As more and more people continue to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more, companies are now increasingly using social media sites to look for their future employees. While the traditional resume may contain just a fraction of information, social media accounts provide the employer with the employee’s personal info, interests, goals, and others showcase their work as a preview of their professional abilities.
Companies mainly use social media to find their employees because it’s cost effective and it saves on time. Majority of companies use LinkedIn for social recruitment and others use Facebook and Twitter. However, with all the advantages that come with social media, there are also certain drawbacks.
In this post, we will explore some of the key advantages and disadvantages of using social media in your employee recruitment.
Advantages
Create brand awareness
Social recruiting doesn’t only benefit you by helping you find the right employee, it also helps to increase the visibility of your brand. When you post ads for new positions on social media, you’re not only strengthening your brand’s image, you’re creating a level of trust with your potential employees. People are more inclined to trust companies that have a strong social media presence. So an increased level of social media presence will help your business in the long run not only to find the right employees but to build trust with potential customers and also make it the best place to work.
Increase traffic
Whenever you send out a post for a job opening on your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram page, it will automatically create a lot of traffic to your site. Even if the majority of the population visiting your site aren’t looking for a job, they will keep visiting your site for further blogs and posts.
Greater Reach
Majority of the world’s population use social media which means every time you post anything it gets read by a huge population. Once you post a job vacancy on your social media platforms using the right process, a lot of people get to view it and tools like auto likes Instagram can help attract more curious people to view your posts. This will help you get more candidates to choose from.
Reduce costs
Recruiting is a costly process which requires the traditional way of advertising and promotion. However, if you use social media you significantly reduce costs and you save a lot on the company resources. Posting an ad on your LinkedIn page, Facebook page or groups will cost you nothing or you can use paid advertising that is only a fraction of what you would have used with traditional advertising like classified ads.
Screen candidates
Social media is a great tool to use to screen your candidates. Most people use social media platforms as avenues to vent out their frustrations and share their views and everyday experiences. What you might not be aware of is that if you’re looking for a job your potential employer can also check your social media profile. Some candidates link their CV’s to their LinkedIn and Twitter pages so you’re able to assess their personal qualities, skills, and previous experiences. Their profiles give you a better understanding of who they are, their interests, hobbies, posts, and the content they engage with.
Hire high-quality candidates
Most companies use social media to recruit high-quality candidates who are tech-savvy which is an important asset in the marketplace today. There is also a likelihood that these candidates are already aware of the emerging business trends which are a plus to your company.
Disadvantages
Limited information
Using some of the social media sites like Twitter limits the amount of information you can publish in your post, Twitter has a maximum of 140 characters in a post. The fact that a normal job post requires you to highlight the duties, educational qualifications, and skills needed for the job, it becomes impossible to put all that information in a single tweet. Job seekers will also have a hard time formatting their CV’s using 140 characters.
You can’t be yourself
If you have strong views about certain topics like racism, politics, etc. you can’t express yourself on your social media pages if you’re going to use them to seek employment. You won’t be able to be your normal self, and you have to be careful what you post or react to because your potential employer may find it offensive. This means you have to refrain from expressing yourself.
Limited employee access to social media
Even though most people have access to social media, there are still some that you may not reach with social media during your job recruitment. This means you will have to use the traditional way of advertising which is an extra cost.
Commit more resources
Using social media for your recruitment process requires you to commit certain resources so that you can be able to manage your social media presence, produce new content, and respond to feedback. You will need to also commit financial resources to paid advertising, creating video or image content, hiring, and training staff.
Protecting the company’s image
It’s a difficult balancing act when it comes to conducting a successful recruitment exercise on social media and protecting your brand’s image. When you post a job vacancy on social media, you will receive many applications then you have to choose the few candidates to contact. Those candidates who didn’t receive any response can feel offended and post damaging information about your company on social media. Talented job applicants may also ignore job vacancies from companies with poor social media profiles.
Final word
Social media is a great tool that you can use to get more information on your potential employees but it can also give you the wrong information that can make you biased. As a job seeker, it’s a great opportunity to network, but the smallest mistake or omission can cause you to be overlooked for a job post. Like every other medium, social media has its good and bad it all depends on how you look at it.