Abstract
Social media platforms have been increasingly used by companies, over the past few years, in order to make their recruitment and selection process more efficient. The aim is to gather more data about the applicants’ competences and personality traits, assuring that they are hiring the right candidates. Nevertheless, this method may be controversial since it can lead to different legal and ethical issues such as discrimination and invasion of privacy. Additionally, some problems may arise regarding the validity and fairness of the information found in such platforms. As Facebook is the most frequently used social platform among students and recently employed workers, we chose it as the main focus of our survey (which had 212 answers), in order to understand the applicants’ point of view about this subject. The main conclusions were that the majority of the respondents affirmed being aware of this practice, despite not agreeing with it; and, also, they do not believe that this is a good tool to evaluate their potential. Finally, our participants’ answers also led us to conclude that there could be contradictions regarding their judgement about the accessing of personal information by firms on Facebook. 76,9% of our respondents affirmed that they usually assess the profile of people who send them friend requests. Our respondents consider the use of Facebook during the selection process as being unethical, even though they assess others’ profiles and search for information themselves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Hoek, J., O’Kane, P., McCracken, M.: Publishing personal information online: how employers’ access, observe and utilise social networking sites within selection procedures. Pers. Rev. 45(1), 67–83 (2016)
Balint, B., Rau-Foster, M.: Cybersnooping: I see what you did there. J. Organ. Cult. Commun. Confl. 19(1), 72–81 (2015)
Smith, W.P., Kidder, D.L.: You’ve been tagged! (Then again, maybe not): employers and Facebook. Bus. Horiz. 53(5), 491–499 (2010)
Hill, K.: Facebook Can Tell You if a Person is Worth Hiring. Forbes (2015). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/03/05/facebook-can-tell-you-if-a-person-is-worth-hiring/#4afc46b164ce. Accessed 16 Oct 2019
Slavić, A., Bjekić, R., Berber, N.: The role of the internet and social networks in recruitment and selection process. Strateg. Manage. 22(3), 36–43 (2017)
Hazelton, A.S., Terhorst, A.: Legal and ethical considerations for social media hiring practices in the workplace. Hilltop Rev. 7(2) (2015). Article No. 7
Driver, S.: Keep it Clean: Social Media Screenings Gain in Popularity. Business News Daily, 7 October (2018). https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2377-social-media-hiring.html. Accessed 17 Oct 2019
Clement, J.: Global social media ranking. Statista (2019). https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 25 Oct 2019
Schawbel, D.: How to Shape Your Facebook Profile to Help You Land a Job (2012). http://business.time.com/2012/03/01/how-to-shape-your-facebook-profile-to-help-you-land-a-job/. Accessed 17 Oct 2019
Becton, J.B., Walker, H.J., Schwager, P., Gilstrap, J.B.: Is what you see what you get? Investigating the relationship between social media content and counterproductive work behaviors, alcohol consumption, and episodic heavy drinking. Int. J. Hum. Resour. Manage. 30(15), 2251–2272 (2019)
Kluemper, D.H., Rosen, P.A.: Future employment selection methods: evaluating social networking web sites. J. Manag. Psychol. 24(6), 567–580 (2009)
Landers, R.N., Schmidt, G.B.: Social media in employee selection and recruitment: an overview. In: Landers, R., Schmidt, G. (eds.) Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment. Springer, Cham (2016)
Mateus, C.: Empresas que vigiem nas redes sociais candidatos a emprego violam a lei. Expresso, 09 Oct 2018 (2018). https://expresso.pt/economia/2018-10-09-Empresas-que-vigiem-nas-redes-sociais-candidatos-a-emprego-violam-a-lei. Accessed 11 Nov 2019
Landers, R.N., Schmidt, G.B.: Social media in employee selection and recruitment: current knowledge, unanswered questions, and future directions. In: Landers, R., Schmidt, G. (eds.) Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment. Springer, Cham (2016)
Black, S.L., Washington, M.L., Schmidt, G.B.: How to stay current in social media to be competitive in recruitment and selection. In: Landers, R., Schmidt, G. (eds.) Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment. Springer, Cham (2016)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants of our online survey, for their time and effort, since we could not have completed this research study without their testimonies.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sharaburyak, V., Moreira, G., Reis, M., Silva, P., Au-Yong-Oliveira, M. (2020). The Use of Social Media in the Recruitment Process. In: Rocha, Á., Adeli, H., Reis, L., Costanzo, S., Orovic, I., Moreira, F. (eds) Trends and Innovations in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1159. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45688-7_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45688-7_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45687-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45688-7
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)