Social media – the future of recruitment is at hand
The Sunday Times ‘Recruiter Forum’ published an article last Sunday that I’ve been meaning to post about all week… in ‘Tapping the Facebook generation’ the debate is all about how ethical it is for businesses to use social media sites as recruitment tools…should prospective employers be scanning social networking sites for information on potential employees and how will candidates react?
Some of the statistics are interesting – according to a survey by www.careerbuilder.com 1 in 10 recruiters use social networking sites to check out candidates, two thirds of those recruiters rejected candidates on the basis of what they found.
There are some interesting insights from companies like T-Mobile, Sainsbury’s and Deloitte, who are seeing big benefits from adding social media tools to their recruitment strategy, particularly for graduates.
The general advice, is to be careful about what you post of sites such as Facebook – even think about restricting access to your Facebook profile…particularly given the news this week, that in the very near future curious employers will not need to register with Facebook to search for people on its database. More significantly, in a couple of months, you’ll even be able to search for a Facebook profile via Google!
Statistics that give some insight into how important social media is becoming as a tool to attract and manage talent, are highlighted in a survey conducted by the Association of Graduate Recruiters this summer. The survey revealed that 75% of 277 graduate recruiters believed that social networking sites would be important in the future in terms of reaching their target audience. Whilst more than 90% also said they thought that interactive features such as blogs and podcasts on web sites, were quite or very important tools for attracting the best talent".
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