Few years back when social media did not have the presence it has today in the online world, methods of recruitment used to be as, on campus recruitment, off-campus recruitment and recruiting by referral scheme or personal contacts. But the emergence of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter has given birth to a new method of recruitment. This may also be termed as online recruitment. Moreover, social media recruitment has become an absolute fit for the recruiters looking for freelancers.
What social media platforms are available for recruitment?
Apart from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, there are other social media networks that are also increasing their popularity viz. MySpace, Ning, Jobster, Google plus, Viadeo, XING and BranchOut. Earlier, these social media platforms were used for personal and business promoting purposes only but with the speed these networks are growing, they have rather created a platform where recruiters can find the suitable employees.
Using LinkedIn
The best platform for recruitment purpose is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional network where recruiters, employers, employees and job seekers can interact in a very smooth way. Since it is a place where a job seeker can have the chance to directly interact with the recruiter or recruitment agency, this is the best social media platform for preliminary short listing of the right talents. As a recruiter, you can join the LinkedIn website and get followers. You can join recruitment or job related groups where you can post the job requirements of your company.
And the best thing is that you will get specific responses adequate to the required job experience. You may create a group of your own. Be active in the groups by posting and replying the queries instantly to get more followers. Also, there’s a specific section for job where jobs can be posted. You can view the profiles of eligible candidate who are interested in your job posting. And, LinkedIn offers a unique view of the profile showcasing the experiences, relevant skills, and recommendations etc. at once. LinkedIn headline is itself a good criterion in short listing the required talent.
Using Facebook
From an informal chatting platform, Facebook has also turned out to be a place for preliminary selection of candidates and answering career related queries. Among all the social platforms, Facebook is mostly used and is not only accessed by computer or laptop but also by phone. Almost everyone has account here including job seekers, recruiters and companies.
Being a recruiter, you can post jobs on your company’s wall or in specific groups where you can get the right talent. The interested candidates can directly contact you for the job requirement. The best part is you can chat with the eligible job seekers and can get to know about their experiences and expertise.
Using Twitter
Twitter is very unique among all the social media platforms because of the specificity it provides. You are as specific as you can be in your tweets. As only 140 characters are required to enter in the tweets, you get specific replies from the job seekers as well. Here also a recruiter has to build up followers and start posting tweets about the latest job requirements in the company.
If you are searching for a 5 year experienced person in Java, you can shortlist the right candidates who have tweeted with exact match. Thus, it becomes easy to find the right guy rather than wasting time in going into the detailed resumes of all the applied candidates.
Pros and Cons
Social media recruitment is very innovative, attractive and has fun involved in it rather than the boring official recruitment. It is an efficient and speedy process. Moreover, it is less expensive and targets a large number of audience. It leads to building up professional network and connecting with talents around the world.
Well, though it may look so luxurious, it also has many drawbacks. The recruiter can not have face to face or personal interaction with the job seekers. The profiles being visited by the recruiter may not be updated ones. Huge publicity is required for the online job postings so that it may reach the right talent. Those who don’t use online platforms are completely ignored. Job seekers feel it difficult to trust the person for job posting and other information as there are many spam messages and fake job postings are created on these networks.
On the whole, use of social media for recruitment purpose is growing day by day. But one also needs to be attentive of the misuse of these platforms for recruitment.
