How Is Social Networking Effective For Recruiters?
How much social media or networking helping organizations to hire talented people? We find many recruiters nowadays effectively using social networking for hiring the best people for an organization. Now the question which needs to be answered is on whether this social networking can replace other recruiting tools.
One of the best and better ways to find and recruit talent for an organization is via the social media route. However, many people and recruiters still believe the fact that its worth is still not explored to a larger extent.
Only very few recruiters have been successful using social media to hire the best talent for an organization. Hence its overall benefits and success rate needs to be judged and figured out by the organizations and recruiters as well. I have seen many recruiters praising the method of social networking as one of the most remarkable solutions in comparison to the older conventional tools available in the industry today.
There are various thoughts and feelings which sets the mood and platform for people to interact online. Let us see how does it affects the online networking circuit.
What does the recruiter or hiring person thinks:
The hiring consultant is confident that as soon as he joins any social media site he is definitely going to get an access to an immense pool of talented professionals. On the various communities or specific networking groups he is confident to find people related to his industry or market. To check whether this statement is true we have to analyze what people want or think when they interact with one another on the social arena.
Psychology of the People joining Social Media sites:
People look forward to stay in touch and connect with their friends. Most of the people interact through various social mediums to build strong and long term connections with their offline friends. They also look forward in gaining value by sharing information and their networks with others. Most of the individuals talk about their personal lives and very few indulge in career related activities or sharing their future aspirations with others. There are various dedicated sites on developing great career prospects however for our current discussion, I would like to keep them out of it.
What can be figured out from this kind of behaviour of usage is:
The connection strength is quite huge in comparison to an individual’s network.
Men responses are less if we compare it to any women. Six or more will be an average number of people with whom a female will be interacting while a man would manage to handle four at any point in time. The mixing of people with common background or profession is seen less as major talk revolves around sharing personal details and achievements. You are also not able to judge where that individual is working or what are his qualifications as people tend to avoid mentioning such details on their social networking profile. You are also not sure whether he has been successful in his profession or what his current employment status is till date.
The study above influences our decision and challenges us to revisit and analyze whether it is beneficial to judge people on the various so called social networking sites. Much deeper study is required before declaring this tool to be complete in all aspects.
How much successful is Social Media?
Discussions around career development or honing one’s skills are seldom found in the various chatrooms or scraps. As a recruiter one would be able to extract very limited information on an individual’s candidature which most of the times leads to incorrect decision making. The profile of many individuals seems to hide the useful information and often carries plane garbage. This leads to a lot of confusions and many times resulting in delays and unjustifiable decisions.
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.