1. Introduction
1.1 Talent management in the current era
Talent management has become a powerful and critical trend in corporate HR today, and an ongoing war for talents is existed between individuals and organizations within many mature markets (Tulgan, 2001). Talents are a key determinant of competitive advantage in an organization, and the right use of technology could strengthen the talent management programs to a great extent.
“Today companies are taking an even more strategic approach to talent acquisition, becoming increasingly inventive to attract and retain valuable candidates. ” said Byrne Mulrooney, chief executive of Futurestep, “While 2015 indicated the start of this thoughtful attitude to hiring, next year we expect this approach to pay off as organizations start to see the fruits of their labour, with the right talent being matched to the right position and making a truly lasting impact. ” According to CIPD (2015), it has been predicted that the investment of recruitment would be risen by numerous companies, and smart data would also be increasingly set to find candidates with the right skills and potential.
1.2 Social media and talent recruitment
The adoption of social media is a phenomenon of our times that has seen an explosive increase across the globe, changing the way in which individuals interact with each other and with organizations in technology-mediated ways (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Nowadays, increasingly more companies are investing recruitment resources in social media platforms, and the adoption pace of these tools continues to accelerate. An overview of the main social media tools used for recruiting would be introduced as follows:
Facebook: a popular social networking service where registered users could create personal profiles, upload photos and video, keep in touch with friends and send messages, embracing automatic notifications when someone update their own profile. In addition, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by common characteristics, making the world more open and connected. (Dean, 2014) “Facebook is one of, if not the best-known social media tool, and is extensively used by people to connect socially. Some organisations do, however, include this tool in their recruitment strategy. ” (Broughton et al., 2013)
LinkedIn: a business-related social networking site mainly used for the business community. Users maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have a pre-existing relationship, called connections. These connections could then be used to build up a contact network, watching out for different companies and finding jobs, people and business opportunities. (Rouse, 2015) “The original social networking site for professionals can be seen in its simplest form, as a ‘shop’ for a recruiter, where he can view, inter alia, the CV, qualifications, education, skills and references of potential employees. ” (Carmen-Gabriela and Victoria-Mihaela, 2014)
Twitter: a popular social networking microblogging service enabling its users to send and read publicly visible posts called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts which are limited to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page as a result of the constraints of Twitter’s Short Message Service (SMS) delivery system. Twitter users can broadcast tweets and subscribe to other users’ tweets by using multiple platforms and equipment. Cell phone text message, desktop client or posts at the Twitter.com website could send tweets and reply to tweets. (McMahon, 2015) “In the professional arena, the micro-blogging website has gained popularity, because it allowed users to follow everything and everyone they wanted- celebrities, influential people, brands, etc. Currently, Twitter serves as a great service for professionals who want to connect and engage with leaders in their industries, to create networks with other people having the same professions and remain up to date with the latest news related to their industry. ” (Carmen-Gabriela and Victoria-Mihaela, 2014)
In 2015, a social recruiting survey at Jobvite has found out that the 92% of recruiters that do use social media in the recruiting process, 4% are not sure and only 4% of recruiters do not use social media. (figure 1)
Figure 1. Percentage of recruiters use social media for recruiting Source: “The Recruiter Nation Survey” (jobvite, 2015). http://www.jobvite.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/09/jobvite_recruiter_nation_2015.pdf [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].
In that research, it has also been presented that LinkedIn (87%), Facebook (55%) and Twitter (47%) are still the favorites for recruiters, and new channels are encroaching on their territory such as Google and YouTube, as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. Top 5 social networking most used by the recruitment
Source: “The Recruiter Nation Survey” (jobvite, 2015). http://www.jobvite.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/09/jobvite_recruiter_nation_2015.pdf [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].
'Nachos' Radoi (2015) stated that “Social recruiting in 2016 will bring a major change – possibly even integrating social media directly with CV’s and profiles all in one place in many more online places… Although many recruiters will use job posting automation which may include social sites, reviewing specialist community sites and advertising roles in these places can be fruitful to find passive as well as the active candidates that job sites and professional networks yield. ”
On the basis of the previous studies, the role of social media in the recruitment process throws up both opportunities and risks for employers. For example, Carmen-Gabriela and Victoria-Mihaela (2014) indicated that social media could help attract potential candidates, facilitating the internal communication with employees and creating, designing, testing and promoting new services. However, these recruitment tools also raise several issues such as“ (1) the accuracy of information available on SNSs, (2) their accessibility across the pool of potential applicants, (3) issues of privacy, and (4) the relative costs and benefits. ” (Broughton et al., 2013) It has been pointed out that “The Internet has drastically changed the face of recruitment. Employers must now actively market themselves by instituting a well-implemented e-recruitment program to find better quality candidates and improve hiring decisions, all in less time and at a lower cost. ” (Smith and Rupp, 2004)
1.3 Structure of the research
As few studies have investigated how social media are used in recruiting in China’s unique social media landscape, this research attempts to explore the implications that using social media for recruitment in china’s bank, and also provide some advice for further improvement.
In the following dissertation, the literature relevant to the research project will be reviewed and discussed in the second chapter, and the methodology utilized in this study would be described and stated in the third chapter. This paper will then include ethical considerations, findings and discussions parts in three, four and five chapters respectively. Finally, a value judgment will be arrived at and a conclusion would be drawn in the end.