Social media is a growing medium of communication all over the world, whereas effective recruitment is one of the most important needs of companies. Do these two meet at any common point? In this article, we will find out the same step by step.
Social media, comprising of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, is arguably the fastest growing communication platform in the world. Nowadays we all spend our precious time ranging from a few minutes to a few hours daily on social media. We do the same for professional and personal purposes. While the professional objectives include networking, business development, knowledge sharing, etc, the latter includes connecting and chatting with friends, sharing thoughts, opinions, photographs, amongst others.
Recruitment can simply be defined as a process to fulfil an organisation?s manpower needs with the competencies and aspirations of an individual by offering a suitable compensation, rewards and benefits. Even though India has a large talent pool, getting the right person at the right time and the right place, not to forget at the right cost too, has become extremely difficult and challenging. Companies are spending huge amounts of money to recruit talented professionals. Talent has become one of the most critical resources choking the growth of many organisations. Companies across industry sectors are now establishing a full fledged talent acquisition department, which was common only in IT/ITeS companies so far.
Apart from the above, the recruitment spend includes talent branding advertisements, job advertisements, job portal subscriptions, employee referral schemes, professional recruiters fee, interview and assessment costs, etc. Amongst the various recruitment options, job portals are the most common tool by the companies, candidates and recruitment consultants. All of the above aspects make recruitment a complex mix of art and science.
If we compare job portals with social media, we will find that both have their advantages and disadvantages. The job portals offer paid services to the recruiters while the social media is free for the basic users. While the job portals are country specific, social media is global in nature. Job portals offer active job seekers whereas social media offers both active and passive job seekers. We can observe social interactions of a candidate on social media, which is not available on job portals. On the other hand, social media is difficult to use for the recruitment purpose while job portals are highly user friendly and easy to use.
Facebook and LinkedIn have more than 500 million and 100 million active users globally. According to an estimate, the active users of Facebook and LinkedIn in India are more than 25 million and 10 million, respectively. The numbers are growing exponentially. Resumes available with leading job portals in India are also running into millions. According to an expert opinion, 80% of the candidates available on job portals are also present on social media, whereas not even 50% of the social media users are present in the job portals. Hence, social media provides companies a platform to look at huge untapped reservoir of talent pool.
To summarise, social media is gaining popularity amongst recruiters and job seekers alike. While the various mediums of recruitments will co-exist, the importance of social media is going to increase in the foreseeable future unless an unknown technological revolution hits all of us.
The author is managing director, TalentAhead India Pvt Ltd