinkedIn usage, its eectiveness, and time spent
on SNWs and LinkedIn eectiveness, on the other,
is stronger for ‘passive’ candidates, demonstrating
the impotant role of SNWs for atracting ‘passive’
candidates. HR professionals are more engaged
in LinkedIn than Facebook and were considering
the former as more eective than the later in the
recruitment process.
International
Journal of
Selection and
Assessment,
22(2)
Pike et al. (2014).
Information from
social neworking sites:
Context collapse and
ambiguiy in hiring
process
Information from social neworking sites can
be useful, yet can create ambiguiy for decision
makers because of context collapse made possible
in SNS technologies.
Information
Systems
Journal, 28
Zide et al. (2014).
LinkedIn and
recruitment: how proiles
dier across occupations
There are signiicant dierences with respect
to ten of the LinkedIn variables in how people
presented themselves across the three groups.
There were also several gender dierences found.
Employee
Relations, 36(5)
107
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Zhang, L. (2014). Legal
and ethical implications
of using social media
in human resource
management
Although there are many advantages in using
social media neworks to assist HR to select
and ilter job candidates, there are reasons for
concerns.
International
Journal of
Innovation, 2(1)
Chiang, J. K. & Suen,
H. (2015). Self-
presentation and hiring
recommendations in
online communities:
Lessons from LinkedIn
The recruiters make inferences about job
seekers’ person–job it and person–organization
it based on argument qualiy in speciic self-
presentation categories, which in turn predict
recruiters’ intentions to recommend job seekers
for hiring. Although cetain speciic categories
of self-presentation oering source credibiliy
have positive associations with person–person
(P–P) it perception, there is a non-signiicant
relationship beween perceived P–P it and hiring
recommendations.
Computers
in Human
Behavior, 48
Diglel, A. & Yazdanifard,
R. (2015). The
utilization of social
neworking websites by
companies as a hiring
tool; its eectiveness
and reliabiliy from
the applicants and
employer’s perspective
There is a distinction beween how users of social
neworking sites perceive the utiliy and purpose
of social neworking sites and how recruiters
see the social neworking sites. Users of Social
neworking sites utilizes them mostly for social
neworking purposes, while recruiters utilize
these sites to accumulate character data about
job seekers without the candidates perpetually
comprehending what data was considered.
Nevetheless, Social neworks oer an intense
apparatus for employers to achieve a pool of
experienced individuals that they may not
othewise have the capaciy to reach.
European
Journal of
Business and
Social Sciences,
4(1)
Dinesh, M. & Kumar,
M. K. R. (2015). Is social
media a preferable
source of recruitment?
An employers’
perspective with
reference to IT sector in
Bangalore
Social media sites cary with distinct advantage
of enabling companies to reinvent themselves
internally as well as externally
International
Journal of
Business and
Administration
Research
Review, 2(11)
Drake, J. R. & Furner,
C. (2015). Screening job
candidates with social
media: A manipulation of
disclosure requests
A request for social media account logins reduces
the trust in the employer, whereas collectivism,
perceived privacy protection competence, and
social media production increases trust in the
employer.
Conference
paper, Tweny-
irst Americas
Conference on
Information
Systems, Pueto
Rico, 2015
108
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Hazelton, A. S. &
Terhorst, A. (2015).
Legal and ethical
considerations for social
media hiring practices in
the workplace
It is crucial for both employers and employees
to be on the same page with social neworking
policies and procedures. Educating employees
regarding the established guidelines will help
prevent any mishaps in the workplace. Becoming
informed on the best practices, and then applying
them will have a tremendous impact on the work
environment.
The Hilltop
Review, 7(2)
Melanthiou et al.
(2015). The use of social
nework sites as an
E-recruitment tool
The online recruitment method has a lot of
beneits but also pifalls of which recruiters
should be aware. Futhermore, it seems that the
contemporay practice of employee screening
through social media can highly aect the hiring
decision and legal implications are likely to
arise with the wrong use of information. On the
contray, a well-designed system and strategic
utilization of available information about
potential candidates may signiicantly assist the
recruitment of employees with the most suitable
skills and competencies.
Journal of
Transnational
Management,
20
Jennifer, D. J. (2015).
From due diligence to
discrimination: employer
use of social media
veting in the hiring
process and potential
liabilities
Since inherent risks of inaccuracy,
misinterpretation, and lack of veriiable data on
social media can compromise any screen, seting
strict internet search procedures and consistent
application, or othewise hiring a third-pay
vendor, are optimal self-regulatoy approaches for
employers to both maintain business interests and
prevent legal liabilities.
Loyola of
Los Angeles
Entetainment
Law Review, 35
Kroeze, R. (2015).
Recruitment via social
media sites: A critical
review and research
agenda
Companies should ty to develop policies
regarding appropriate and inappropriate use
of internet screening. If this is done properly,
eveybody in the company will know what the
standards are that will help to limit the problems
concerning social media recruitment. Companies
could also conduct a risk-beneit analysis.
5th IBA
Bachelor Thesis
Conference,
The Faculy
of Behavioral,
Management
and Social
Sciences,
Enschede,
Universiy of
Twe nt e
Lewis et al. (2015).
A critical analysis of
the implementation
of social neworking
as an e-recruitment
tool within a securiy
enterprise
Social neworking can be eectively used as
an e-recruitment tool as long as a traditional
recruitment method is also used.
Cogent
Business &
Management, 2
109
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Rana, G. (2015). Use
of social media to ind
suitable applicants in the
advetising industy
Numbers of people being hired through these
medias are increasing eveyday with increasing
number of users and with dierent new plaforms
available. It can be assumed that use of social
media will grow in future for recruitment in
advetising agencies as well as other sectors. With
appropriate choice of words and designs and good
communication and interaction skills employers
can establish themselves as a desired recruiter.
Degree Thesis,
International
Business,
ARCADA
Schneider, T. J. (2015).
Social neworking sites
and personnel selection:
An initial validiy
assessment
If password is requested, 57.87% applicants would
refuse the request, and would thus remove
themselves from the applicant pool reducing
the utiliy of an organization’s selection system
and thereby impact an organization’s botom
line. Also, the password request could result in
adverse impact for protected groups, and lead to
legal action on behalf of applicants within these
groups. There was only a slight potential beneit
to the loss of applicants in that those remaining
in the pool were slightly higher on agreeableness
and conscientiousness, and lower on psychopathy.
However, the eect sizes were small, and those
remaining in the applicant pool scored higher on
impression management, suggesting that their
more favorable personaliy scores may have been
dissimulated.
PhD Thesis,
Doctor of
Philosophy,
Industrial/
Organizational
Psychology,
The School of
Graduate and
Postdoctoral
Studies, The
Universiy
of Western
Ontario
Aguado et al. (2016).
Applicant reactions to
social nework web use
in personnel selection
and assessment
Applicants show more positive atitude to the
use of professional SNWs compared to non-
professional SNWs. In addition, female and young
applicants have less positive atitudes than males
and other paticipants towards the use of non-
professional SNWs.
Journal of
Work and
Organizational
Psychology,
32(3)
Black, S. W., & Schmidt,
G. (2016). How to Stay
Current in Social Media
to Be Competitive
in Recruitment and
Selection
Developing technologies and other developments
that could have signiicant impact on how social
media is best used by organizations
Social Media
in Employee
Selection and
Recruitment
(Chapter 10)
Cooley, D., & Parks-
Yancy, R. (2016). Impact
of traditional and
internet/social media
screening mechanisms
on employers’
perceptions of job
applicants
Older employers checked candidates once online,
whereas younger employers checked candidates
multiple times.
The Journal of
Social Media in
Sociey, 5(3)
110
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Hoek et al. (2016).
Publishing personal
information online:
How employers’ access,
obseve and utilize social
neworking sites within
selection procedures
SNS proiles were either accessed as pat of
an organization’s oicial selection process
through integrating internet screening as pat
of the formal process and obtaining candidate
permission, or through covet (without consent)
obsevation. Facebook was primarily used to
identify a candidate’s organization it and make
assessment of their sot skills, whereas LinkedIn
distinguished their professional atributes and
job it. Problems were associated with the extent
to which SNSs were relective of the person and
whether a candidate’s personal life relected
their work. Respondents focused more upon
the legaliy, rather than the ethics, of accessing
“private” information via SNSs.
Personnel
Review, 45(1)
Ladkin, A., & Buhalis, D.
(2016). Online and social
media recruitment:
Hospitaliy employer and
prospective employee
considerations
Considerations for employers include website
atributes, issues of fairness in the recruitments
process and brand reputation. For prospective
employees, the considerations center on public
and private online proiles. Considerations
common to both include the value of an online
presence, the blurring of boundaries in online
information and legal implications.
International
Journal of
Contemporay
Hospitaliy
Management,
28(2)
Schmidt, G. B. &
O’Connor, K. W. (2016).
Legal concerns when
considering social media
data in selection
Organizations might consider creating in-depth
and clear procedures of how social media data
from sites examined would have protected class
information removed before the relevant social
media data is passed onto evaluators. Companies
may also consider having a third-pay vendor do
the social media data collection process.
Social Media
in Employee
Selection
(Chapter-13)
Stephanie, L. B., &
Schmid, G. B. (2016).
How to stay current
in social media to
be competitive in
recruitment and
selection.
Social media can be a good source of recruitment
and selection to be competitive if properly
utilized.
Social Media
in Employee
Selection and
Recruitment
(Book chapter)
Wade, J. (2016). Social
media and selection:
How does new
technology change an
old game?
Perceived similariy inluenced liking and in turn,
hireabiliy, for all of our political conditions,
regardless of the social media plaform
information was viewed on.
Working Paper
Series No.
61, Clemson
Universiy
Drake et al. (2016). Job
Applicants’ Information
Privacy Protection
Responses: Using Social
Media for Candidate
Screening
Individual ethical decisions and the perceived
intensiy of the moral dilemma increase job
seekers’ intentions to protect the information
privacy of their social media accounts when
confronted with requests for login credentials
from potential employers.
Transactions
in Human-
Computer
Interactions,
8(4)
111
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Carpentier et al. (2017).
Recruiting nurses
through social media:
Eects on employer
brand and atractiveness
Nurses’ exposure to the hospital’s Facebook or
LinkedIn page had a signiicant positive eect on
a majoriy of the employer brand dimensions, both
instrumental and symbolic. In addition,
nurses who visited the Facebook page felt more
atracted to working at the hospital. Most of these
eects were mediated by social presence.
Journal of
Advanced
Nursing, 73(11)
Holland, P. & Jeske,
D. (2017). Changing
Role of Social Media
at Work: Implications
for Recruitment and
Selection
Cetain emergent practices such as cyber-veting
and applicant data mining demonstrate a lack in
moral, ethical, and legal frameworks. The lack of
atention paid to these new HR risks highlight
the skill gap within the HR profession to handle
information and data securiy challenges, any of
which can be exacerbated due to social media.
The Changing
Context of
Managing
People
(Emerald Book
Series)
Vroman et al. (2016).
Employer Liabiliy for
Using Social Media in
Hiring Decisions
The complex requirements and serious potential
for loss imposed by state and federal legal systems
demands that enterprises familiarize themselves
with the rules and best practices concerning the
use of social media in the hiring process.
Journal of
Social Media for
Organizations,
3(1)
Baet, S. (2017).
Facebook proile picture
appearance aects
recruiters’ irst hiring
decisions
Candidates with the most beneicial Facebook
picture obtain approximately 38% more job
inteview invitations compared to candidates
with the least beneicial picture. In addition,
evidence suggested for a higher eect of Facebook
proile picture appearance on hiring chances
when candidates are highly educated and when
recruiters are female.
New Media &
Sociey, 20(3)
Cerro et al. (2017).
Interpersonal perception
of LinkedIn proiles and
employabiliy
LinkedIn is a vey useful tool that provides
added value by speeding the initial phase of the
personnel selection process: the iltering of CVs.
However, the beneits oered by this method
seve only to streamline this process, not to
eliminate the need for it.
Aloma, 35(2)
Egerová, D. & Eger, L.
(2017). Recruitment
through the use of
corporate websites –
A comparative study
Most companies provide explicit organizational
related information and available information
regarding job characteristics. On the other hand,
the indings indicate that most companies do not
communicate components regarding their culture
and do not provide content speciically targeting
college or universiy candidates. Moreover, only
a half of companies from the study sample
(AutoSAP) uses social media as a pat of their
recruitment eots.
Education
Excellence and
Innovation
Management
through
Vision 2020.
Conference
paper presented
at Norristown:
International
Business
Information
Management
Association
112
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
Priyadarshini et al.
(2017). Employer
atractiveness
through social media:
A phenomenological
study
Through social media it has become vey easy for
to interact with the prospective employers. By
using social media, resumes and applications can
be received from prospective employees shotly
to the applicants with equal eiciency. Futher,
social media reduces many costs for the company
by enabling to reach potential employees. Lastly,
the usage of social media should be restricted to
recruitment and marketing only.
The Qualitative
Repot, 22(4)
Zubielqui et al.
(2017). Social media,
open innovation &
HRM: Implications for
peformance
Social media seves as a mediator for the effect of
external knowledge lows on irm innovativeness
when irms atach high impotance to modern
HRM practices. Futhermore, while the results
demonstrate that innovativeness and irm
peformance are positively related, innovativeness
does not translate into improved irm peformance
in irms that atach low impotance to modern
HRM practices.
Technological
Forecasting &
Social Change
Callan, R. C. (2018).
The eects of selection
system characteristics
and privacy needs
on procedural justice
perceptions: An
investigation of social
neworking data in
employee selection
Manipulation of justice rules being related to
perceptions of the associated procedural justice
rules, also related to overall procedural justice
perceptions. Futher, privacy concerns were
related to overall procedural justice perceptions.
The moderating role of privacy concerns on
the relationship beween procedural justice
rule perceptions and overall procedural justice
perceptions was not suppoted. A post-hoc
analysis revealed that the interaction beween
objective procedural justice and privacy
concerns had a small eect on procedural justice
perceptions.
PhD Thesis,
Psychology,
Old Dominion
Universiy
Koch, T., Gerber, C., & De
Klerk, J. J. (2018). The
impact of social media
on recruitment: Are you
LinkedIn?
Despite still utilizing some traditional methods
of recruiting, South African recruiters follow
their international counterpats, with LinkedIn
being central to their respective recruitment
processes. The use of Twiter and Facebook for
recruitment was found to be substantially lower
in South Africa than elsewhere. Without following
a focused approach, the volume of work that
emanates from using social media may ovewhelm
a recruiter.
SA Journal
of Human
Resource
Management, 16
Kutlu1 et al.
(2018). LINKEDIN
for recruitment:
An examination of
recruiters’ use of “Apply”
and “Easy Apply”
features
Most recruiters prefer ‘Easy Apply’ for all
recruitment on LinkedIn because of its ease of use.
Conference
Paper.
Depatment of
Management
Information
Systems,
Bogazici
Universiy,
Istanbul,
TURKEY.
113
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
Nugroho, F. E., &
Trinugroho, I. (2018).
Facebook contents
and job recruitment:
A experimental study
Applicants’ Facebook contents signiicantly aect
the recruitment decisions which are indicated by
the dierence of choice from the irst phase to
third phase. Qualiied applicants are associated
with more professional contents on their Facebook
accounts
Jurnal Ilmiah
Manajemen,
8(2)
Kimberly et al.
(2018). Social media,
data privacy and the
internet of people,
things and sevices in
the workplace: A legal
and organizational
perspective
Social media and other data privacy issues have
had a transformative impact on the workplace.
They have also presented organizations with
many issues, both positive and negative, to
consider. Speciically, with regard to selection
and termination of employment, social media
has played an increasingly prominent role in
organizations. Likewise, data management and
employee privacy are vital, as wellness programs,
GPS tracking, and mobile devices are oten oered
to employees.
The Internet of
People, Things
and Sevices
Workplace
Transforma-
tions (Book
chapter)
Roulin, N., & Levashina,
J. (2018). LinkedIn as
a new selection method:
Psychometric propeties
and assessment
approach
Initial LinkedIn-based ratings correlate with
self-repots for more visible skills (leadership,
communication, and planning) and personaliy
traits (extraversion), and for cognitive abiliy.
LinkedIn-based hiring recommendations are
positively associated with indicators of career
success. Potential adverse impact is also limited.
Proiles that are longer, include a picture, and
have more connections are rated more positively.
Some of those features are valid cues to
applicants’ characteristics (e.g., applicants high
on conscientiousness have longer proiles). An
itemized LinkedIn assessment is more eective
than a global assessment.
Personnel
Psychology
Suen, H. (2018). How
passive job candidates
respond to social
neworking site
screening
A candidate who can beter control his/her SNS
information is less likely to perceive that his/her
privacy has been invaded during SNS screening
by potential employers, thus mitigating his/her
perception of procedural unfairness. In addition,
when SNS screening is more transparent, the
candidate is less likely to perceive the selection
procedure as unfair, which will reduce his/her
intention to withdraw from employment selection.
Computers
in Human
Behavior, 85
Villeda, M., & McCamey,
R. (2019). Use of social
neworking sites for
recruiting and selecting
in the hiring process
SNS should be used in recruiting and selecting of
employees, but employers should not solely rely
on such plaforms. Employers greatly beneit from
the unbiased information concerning SNS, but as
time progresses and processes evolve.
International
Business
Research, 12(3)
Source: Literature suvey.
114
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
2.5 Increasing utilization of social media in hiring
process: The motivations
Why increasing number of employers and jobseekers are using social
media? What are the advantages and what are the pitfalls of using social
media? Do the benets and limitations dier for employers and jobseek-
ers or actually the same? We try to find the answers of those questions
on the following paragraphs:
Reduced cost and time: Literature indicate that social media can reduce
the cost and time needed for recruitment with higher eciency (Petre et al.,
2016; Rosoiu & Popescu, 2016; Vidros et al., 2016). For example, placing an
ad on the internet is often cost free and the information may be edited if any
mistake is noticed or a change is needed (Sylva & Mol, 2009), while publishing
a job ad in a newspaper requires nancial resources. Online Recruitment
also allows for a considerable reduction in paperwork, reducing application
costs (Petre et al., 2016).
Readymade information: Social media provide some information already
available for the employers that are not otherwise obtainable elsewhere such
as behavioral pattern, hobbies, interests, friend groups etc. In addition, there
is an opportunity for the employers to cross check the information that has
been already provided to them.
To attract passive job seekers: HR professionals frequently sustain that
business oriented SNSs present an abundant source of information concerning
passive jobseekers (Wolk, 2004). These individuals are particularly attractive for
organizations as they represent an unexploited pool of potentials not connected
with placement agencies or other recruiting professionals. Many passive can-
didates are considered to be especially stable employees (DeKay, 2009). DeKay
(2009) pointed out that a majority of LinkedIn members are having a prole to be
contacted by employers for new career opportunities. Most of proles include
detailed descriptions of present and past work experiences, areas of expertise
and links to references made available by former supervisors and co-workers.
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The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
To avoid negligent hiring: A good number of employers argue it is purely
their responsibility, as stewards of their organizations and as individuals who
uphold an obligation to their stakeholders, use social media information to
learn as much as they can about potential employees. They further argue
that they have a right and a need to protect them from the accusations of
negligent hiring. This could occur if an organization ‘fails to uncover an
applicant’s incompetence or untness by a diligent search of references,
criminal background or even general background (Clark & Roberts, 2010).
Tentative predictor of potential employee’s personality and per-
son-job tness: Some employers utilize social media information as instru-
ments to evaluate candidates’ behavior or characteristics (Stoughton et al.,
2015) because such information provide relatively transparent and honest
personal information, such as the content posted on candidates’ sites by
their friends, compared with the information on conventional resumes or
application forms, which is expected to project a denite impression or pre-
ferred image (Slovensky & Ross, 2012). Kluemper et al. (2012) conducted two
studies on Facebook established that screening a job candidate’s SNS prole
may also supply useful information to forecast the candidate’s personality
for a hiring decision. Moreover, SNS information can be used to develop
targeted interview questions (Davison et al., 2011) and conversations and
to build connections during interviews (Smith & Kidder, 2010).
2.6 Using social media in hiring: Beneits and risks
Social media is getting popular to the employers and jobseekers for sev-
eral reasons. The causes for such popularities have been identied on the
following paragraphs dividing between the employers and job applicants:
116
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
2.6.1 Benets and challenges for the employers
It is not to mention that there are a few benets to using SNS in the hiring.
Numerous organizations, especially in technologically advanced countries
have already integrated it to some extent. Among them, some notable ex-
amples are cheap cost and decreased time to hire, the capacity to reach out
to a younger age group and a bigger pool of applicants, attracting passive
job applicants, and providing organizations with a diverse tool for predicting
the performance of tentative employees.
However, there are more than a few challenges associated for using
social media information for hiring, which should also be noted by the HR
professionals who are involved in hiring process. The main challenges/risks
are legal issues, the incapability to employ a varied pool of candidates (re-
garding age, gender, and race) and the lack of validity and reliability of these
platforms. As a hiring approach, social media provide more benets at the
recruitment stage, having no damage in attracting more job applicants when
the charge is nominal. Rather social media use might create further troubles if
used during the screening and selection process (Villeda & McCamey, 2019).
2.6.2 Benets and challenges for the job applicants
A notable benet of using social media sites for jobseekers in is that so-
cial media is a low costs medium for searching for job opportunities. Job-
seekers can connect to the social platforms of companies (Job pages in
SM) and can eortlessly have entrance to the vacancies companies post.
Applicants can even do this secretly, which could be possibly an advan-
tage for who presently employed thus assisting the jobseekers in a more
responsive manner (Reiners, 2013).
Further, they can easily access to inuential referees and important infor-
mation about the company (Kroeze, 2015) helping them to prepare even better
for the job screening process. On the other hand, social media and social
117
The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
networking sites especially can raise the possibility to connect and swap infor-
mation between the employers and job applicants face to face. Jobseekers
and recruiters mutually can preserve, organize, and widen their social asso-
ciation more eciently with the help of social media where they can lter out
relevant information and use them to generate new cooperative oppor tunities.
In case of limitations for jobseekers, the rst thing comes out is that
users (also applicants) seldom realize what information might be disclosed
publicly (Madejski et al., 2011) or how a normal post or comment might
be misjudged (Wang et al., 2011) by a possible future employer. An appli-
cant’s social networking site does not contain only personal data posted
online by him/her but also pictures/shares/comments uploaded by others
such as friends, family or institutions. Such information might be incorrect,
which might even damage them as an individual (Henson et al., 2011). Social
media information might also be inaccurate as there is a lack of reliability
that could be transferred when used in the hiring process since one party
(candidate) has real information compared to the other (employer) who just
interprets it (Villeda & McCamey, 2019).
Individuals are become the victim of identity theft or when fake information
is posted about them on someone else’s website (i.e., libelous information)
(Davison et al., 2012). A study by Kluemper (2012) showed that employers
reject jobseekers based on what they nd about them on social media. He
found that 35% of employers said that they would reject a jobseeker because
of information they found on social media.
3. Recommendations for employers
and employees
Based on the previous ndings, the study attempts to make several recom-
mendations for the employers on using the social media for hiring purposes.
The suggestions are highlighted on the following paragraphs:
118
Md Sajjad Hosain, Ping Liu
3.1 Reliabiliy and validiy of information collected
Since SM platforms such as Facebook and Twitter depicts decision makers
to factors that equal employment law restricts, the burden of proof may be on
the organization to demonstrate that group membership did not factor into
the hiring decision (and this may be dicult to accomplish). On the basis of
these factors, it is strongly suggested that the organizations should refrain
from using SM (e.g., Facebook) and other Internet information (e.g., Google
searches) until methods for collecting and evaluating such information are
shown to be reliable and valid (Iddekinge et al., 2013).
3.2 Development of transparent policy and code
of conduct
Iddekinge et al. (2013) recommend that organizations develop clear policies
concerning the use of SM and other Internet information. In fact, the outcome
of an S HR M ( 20 11) survey suggested that a good number of organizations do
not have a policy regarding the use of Internet information. Fortunately, some
organizations have already recognized codes of conduct or ethical guidelines
for the use of social media guided by some professional associations. Such
codes should be extended to reect on recruitment and selection. These
codes should specify the ethical and/or professional consequences of cer tain
actions while providing recommendations to HR professionals to reduce the
reliance on individual judgment and morals. In addition, a well-structured and
thought-through code of conduct sends a signal to all in the organization
(employers and employees) about which practices are acceptable and which
are not such as cybervetting applicants without consent or legal justication
(Holland & Jeske, 2017).
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The Role of Social Media on Talent Search and Acquisition: Evidence from Contemporay Literature
3.3 Linking the code of conduct to training:
At present, individuals may be hired and promoted to roles with greater re-
sponsibility without being trained in how to spot, aver t, and react to challenging
social media use among employees they manage (Pallarito, 2014; Roberts
& Sambrook, 2014). The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM,
2016a, 2016b) reported the results of two surveys with HR professionals
showing the following: Only 56% of respondents in 2011 and 59% in 2013
had a formal or informal policy on applicant screening in their organization.
This means that risks such as slander (Lieber, 2011) are almost inevitable,
given that around 40% of employers do not have such a policy. Attempts
to control what is shared by employees on social media is less likely to be
eective than a proactive discussion and eective training only if the respon-
sibilities and condentiality issues are understood will they be acted upon
(Hyman, 2016). While code of conducts may exist, few of these are actually
linked to induction training upon hiring or promotion. There are reasons to
believe that training and discussion are the keys to ensuring that the under-
lying aspects of the code of conduct are understood and applied. Training,
however, is unlikely to reduce discriminatory practices. The organization
must have a policy of fair and unbiased treatment, modeled by its leaders
and reinforced through additional training and appropriate legal selection
practices (Holland & Jeske, 2017). If the training is not complemented by
good management practice (e.g., such as having an open discussion around
inclusion vs. discrimination, ethical leaders that role-model ethical behavior
when discriminatory practices are discovered), codes of conduct are unlikely
to be eective (recommendations on the EEOC, 2016).
3.4 Selection of appropriate media
If an organization wants to use social media for job advertising, it should
select the appropriate one that suits. Selecting the wrong social media to
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communicate a job opening could result in receiving excess and unrelated
applications. Possible overloading of the system could lead to missing ac-
tual skilled (talented) applicants. On the other hand, wrong selection could
also mean receiving less than the expected applications, leading again to
the same outcome. According to some experts, online recruitment is more
eective for companies already known (Greengard, 2012; Galanaki, 2002),
large, and involved in technology. It was proven that e-recruitment was more
eective and yielded more results when the company was more recognized,
as job seekers look rst at companies that they know and advertise more,
and then locate less recognized ones.
3.5 Using the social media more for talent search
than screening
The use of social media should be more concentrated in searching talent
thorough social media news portals or social media advertising. Organi-
zations should rely less on screening a candidate based on social media
information to avoid lawsuit and privacy issues. With having proper guide-
lines and validity and reliability of social media information, organizations
should refrain from using social media information on selection, screening
and background checking.
3.6 Using social media a complimentay
instrument rather than a sole one
Organization can use social media information as additional tool for initial
recruitment rather than solely relying on that. Social media can act as the
tool of checking the information on CV or resume of candidates.
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3.7 Focusing on job-related information and
professional social media only
SM assessments should be related to job related information (Miguel, 2013).
The information should note the nature of the KSAs or behaviors being
targeted or measured. Further, it is suggested that organizations consider
what criterion (or criteria) they wish to predict and what SM information
might be relevant to that criterion. This set of suggestions may help clarify
results of the SM assessment process, because decision makers will better
understand what to focus on and predict. Third, organizations focus only
on employment purposed websites (e.g., LinkedIn) (Kluemper et al., 2012;
Miguel, 2013; Sinar, 2013; Sinar & Winter, 2012). Again, in this respect, we do
not generally recommend using such information in operational selection
at this time. Rather, this is a good place to do research “in the background”
to see if SM assessments might provide valid information. This background
research might examine resume to check if variables such as breaks in em-
ployment and promotions might be captured from SM websites (Sinar, 2013).
Such data might add to variance accounted for (in various criteria) beyond
personality tests or cognitive ability tests, although dealing with potentially
incomplete information could still prove challenging (Roth et al., 2013).
4. Theoretical and practical implications
4.1 Theoretical implications
The social media is gaining rapid attention from the academicians and re-
searchers but there are very few evidences (both theoretical and empirical)
on how to utilize, when to utilize such a platform form dierent HR functions.
The paper is based on previous literatures where the ndings and suggestions
are summarized and highlighted. The Authors are hopeful that this paper
will help the researchers to further investigate in this matter in more deeply
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and with wider scope, thus acting as the bridge for additional investigation
as this area of HRM needs more attention and results to be implemented.
4.2 Practical implications
The research will be expected to be further helpful to the organizations and
policy makers to implement the suggestions made earlier. Social media is
a tool that can be utilized for saving time and money provided that it should
be used with extreme caution and with proper guidelines to avoid any com-
plicacies. The paper might helpful also for formulating and implementing
a proper social media policy (SMP) in order to make timely and efficient
utilization of social media for hiring purposes.
5. Research limitations and scope for futher
research
This paper is based solely on previous research published in dierent jour-
nals and thesis based on the authors’ ndings. This study focused on indi-
vidual organizations only; limiting the scope. The dimension can be further
widened by focusing on the use of social media by recruitment agencies
themselves. Further, the impact of training for recruiters in the use of social
media, especially Facebook and LinkedIn in the recruitment process might
be a further topic that has yet to be explored. Studies in the future may seek
to use quantitative methods to do research that allow a much bigger sample
size in order to validate the conclusions previously made.
6. Conclusion
As the inevitable parts of technological innovation and development, no one
can ignore social media as part of our daily lives. However, cautions should
be made while utilizing these networks keeping consistency with law and
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regulations. Furthermore, both players in this game, employers and applicants
should respect each other in terms of privacy, fairness and ethics (for em-
ployers) and organizational hiring policy and practices (for job applications).
The social media can only function in an eective and ecient manner if both
the employers and employees know the basic legal and ethical foundations
regarding these recent utilizations in organizations and business purposes.
It is obvious that social media being widely utilized in searching and
acquiring potential employees and it is expected to grow as a hiring tool in
upcoming time. However, utilizing social media instead of the traditional meth-
ods can be as well problematic. Further, using social media as a searching
and recruitment tool might lead to legal issues. Similarly, social media has
non-work-related components that could bias decision making regarding
recruitment (e.g. photograph, personal interests and personal information).
On a nal note, we emphasize that using social media as a searching and
hiring tool is a rapidly burgeoning practice, though it is severely under-re-
searched. We hope our investigative study will place the foundation for future
experimental research in this particular sphere.
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