Should Employers use Social Media to screen job applicants?

Introduction

The social media have taken over the world in a small time period and almost every person uses them. The technology revolution brought the use of social media and busy lives of people make them use the social media often in order to stay in touch with their loved ones. The excessive use apart from connecting with friends and relatives, the social media usage also brought them to share such things which they are interested towards. These are the aspects which can be considered by the employers when hiring someone by scrutinize the social media profile. The positive side of this step will help employer to know the relevancy of the employee the company is intending to hire but in the meantime the negative side is the privacy violation of that person. The employers who are performing these tasks to go through the social media profiles need to take care the legal and ethical boundaries which protects the privacy right of the employee. Furthermore, the discussion will undertake in the following of all the positive and negative side of the social media influence in hiring process.

Discussion

The usage method of the employers of the social media profile of candidate should be taken under consideration when forming any particular opinion regarding it. The first application which is created for the same purpose and widely used by the employers is LinkedIn. The method of selecting the candidate and showing the interest of hiring on the LinkedIn by the employer to any person is searching the relevant fields and interests. Mostly the search goes through the mutual connections, posting the opening of the position and often directly messages the person whom an employer wants to hire. The LinkedIn is less controversial as compared to other social media websites because it serves the same and relevant purpose. People who use the LinkedIn are interested in showing their profile to get the jobs in their relevant fields. The second most famous social website is Facebook, and lately the usage of Facebook has increased drastically among the people and in the meantime the recruiters also use it to hunt the talent. The corporate world have created the official pages on which they display the advertisement for the people to show interest in those potions. While those who show interest, the employers scrutinize the profile of the candidate to look for the relevancy. The third famous social media is twitter which also being used by the employer for the similar purpose as in the Facebook (Drouin, 3).

This practice is widely criticized by many people because it’s the violation of privacy right. The life in the workplace is different than the life out of the workplace. Those employers who look into the social media profile possibly found out those aspect of potential candidates and reject them on those basis. The use of social media is inappropriate because it contradicts the personal space of candidate. If organization started to give the permission to check the social media profile before recruiting the candidate this will turn into the right to that HR manager use that information against the employee. The stalking and harassment cases which are raising the concern of women’s right organization also consider it violation of privacy. For example, the consumption of Alcohol is not illegal but the display of the pictures while consuming it will leave the impression of non-seriousness and question the integrity of candidate.

The other reason of not using the social media as the mean of recruiting because the information provided on the CV is valid as compared to social media profile. The authenticity of those displayed information should be questioned before considering it. The usage of social media for recruiting the employee is neither ethical nor legal way. The HR should consider and respect the privacy of the candidate.

On the contrary, those who speaks in the right of using social media as the mean of recruiting and scrutinizing the candidate consider it most efficient way. The medium which a social media can become is beneficial for the employees and the employers. The usage of social media is excessive and while using those social websites people can also find jobs for themselves easily and conveniently. The other reason of considering the social media an efficient method is because the users share things which they are interested in and also show their specialty. This is the advantage for the employers to assess the potential candidate by the interests and what they are good in. The blogs can give the edge to candidate because the employer is looking for someone who can writer good and make the proposals as part of the nature of the job. Technology is the essential part of the lives of all the people and the use of it creates the ease for everyone.

The traditional Human Resource practice is slow and waste time and resources but the use of social media can make the hiring process quick. The traditional use of HR practice needs several processes to go through which wastes the time of both the candidate and the employer. But the use of social media makes it faster, the candidate don’t need to prove the specialty and in one process the top candidate can be hired. The other significance of using the social media as the mean of recruiting is that their job post will reach to maximum number of people who could avail the opportunity (Alexander, Deanna and Fred H, 6).

Conclusions

In conclusion, the use of social media is proven to be more effective and efficient by going through several research and surveys. The social media as a medium of recruiting holds both the positive and negative sides. The positive side of this step will help employer to know the relevancy of the employee the company is intending to hire but in the meantime the negative side is the privacy violation of that person. The medium which a social media can become is beneficial for the employees and the employers. The usage of social media is excessive and while using those social websites people can also find jobs for themselves easily and conveniently. The other reason of considering the social media an efficient method is because the users share things which they are interested in and also show their specialty. This is the advantage for the employers to assess the potential candidate by the interests and what they are good in. The blogs can give the edge to candidate because the employer is looking for someone who can writer good and make the proposals as part of the nature of the job. Technology is the essential part of the lives of all the people and the use of it creates the ease for everyone. The employers should consider all the aspects of legal and ethical for using the social media but if these aspects are under consideration this method will bring the efficiency in the human resources recruiting practice.

Works Cited

Drouin, Michelle, et al. “Facebook fired: Legal perspectives and young adults’ opinions on the use of social media in hiring and firing decisions.” Computers in Human Behavior 46 (2015): 123-128.

Alexander, Elizabeth C., Deanna Mader, and Fred H. Mader. “Using Social Media During the Hiring Process: A Comparison Between Recruiters and Job Seekers.” (2017).