What do employees look for on candidate’s social media profiles?
Employees look for candidates who show an interest in their profession on social media such as sharing content on their page. They also look for candidates with active engagement on social media and with completed detailed profiles to show full commitment to job searches and their career. Likewise information should be constant throughout all social media profiles to show consistency. (Madia, 2011)
An important step to take in specific is to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date with as much information as possible, since this is the most common social media site that recruiters look at. With other social media accounts which are less commonly searched, make sure any questionable posts are deleted, such as those that may be illegal, sexual or include profanity. Likewise there shouldn’t be any negative or offensive comments about another user or an organisation. (Wood, 2017)
Statistics on social media recruitment:
A survey showed that from the sample of people used, 85% of professionals are members of LinkedIn, which reiterates the importance of keeping this social media site up to date. Whereby 79.6% of employees would use LinkedIn to research candidates prior to an interview.
Additionally this survey also showed that 68% of job seeking candidates feel that networking through social media is important and develops their career further. This is because through networking, extra research and knowledge is acquired, and you can join groups related to your industry and directly converse with companies online. (Walters, 2017)
In summary, Social media is increasingly being used in recruitment processes. Therefore its important that users adapt their social media accounts to be career friendly and even use them to show their enthusiasm for the industry they’re searching for a job in. This way, their social media could impact their career for the better.
References:
Walters, R. (2017) ‘USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS’ Whitepaper insight series. (accessed 23rd February) https://www.robertwalters.com/content/dam/robert-walters/corporate/news-and-pr/files/whitepapers/using-social-media-in-the-recruitment-process.pdf
Wood, M. (2017) ‘Not Getting Any Job Offers? Your Social Media Activity Could Be The Reason’ Forbes. (accessed 22nd February) https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2017/06/22/not-getting-any-job-offers-your-social-media-activity-could-be-the-reason/#465ea7d3374b
Madia, S. (2011) “Best practices for using social media as a recruitment strategy”,Strategic HR Review, Vol. 10 Issue: 6, pp.19-24 (accessed 25th Februrary) https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/14754391111172788
HR in Asia (2013) ‘Does social media recruiting work?’ (accessed 25th February) http://www.hrinasia.com/recruitment/does-social-media-recruiting-work/
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