How to Utilize Social Media During the Hiring Process Earlier this year, LinkedIn, the online professional networking site, passed the 300 million mark for registered users. Twitter has twice that number of active accounts, at over 600 million users. And ten years after it was founded, Facebook now boasts well over one billion users. All told, more than a quarter of the world’s population now has at least one social media account – and these numbers are growing every day. Social media has become, without hyperbole, one of the most powerful platforms for human interaction on the planet, and, if a business is to be successful in today’s marketplace, they need to understand how to harness that power and make it work for them. Social media presents a number of advantages for the modern business. Primarily it provides a way to get in touch with your base of potential employees that is inexpensive, immediate, and effective. Social media can be updated in real time, showing the individuals that are interested in your brand what is happening in this moment. Further, companies that choose not to utilize the online opportunities that are available are not only denying people access to their services; they are also projecting an image of a company that is out of touch and inefficient. Having an active social media presence, however, is a sign of a thriving brand that’s in step with the contemporary economic climate. One of the areas where social media has proven most effective is in the employment search process where new platforms are creating unprecedented opportunities for organizations to find the individuals that are best suited for their open positions – and vice versa for the people that are currently looking for jobs. Using the targeted, two-way nature of online communication provides a streamlined solution to a formerly arduous process that’s updated in real time. Regardless of the time or date, as soon as a job posting becomes available or gets filled, that information can be updated so that the hiring process can start right away and time isn’t wasted with applications for positions that are no longer available. Recruiting management software like Recruiterbox has further simplified this process, allowing users to post and manage their content on multiple platforms. Using online recruiting software allows organizations access to wide amounts of people at a time, while simultaneously targeting individuals that are more likely to be suited for the job by searching for prospective employees by education, experience, region, and any number of other metrics that make it more likely for a company to find the exact matches for their specific needs. Social media also provides heretofore-unavailable information about who your potential employees are and whether or not they seem like a good fit for your institution. How a person conducts himself or herself online says a lot about who they are as a person, and you don’t want to risk employing someone who might compromise sensitive information, denigrate the organization publically, or embarrass it with socially unacceptable behavior. Using applicant tracking systems and accessing people’s self-posted, publically available
information is a legal, non-invasive way to get to know the people that you will be investing your time, money, and resources in. There are vast amounts of information and time saving applications currently available to modern organizations and to ignore it is to needlessly deny oneself data that could be utilized to help make better choices more efficiently. When one examines the advantages that social media now offers, its specific uses in the hiring process, and all of the recruitment software now available to employers, it no longer makes sense not to utilize these assets. Those raw numbers of subscribers for those sites and the overall percentage of people that are connected online isn’t going down; it will only continue to climb, and those organizations that best utilize its powers will be the ones that climb along with it.
Company Bio Recruiterbox Inc. is a recruiting software tool designed to help employers simplify the hiring process. Recruiterbox allows users to easily post openings to multiple platforms, manage resumes, track applicants, and more. Recruiterbox has made it their mission to develop products that improve the way companies and individuals can communicate with each other. Sources “A Quarter of the World’s Population Uses Social Media.” Tourism Review, 8-7-2013. Fowler, Geoffrey A. “Facebook: One Billion and Counting.” Wall Street Journal 10-42012.