While it’s a still bit taboo to talk about in the recruitment industry, nearly every recruiter does it. In fact, recruiters spend around half of their weekly efforts focused on this activity alone. What are we talking about here, exactly? Whether professional recruiters are willing to admit it or not, social media profiling of candidates has become the name of the game in the recruiting world. So much so that how recruiting takes place has been transformed in just the last decade.
How recruiters use social media to screen candidates and what information they use to either reject or select candidates in this process has been a mystery of sorts for a long time. But this article will expose what some of these practices are, to level the playing field for candidates. Let’s take a deeper look at how recruiters use social media in today’s competitive job market.
Insider Look at the Use of Social Networks for Candidate Screening
In the last few years, there have been numerous research studies conducted that provide a glimpse of the recruitment world in relation to social networks. Jobvite, a recruiting software firm, released their 2013 Social Recruiting Survey , which indicates 94 percent of all recruiters polled use or plan to use social media in recruitment efforts (up from 78 percent in 2008), while another 78 percent of recruiters have made a hire through social networks.
It wasn’t that long ago that recruiters turned to print newspaper ads, career fairs, and direct employee referrals to source candidates. While back in the mid-1990s, recruiters used other sources for advertising jobs and gathering a talent pool, now social media is the number one source of fresh candidates. In fact, a TIME magazine article recently highlighted how businesses are leveraging their brand and connect with more candidates via social networks.
How recruiters use social media can vary slightly from one to the next, but they use these networks to perform the following tasks:
- Search for candidates with specialized skills, backgrounds and strong career histories.
- Research applicants to learn more about them through profiles and peer associations.
- Build talent pools through niche groups, job adverts and social network connections.
Recruiters are often known to browse through social networks to check out the credentials of potential candidates, send them invitations to apply for specific opportunities, and communication with passive candidates through strategic content campaigns. Oftentimes, before calling a candidate in for an interview, the standard practice is to also look for individuals on their social media profiles, including looking at images, posts, and other information.
Many may consider this to be “spying” on candidates, but in truth there are no laws against such activities. Social network members are free to clean up their profiles, set up privacy limits and build separate profiles for the specific purpose of looking good to recruiters. But, on the Internet, once information is published online it’s out there forever.
Common Reasons for Rejecting Candidates Based on Social Media Data
While most recruiters don’t like to admit this, they can and do base at least some of their hiring decisions on what they find on social media profiles. How can they not? If a candidate presented a stellar resume and career history, yet their social profile displayed them in images of wild partying or offensive content; what would most people think? Recruiters are human too, and at least a part of their subconscious mind will be influenced by social profiles.
However, with that said, there are common reasons that a recruiter may reject a candidate based on their social media profile. Here are a few:
Not Having a Social Media Presence – When a recruiter gets a resume, he or she will generally do an online search to see if a social profile exists. If one is not found, this can spell trouble for the candidate. Why? The non-existence of a social profile may indicate that a candidate is not technology savvy or lacks the ability to collaborate with peers.
Bad Posts and Offensive Content – Job seekers should be careful what they share on their profiles, including negative and offensive content. The TIME article mentioned above indicated that one study of Twitter mentioned, “references to illicit drugs, posts of a sexual nature, and mentions of alcohol consumption were likely to be viewed negatively by 78%, 67%, and 47% of recruiters.”
Lack of Professional Associations and Networks – When recruiters find a candidate online, they will also check out their professional associations and networks via social profiles. Four out of five recruiters enjoy seeking memberships and affiliations with professional groups on social profiles because it indicates the candidate’s commitment to their industry.
Poor Grammar and Spelling Mistakes – In the social media world, correct grammar, punctuation and spelling count. One of the pet peeves of detail-oriented recruiters is seeing badly written profiles on social networks, which indicate a level of carelessness on the part of the candidate.
Job seekers who take the time to clean up and improve their social media profiles will generally fare better in terms of the number of recruiters who will contact them for career opportunities. Understanding how recruiters use social profiling and how they select candidates for placement can help increase the chance of being called in for a great new job.
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