How does social media affect hiring processes and practices of Human Resources managers and recruiters?

1. Social Media and the
Hiring Process
Abumere Imoukhuede

2. Social Media
 According to Boyd and Ellison (2007), Social Network Sites
“allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public
profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other
users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by others
within the system’’ (Boyd and Ellison 2007).
 Facebook alone currently has an active membership of over
800 million people (Statistics 2011).

3. Social Media and the Hiring Process
 In a study by the Society for Human Resource
Management in April 2013, it was found out that 77
percent of hiring mangers reported using social
networking sites (Bologna 2014).
 A survey by a recruiting software company called Jobvite
showed that 93 percent of recruiters that they surveyed
are likely to look at a person’s profile in the course of filling
a job. More than 40 percent have reconsidered a job
candidate based their social media profile and 60 percent
say that improper grammar or punctuation on social
networks make them think less of an applicant (White
2013).

4. The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall:The Use of Social
Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions
(Victoria R. Brown & E. DalyVaughn)
 Risks involved in informal use of social network sites include the
perception of invasion of privacy, lack of clear identifiable
theoretical constructs and absence data to support the
information found on the social network sites. Because
information found on the Internet is public and does not
constitute to invasion of privacy. It now falls on the organization
to make sure that process of finding more information on
applicants does not invoke a breach in privacy.
 Information that is related to protected group status including
race, color, religion, sex and national origin (covered underTitle
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964); age (covered by the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act [ADEA] of 1967); and
disability status (covered by the Americans with DisabilitiesAct
[ADA] of 1990) can be used to make hiring decisions since
employers are not required to disclose their basis for hiring.

5. Friend or Foe?The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Social
Networking Sites for HR Decisions
(H. Kristl Davison, Catherine Maraist & Mark N. Bing)
 Human Resource Managers and recruiters assume that it is
legal to use social network sites to screen applicants as
long as they do not violate civil rights laws by engaging in
unequal treatment. But they do not put into consideration
the employee’s privacy rights and defamation of character
by other peoples web postings that concern the individual.

6. Facebook and Personnel Selection:What’s the big Deal?
(Rahul S. Chauhan, M. Ronald Buckley & Michael G. Harvey)
 Employers are now expected to type an applicant’s name into an Internet search
engine as part of their background check process before hiring the individual as
an additional means for determining whether an applicant is a threat or danger
to themselves and/or others in the workplace.
 Practitioners have warned that in order to avoid missing potentially relevant
evidence, they must look beyond traditional venues and look at SNWs (e.g.,
Facebook) due to the amount of information about an individual that is available
on them (pictures, language, patterns, etc.). However, the legality of this
practice and its effectiveness remains a grey area in the literature.
 63 percent of employers that utilize SNW’s websites as part of their hiring
processes rejected candidates based upon the information found on their
profiles. Alternatively, employers also reported that information from applicant
SNWs actually encouraged them to hire candidates as well.
 There are no federal or state laws that specifically prevent employer’s from
viewing and/or using information gathered from an unrestricted SNW profile to
make hiring decisions with regard to unrestricted profiles.

7. Future Research
 There is not much research on how Social Media affects
the hiring process
 There is not much research on how useful information
found on an applicant affects their ability to carry out the
job
 The EEOC and NLRB need to look more into protecting job
applicants against Social Media discrimination
 Job Applicants need to protect their privacy better

8. References
 Brown,V. R., &Vaughn, E. (2011).TheWriting on the (Facebook) Wall:The Use of Social
Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions. Journal Of Business & Psychology, 26(2), 219-225.
doi:10.1007/s10869-011-9221-x
 Chauhan, R. S., Buckley, M., & Harvey, M. G. (2013). Facebook and personnel selection:: What's
the big deal?. Organizational Dynamics, 42(2), 126-134. doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2013.03.006
 Davison, H., Maraist, C., & Bing, M. N. (2011). Friend or Foe?The Promise and Pitfalls of Using
Social Networking Sites for HR Decisions. Journal Of Business & Psychology, 26(2), 153-159.
doi:10.1007/s10869-011-9215-8
 Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship.
Journal of Computer Mediated Education, 13(1), article 11. Retrieved 5 March 2008 from
 Statistics. (2011). Facebook. Retrieved April 19, 2014, from http://www.facebook.com/press
/info.php?statistics.
 White, M. C. (2013). WillYour Facebook Profile SabotageYour Job Search?. Time.Com, 1.