Which of the following indicates a risk of using social media in human resources?

The Risks and Rewards of Social Media Use in Recruitment and Hiring

Today social media play a massive part in many aspects of our lives, especially since the global pandemic had us all locked at home. And recruitment isn’t an exclusion of this statement. With the right Internet tools, only in the following hour people will send a significant number of job applications, write and post, sell and buy, Twitter followers will send 500 tweets in a few seconds, learn, or find a like-minded crowd. There are lots of opportunities with different platforms.

However, the system of hiring and recruitment through social networks isn’t perfect, and to use it properly, read this article. Here you will find risks and rewards of recruitment and valuable tips for employers. 

Improved Reputation Of The Brand

Brands can establish and maintain their reputation on social networks, exposing their values and principles of work to the world. Hence, your potential employees can be productive and enthusiastic about their work, as they are attracted to your job offers by concrete factors they find pleasing and interesting. 

Engaged employees are one of the vital things that impact brand quality. And on social platforms like Instagram or Twitter, you can describe what your brand is about, as well as share real customer experience. Such demonstration will sort out people who will be genuinely interested in the job. 

Direct Job Offers

When you describe your job conditions and requirements for the candidates on social platforms, it is a time economy for you, as for potential workers of your company. People can examine and decide if they want to take the offer without additional efforts, and as a result, you will spend time only on productive applications. Both parties save uptime, which is the primary value in business. 

There is already a specific platform for business relations – LinkedIn:

• you can upload official job offers, 
• look through potential candidates, 
• contact them easily. 

Also, on Linked In, you can share specific information that not be relevant to other social networks. Articles, studies, business details – all that will be a great addition to your profile on LinkedIn. Here, you can discover new trends and moods of current recruitment and find valuable articles to improve your HR department’s productivity. Also, on Linked In, you can share specific information that not be relevant to other social networks. 

Examine Your Candidates

Today, the character and preferences of the candidate play a part in hiring. We all want to find like-minded people. And on social media your HR managers can detect the most effective and potentially productive employees, as well as examine their reputation too. The personal qualities of a candidate are essential, as we all still have to work collectively, and at some point, the relationships between employees can play a massive part in the working process. 

Improve Your Relations

By being active on social networks, brands demonstrate engagement for potential customers and potential workers. Sharing news and trends of the industry is what indicates your involvement and development for people who wish to become a part of your team too. Being active on social platforms increases your reach and expands the hiring potential even before revealing an actual job offer. 

Social Media Take Time

Although the potential value of using social networks is enormous, proper organisation and running consume much time. To make any activity online effective for you, you have to: 

• invest time and resources into establishing your reputation, 
• maintain it, 
• search, collect and post interesting and actual information. 

Creating and planning content also takes much time. So, if the budget allows, it is better to take a special person who will manage your social media profiles and co-work with the HR department. 

Criticism And Hate

Along with collecting positive experiences, people can find negative comments about your business. There are many sites where employees share their knowledge about working in different companies anonymously. Such comments can sometimes be a result of personal offend or simply a diversion from your competitors. Seeing negative comments about your business can scare off the candidates you would actually like to add to your team. 

This medicine is spending resources and time creating an effective strategy for reacting to criticism on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. You have to make up a plan that will allow you to create a clear negotiation and provide a positive result for problematic situations. However, you have to take care of the reviews of your employees – always make sure that when somebody leaves your team for any reason, they don’t have any motivation to cover your brand with dirt. 

Following All New Trends Is Not Easy

Although social networks have made the process of examining the industry much more straightforward and improved communication between employees and brands, the social aspects of the modern world are now intertwined with the business sphere a lot. 

The problem of equality and diversity, which weren’t exposed much before, now can ruin your reputation in seconds. So your search for candidates now has to include the check-up of their social position (which isn’t always obvious). Your HR managers have to be careful as they negotiate with the potential worker, and your position for hiring now has to consider many aspects that seemed not worth mentioning before. Social media have sharpened such problems:

• Glass ceiling and other gender-based issues
• Racism
• Agism
• Salary comparison
• Working conditions

And many others that may depend on the industry. All those are now to be revealed and discussed on social platforms and can cause a severe decrease in your brand’s popularity. 

Privacy Issues

Along with the possibility to match the potential employee and make your team more effective, you also now have access to their private lives. Do you really want that? OH no. The balance between the business appearance and personal perforations of the worker is a delicate issue that requires diplomacy and care. 

Although modern society is targeted at diminishing this balance, there are still things that shouldn’t be all open to the public. For example, in many countries, the profession of a teacher is still covered with multiple prejudices, especially for their appearance. 

Tattoos and colored hair, bright make-up, and clothes (even outside of their workplace), friends, photos on social networks – all that is now open for society and can cause problems not only for a teacher personally but for the school administration as well, despite the level of professionalism. We have to fight this issue, but the battle is hard to win because conservative and liberal tendencies are running nose to nose. 

Conclusion

Hiring and recruitment with the help of social media take time. And consumes resources like crazy, so it is highly recommended to use platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter to improve your recruiting experience. But the result you can achieve with the right strategy is stunning.

Hppy delivers insights, research and information to business and HR leaders to create better employee engagement initiatives and workplace programs.

Related Posts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.