The Use of Social Media in the Recruitment Process

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.