The evolution of Web 2.0 technology saw a further development on marketing. Web 2.0 uses more participatory technologies such as online communities and social channels, rather than just transactional channels or information. These advance digital technologies facilitated the practice of co-created, user-generated, user-shared content with a focus on the active (not passive) user rather than the website or marketer as per Web 1.0. The change was from one-way model of passive communication to a multichannel and multi-user approach in which web users were empowered to ‘pull’ down information and interact with the organisation and content, as well as each other (consumer-to-consumer). Some other changes from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 are the mode of transfer, before it was a monologue and nowadays is a dialogue (Kuikka, 2011).
According to Girard et al. (2014) social media is presenting a significant issue for recruitment agencies. The change in technology and rise of marketing is developing the need for new methods of marketing and new strategies on recruitment (Chahal, 2015). According to Walter, needs are not being met since 84% of businesses are undergoing lack of marketing skills.
For this point, Firstly, all organizations must develop internal policies and procedures aiming in protecting themselves from external risk. Secondly, this can be achieved by implementing the right rules to manage social media during the recruitment process and taking advantage of the benefits to be gained by using the same as opposed to the negative effect of social media, which can harm recruitment. Thirdly, a long-term strategy must be applied in order to avoid external risk.
There is a strong indication that applicants with business oriented qualifications and marketing training should have a preference on hiring. Orsi proposes that the ancient Greek idiom “ am getting older while learning” is to be safeguarded (Orsi,2015).
Internal challenges
Internal challenges can be explained as the “planned use of collaboration to steadily affect the understanding, approaches and behaviours of existing employees” (stauss and Hoffman, 2000). Within the dramatic increase of social media and its universal addition into organizations, such as recruitment agencies advanced platforms by formulating interaction with the business in a more easy way. Also, internal challenges can be defined as the progression in which organizations use internal bases of recruitment to fill job positions with a current member of the organization. This is used for advancements. Overall, it advances the procedure by the usage of social media as it is quicker (status and Hoffman, 2000).
External challenges
External challenges are related with organizations character and legal issues. It is also suggested that when a company uses social media networking for external challenges is mainly aimed at stakeholders. Also is the procedure where organizations will request new applicants. This can succeed by the sector of HR or by advertisements of job vacancies (Status and Hoffman, 2000).
3.1 Business Drivers
Business drivers are defined as the process that is significant for the sustained evolution and achievement of a company. It is essential to know what is the business-marketing plan, which embraces the goals that an organization desires to achieve. For example, improve research and progress insights, increase the traffic to the website, increase sales per channel, and decrease costs assigned to customer service (Gonzalo, 2012). An organization must recognize its business drivers to maximize any of their control. The business drivers involved in the adoption of social media platforms are numerous. Firstly, businesses must improve branding and awareness. Social media is mighty to aid organisation gain audiences, therefore by being present and active in various social networks is an advantage in increasing awareness. Secondly, protecting the reputation is another business driver for organisations. Nowadays, with social media changes can happen when least expected. Therefore, it is important to monitor the conversations of customers in order to take action when required. Thirdly, enhancing public relations is also crucial. Hence, answering to customer’s posts on social media is essential for building a relationship. Fourthly, building community around the organization is vital to creating brand loyalty and brand advocacy. Lastly, a business can advance customer service. Many organizations use social media to improve their concerns and complaints. Therefore organizations can read and thus monitor their mistakes (Gonzalo, 2012).
3.2 Benefits
It is more applicable when businesses are using social media tools to hire possible employees and more easily by promoting posts through social media tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter (Greiner, 2012). According to Nagy (2018), it is stated that by hiring the most suitable candidate it is an opportunity for the success of the company. 56 percept of recruitment agencies use social media to hire a new employer (Morgan 2015).
Organizations are admitting the benefits of using social media such as saving money because social media tools are free to set up, rather than the traditional way of recruiting applicant’s that costs a lot of money and time by expanding the best quality of candidates. Also, by hiring employers from social media, it increases the level of the organization to more “sophisticated”(Acas, 2013).
The procedure of recruitment could cause time consuming for both the company and workers. That’s why social media recruitment gives benefit to everyone. Social media tools are used to recognize possible candidates with personality or education and to accomplished a candidate through social media recruitment way. The candidates can be benefited if they provide an innovative and productive profile and by expressing positive comments to an organization post for possible applicants (Broughton et al., 2013). By posting attractive information familiar to the job sectors it is easier for an employer to improve the relationship with the applicant.
This means that people are more straightforward through social media, as compared to the traditional recruiting method. Furthermore, most possible employees are familiar in technology and well informed about new business trends that will help the organization to get an advantage. Also, another benefit is that, “Candidates referred for appointment by current employees not only that they are more productive but they stay committed” (Innovative employee, 2015).
By using social media is “increasing the pool of applicants reached, and being able to target recruitment at specific groups of potential candidates” (Davison, Maraist and Bing, 2011). The prospect is that social media will expand the scope of information about individuals and organizations and offer more applicants for selection. Also another benefit is that it is easy to track and measure and offer authorized information of the engagement of the process (Taylor, 2014).
Additionally, social media can support organizations to focus their recruitment more precisely, by showing accurate image of the agency, and reach a broader choice of possible applicants. This combination is very stimulating for recruitment agencies.
3.3 Opportunities
As stated by Regions Job (2011), recruitment is an opportunity that effected by the growth of social media. An opportunity can be the website that permits the connection and distribution with other active users that have similar interests (McTigue, 2016). Also, currently, it is easier to target users with promoting campaigns such as advertisements. Furthermore, it is important to note that by concentrating on social media tools and sharing information about mission, vision and generally personal material, gives the opportunity to candidates to be attracted to jobs with similar values. Finally, feedback from customers in social media will give an extra advantage to the organization to success.
3.4 Obstacles
The procedure of going over CVs and applications is extremely time consuming. Not all applicants have skills and high-level qualities that’s why employees have to be aware of risks. Also, sometimes-social media tools require bad critics and comments, however in this case, traditional and social media recruitment is the same. A disadvantage is that recruitment agencies are never sure whether the information that the candidate provides is accurate. With a result, of if the information is inaccurate to loose time (Acas, 2013). By using any social media tool, it is a controversial concern as there are possible chances of breaching privacy and data protection (Niche, 2013).
Legal implications comparatively new tool for hiring an employee, social media tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter, contrary to personal data protection loss through social networking recruiting officers can gain information of personal data of applicants such as “age, gender and other. Risk such as legal implications have to be made aware when social media is active because this allows the potential applicants to claim discrimination if rejected on the basis of individual biases and seek remedies. It is important to be aware of how to use social media if such use is made as a recruitment tool, to avoid unfair treatment of certain candidates (Niche, 2013).
Also applicants are familiar that by using any social media tool it can benefit only them, because they have the advantage and the opportunity to post whatever personal information they want. Sometimes candidates can be biased on the information provided about abilities. As a result it is demonstrated that mostly when employers faced those types of problem it causes waste of time (Hanly, 2014).
Through social media, user continuously communicates and lets other users know his existence. Absences from social media can cause damage at the same time useless broadcasting of messages without engaging with followers can discourage which is also bad (Jusola, 2010).
The new trend for filtering a candidate at recruiting creates a challenge for interested employers who can spy on prospective employees, by checking abilities, skills, social behavior, political views, religious and preferences and aspects of private life before engaging a candidate. At the same time non-participation of a candidate into social media can create social exclusion, which is discrimination for the candidate (Jusola, 2010).
Measuring benefits from social media can be harder:
Evaluating members in a company’s Facebook group it is not difficult. What is difficult though is to evaluate results like customer loyalty or brand recognition. Even in the case where company can measure customer loyalty or brand recognition the element of cost can change the result.
4. Innovation Issues
According to Cambridge dictionary, “innovation can be defined as a new idea or process”(Cambridge dictionary, 2017). Regarding the above topic, the most obvious innovative issue is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a recruitment tool on its own, therefore this affects negatively recruitment agencies since people can now easily find jobs through LinkedIn. As stated by Shaw and Schifrin (2015), there are more than 100 users that use LinkedIn in order to hire applicants within a small period of time. Also another innovative issue is potential discrimination. Potential discrimination provides a code that recommends that all employees must separate personal information during the recruitment procedure, in order to avoid been used as a disadvantage for the applicants (Kingsley Napley Team, 2014). According to Solomou (2012), there is often a chance of hiring an unsuitable applicant. This can causes bad financial issues of the company and bad applicant experience. Applicants might wait for long time until they get the approval of being able to get their possible roles (Solomon, 2010).
5. Impact Analysis
Social media is increasing daily, and users obsessing through all social media platforms. Although, It is obvious that recruiting agencies are advancing greatly from social media.
Metrics:
Source of influence: Recruitment agencies are following applicant’s sources in order to concentrate to most successful abilities. Currently, applicants have to be persuading by many different sources such as following, employ and engage the right company.
Referral rates: Associates should be connection, cooperating with applicants and producing referrals for example by using social analytics to find out, which is the best time to upload a post.
Time to hire: According to Dise study they indicate 79% of people who seeks for job vacancies are using social media to search (Dice staff, 2016).
Quality of Hire: It is important to hire good quality candidates that are associated and contribute, stay for a biggest period of time and who are promotable in the company (Huffman, 2016).
What are the differences of recruitment before social media and now:
Long time ago when social media was not connected to recruitment, the process to hire an employee it was way different from now. Organizations were advertising different types of jobs in newspapers that costed a lot of money, by involving specialized recruitment consultant, or by uploading posts through company’s web page. Potential employees were incompetent to have a convenient discussion with employers. Although those methods of recruiting don’t cause benefits to the organization as applicants need to be more active in organizations attitude.
Currently, there is a great growth in spending time on social media tools. Approximately 60% of people who seek for jobs are active to social media search. “A major differentiator here is the way professional recruiters communicate with candidates and the level of trust they are able to create in this digital world” (Dienst,