Recruitment Trends

Social media has certainly had a huge impact on our day to day life. We have all heard about how web 2.0 has made everything interactive and its user driven/oriented features have captivated the netizens. They are all now part of numerous social/professional networks. They are also quite interested in letting others know of their status and day-to-day life through blogs, microblogs etc.

Eventually recruitment will also become 2.0. Lot of companies already use this strategy, one such being Ogilvy and Mather, as they wonderfully explain it in this article.

In a nutshell, it means that recruitment will be a more comprehensive process. In reality it also means a more tedious one. Recruiters will no longer just want to see your recommendations and credentials and awards etc. They would rather see you in action. They would rather hear your views in public than make you sit on a chair and question you.

Consequences?

There will be very little left to hide, especially if you’re socially active online. Your blogs will be scanned thoroughly to get an idea of your personality, your LinkedIn lists will be scanned to find people to find out more about you. While this will ensure that the recruiters know the potential employee better, it will also mean that the recruiter should work overtime to go through all these blogs and social networks just to find that right candidate.

It will also mean that the candidates should be wary about their online identity. He should also keep in mind that whatever he says on the web is there to stay, thanks to the web-crawlers which take a snapshot of every page and hence make it accessible even if they are taken off.

An example can be: A candidate posts a link to a racist humour website on his blog and appreciates the jokes there. The recruiter might not fancy that and might start judging the candidate despite his good analytical abilities., and this might cost our man his job.