216 Int. J. Intercultural Information Management, Vol. 4, No.

4, 2014

Effective use of social media recruiting

Arunima Khullar* and Prakhar Pandey

School of Business Management,
NMIMS Mumbai, India
Email: arunima.khullar@gmail.com
Email: prakhar0204@gmail.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract: With the rapid evolution of digital media, online presence is

becoming a front-runner factor for the success of business and entities, alike.
Tapping on the pace of this evolution, socially active employers are
transcending towards social media platforms and online portals for attracting
and sourcing talent. What attracts these organisations is ease of access,
continuous availability, spontaneity and transparency. At forefront of this
change is human resources department, which plays the dynamic role of
designing strategies for attracting talent digitally while making sure that the
digital footprint of the company is constantly evolving. This research paper
delineates the digital media presence of nearly 50 companies that are
categorised in accordance of industry and employee strength. The paper further
probes into the digital practices followed by a selected few of these 50
companies, by studying their efforts in social media, their approach towards
change in recruiting policies, benefits derived and management level
interventions taken to promote this change.

Keywords: social media; recruiting; gamification; talent; digital; sourcing;

human resource; branding; organisations; employees.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Khullar, A. and Pandey, P.

(2014) ‘Effective use of social media recruiting’, Int. J. Intercultural
Information Management, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.216–227.

Biographical notes: Arunima Khullar belongs to the MBA HR batch of 2014,

School of Business Management (SBM), NMIMS Mumbai. She has done
Bcom (Hons) with a specialisation in Business Economics from Panjab
University. Her interests include writing, reading, studying organisational
behaviour, social work and exploring uses of social media. She was the
Editorial Head of the Social Responsibility Forum at SBM, NMIMS Mumbai
during 2013–2014.

Prakhar Pandey belongs to the MBA HR batch of 2014, School of Business

Management, NMIMS Mumbai. He has done Engineering in Computer
Science from UIT-RGPV, Bhopal. His summer internship experience at ARM,
India, was based on developing and implementing a social media recruiting
strategy for the firm. With a keen insight into social media networking
and e-recruiting, he seeks interests in automobile, human psychology and
technology.

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Effective use
of social media recruiting’ presented at the ‘International Conference on
Social Media for Business 2014’,IIM Raipur, India, 10–11 January 2014 .

Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 Effective use of social media recruiting 217

1 Introduction

Human resources are the key to achieve the organisational goals by excelling in every
field of business. It is hence required to have an efficient as well as effective recruitment
process which can adapt itself to the dynamic environment (Bersin, 2014). With the
advent of digitalisation in every sphere of business functioning, the process of talent
acquisition and recruitment has also undergone a sea change. This research paper focuses
on the use of social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for the
purpose of recruitment.
It describes the various phases of social recruitment, which started from the use of job
portals and career databases, and moved to the creation of two-way talent communities.
This has further evolved into employment of innovative practices for candidate
attraction, involvement, engagement and selection. Putting all this in perspective, these
initiatives are only the first steps towards employee retention (Sundberg, 2012).

2 Phases of social media recruiting

Social media has seen a drastic change over the decades. The traditional job ads and
printed openings have been replaced by a new wave of digital hiring with job boards and
online portals.

2.1 Social recruiting 1.0

Social recruiting 1.0 primarily refers to posting jobs and spotting candidates on public
social networks. It is almost considered as an equivalent of classified advertising on new
channels. It is marginally social and scarcely changes the way organisations engage with
candidates, making it business as usual, only with an extended reach. Social recruiting
1.0 involves minimal efforts towards improving the candidate experience and barely
simplifies the life of recruiters in improving their relationship with hiring managers or
reducing costs and time-to-hire.
Using social networks as a sort of outsourcing mall for everything social is only a
small part of the socialisation of business and it may even end up weakening the web
presence of a brand. Social recruiting 1.0 failed to address questions such as ‘What
becomes of your web identity as an organisation?’ and ‘How do you differentiate
yourself from all the other companies that compete for the same talent pool as you?’

2.2 Social recruiting 2.0

Social recruiting 2.0 along with social recruiting 1.0 focuses mainly on tapping the active
job seekers, who apply to vacancies, are enrolled on agency books and watch job boards
vigorously. While social recruiting 1.0 only added a social layer to recruiting, 2.0 led to a
certain complexity in the sometimes-unyielding systems. The social recruiting 2.0
approach prompts an environment conducive to focused interactions between a company
and the candidates and fosters a continuous engagement that enables recruiters to meet,
218 A. Khullar and P. Pandey

retain and select people, who show true interest in the company’s culture and its
values (Restel, 2013). Social recruiting 2.0 transparently embedded connectedness
between people and information.

2.3 Social recruiting 3.0

Recruitment 3.0 is a huge leap as it moves recruitment out of its comfort zone. The
beating heart of 3.0 is the non-active/passive individual (Herd Wisdom, 2013) and a
focus on ‘best talent’ and building ‘predictable talent pipelines’. In addition, the
philosophy of ‘everyone is a potential candidate, so engage them’ is central to 3.0.
Recruitment 3.0 focuses on building engaged, two-way, free-conversation-based,
transparent communities where an emotional attachment can be fostered with new talent.
The practices are anchored by employment branding, marketing and PR. Apart from
building communities, 3.0 is also concerned with mapping key competitors and attracting
cream-of-the-crop talent with brand and in-house opportunities.

2.4 Social recruiting 4.0

Recruitment 4.0 saw recruiting move from being a cost centre (a loss-making division) to
being a profit centre. Considering the world we live in, value can be defined differently
by various organisations. Companies like Facebook and LinkedIn have massive
valuations, well above their profitability margins.
In this age of information, the power lies in networks. Networks refer to data and data
represents power, which can in turn be related to money. Hence, organisations are
focused on data.
There are several facets to recruitment as a profit centre, such as reduction of
recruiting costs to a minimum. In this case agency usage will be minimal, there will be
less need for mass job board advertising, and organisations could see reduction in
number of in-house recruiters employed. This reduction shall depend on building and
nurturing a ‘qualitative’ community, a strong employment brand, vibrant social networks,
mapped competitors and placement of a predictable talent pipeline for key hiring
channels. Talent communities will then evolve into a self-service community, where
recruitment can be executed by crowd sourcing, and by hiring managers engaged in
pipeline generation and hiring.
Recruitment 4.0 also saw the coming up of gamification, which is principled to create
more engagement, sense of belonging and attachment to organisation’s website, hence
driving potential of more opportunities for monetisation.

2.5 Social recruiting 5.0

This is the most advanced form of social recruiting till date. Recruiting 5.0 is about going
back to basics, along with personalisation, self-sufficiency, predictability and big data.
It aims at diversifying the media used for hiring. Organisations are now aiming at
mobile recruiting, and many such organisations have developed their own App to keep
candidates synced 24 × 7.
 Effective use of social media recruiting 219

Recruitment 3.0 detailed the candidate experience and how to influence each stage
until selection of a candidate. Recruitment 5.0 looks at getting back to the very basics
of recruiting such as picking up the phone and building relationships with candidates
(even if they are not a candidate today), identifying key motivators for candidates,
understanding business strategies and cultural fit and advising the business by being a
consultant on the talent market.
The final instalment shall include ideation and seminars to keep prospective
candidates engaged and to catch them young.

3 Shift towards social media recruiting

The shift in recruitment strategy towards social media highlights the following:
1 Focus on passive candidates: the earlier phases focused on active candidates, who on
an average composed of 10% of the total candidate pool. Now, the shift has
happened towards recognising and engaging the other 90% of candidates (Reddy,
2013).
2 Employer branding: organisations are now evolving their digital footprint in order to
portray their values and brand image (HRPULSE, 2013).
3 Consumers and employees as the brand ambassadors: organisations are adopting the
philosophy of recognising their employees as the brand managers and giving them
the responsibility of social media recruiting.

4 Social media practices

4.1 Accenture
As the pioneers of social media recruitment across the globe, Accenture provides a strong
ground to study the effectiveness with which they have been using platforms like
LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., to the best of their capacities. ‘Social media enables a business
to build relationships with professionals who could at some point be the perfect
employee’, Suzy Style, Accenture’s Head of Recruitment voices out. Accenture has been
leading the whole social recruiting wave by maintaining a fine balance in its online
efforts along with its conventional recruiting methods. Accenture has leveraged on all the
possible means of social media engagement. While social platforms are abuzz with
Accenture’s updates and talent branding initiatives, the ‘Accenture career portal’ is their
key sourcing point. The career portal is so designed that it offers opportunities to both
experienced and fresher candidates along with offering start-up kits for engaging the
candidates interested in Accenture. The Accenture Passport module helps the HR
Department at Accenture to track down all the activities related to the registered
candidates. This is the ‘next thing’ in social media recruiting. If proved successful in
Accenture’s current recruitment model, where it will run alongside traditional
recruitment, it could become an industry benchmark.
220 A. Khullar and P. Pandey

4.2 Philips
India HR head and global CLO Yashwant Mahadik is one of the few HR leaders in India
who understands the fundamental shift and power of social to business. His support in
creating roles for employees in social media recruitment and then empowering them with
responsibility made the phenomenon successful at Philips. Philips started with cross-
functional education by recognising the importance of education in social media skills for
their HR employees. Hence, enabling the employees in understanding how social media
can help them in achieving their business results. To make business leaders understand
how digital and social media will impact businesses, Philips made use of ‘reverse
mentoring’. Hence, providing business education as regard social media to top
management to understand the significance of social media usage. Philips also prepared
strategy & business development teams and corporate communications group for social
media usage. Most essentially, the significance of content was explained to employees by
making them understand who the external audience is and what content they value. The
company relies on internal stakeholders for ideas and key strategy building for employer
branding.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, Philips introduced Campus Journos in order to
engage B-School students. Instead of leveraging Facebook or spending on ads, the
organisation made use of Wordpress for the same.

5 Gamification

Social games adapted to specific business situations offer one of the most engaging ways
for organisations to connect with prospective talent and showcase their growth potential
and organisational culture effectively. Applicants find it appealing to prove their skills
through solving challenges and puzzles in a gaming environment and offer recruiters a
quantifiable way to evaluate a better fit. It, however, remains to be seen which Indian
company is going to leverage the first-mover advantage in the gamification of recruiting.

6 Research objective

The objective of this research paper is to analyse the different strategies adopted by
organisations for leveraging their digital footprint via social networks. Further, the
benefits and challenges faced by organisations in social media recruiting are probed.

7 Literature review

7.1 Jobvite social recruiting survey results 2012

Social media has quickly become a dominant force for companies to find and hire quality
talent because it allows employers to tap extended networks for candidates who would
not be found otherwise. Social recruiting offers tremendous value to companies of all
sizes (Jobvite, 2014).
 Effective use of social media recruiting 221

The increase in social media use for recruiting is a direct result of the number of
quality candidates seen from social channels. As the tracking systems and social
networks become commonplace in recruiting, trending data indicate social recruiting not
only increases the number of applicants in the hiring pipeline, but also increases the
quality of candidates.
Respondents of this survey clearly suggested that social recruiting is forefront in their
hiring strategies, and in particular there is growing interest in reviewing candidate’s
profiles during the hiring process. Grammar and spelling mistakes in social profiles
also garnered a negative reaction from organisations – much higher than alcohol
consumption. As the recruiters continue to collect more knowledge on social recruiting
best practices, the number of quality hires acquired through social media is increasing.
The role a candidates’ social activity plays in hiring decisions is also growing in
importance. Hiring has broadened its reach to include a multitude of social media sources
as the companies continue to seek out new ways to find and hire the best talent.

7.2 Bullhorn social activity report 2012

This report takes a look at the current social media activities of recruiters and job seekers
across the ‘big three’ social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The report
presents key findings and benchmark data pulled from the Bullhorn Reach user network
of over 35,000 recruiters. The report explores the frequency social networks utilised most
often and how effective each network is for sourcing candidates. The data do not
represent a subjective projection, but an objective summary of the actual activity pulled
from the Bullhorn Reach user database during calendar year 2011.
Since social recruiting has proven to be a rapidly growing category, Bullhorn expects
increased social engagement from recruiters. The report evaluates the current social
network activity among recruiters and suggests several interesting insights. First, the
findings suggest that recruiters are connected to all three social networks, but are using
LinkedIn and Twitter much more than Facebook to recruit talent. While it was found that
LinkedIn is driving the most views and applications per job posted on the ‘big three’
social networks, the analysis shows that Twitter followers are much more likely to apply
for a job than connections on LinkedIn or friends on Facebook. Overall, Twitter and
Facebook appear to be highly under-utilised networks for recruiting, but the behaviour is
expected to change.

8 Research methodology

The research was conducted by finding secondary data available on the internet. This
includes interviews of organisational leaders in the HR fraternity and survey reports of
talent management consultancies.
The second phase of data collection focused on getting primary data HR professional
across these organisations, which is still under progress.
The data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation are
shown in Table 1.
222 A. Khullar and P. Pandey

Table 1 Data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation

Employee
Company Industry Best social media activity
strength
Accenture IT & Consulting 240000+  Supports the cause for Women in
Society on Facebook page
 Job Ad on Facebook pages
 On Career page it gives well laid
format for available opportunities,
profile building
 Using Gamification
 Effectively using its Youtube page to
promote jobs and org. culture by
means of videos from employees
Apple Computer 70000+  Uses a customised search option on
Hardware the career site to send related updates
to the interested candidates, zero
social media activities
Aurecon Engineering 7000+  Uses Facebook and Linkedin to
promote its people as 7000 distinct
stories
 Has write-ups from its Key
performers in the company
Bain and Company Consulting 5000+  Uses career site to promote its
profiles of over 800 employee
 Join us career page promotes the
Bain work-life balance and activities
Barclays Financial Services 150000+  Promotes the clients it has helped in
achieving better results, on the career
site
Black Berry Telecom 12000+  Uses Facebook page to ping fans
Equipment with regular news and updates,
follows a proper schedule of campus
events and uses campus ambassador
system
Booz Allen Hamilton Management 25000+  Associating themselves with sport
Consulting events to promote their brand and
spread awareness
CapGemini IT services 120000+  Uses the Facebook page to its fullest
 Promoting employee pages
 Uses employees for blogging on
current tech stuff
 Facebook career page embeds the
corporate career site, People info
videos and jobs open
 It also conducts Tech Challenges and
keeps events list updated
 Public speaking also
 Effective use of social media recruiting 223

Table 1 Data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation (continued)

Employee
Company Industry Best social media activity
strength
CISCO Networking 70000+  Uses Superfan programme on
Equipment Facebook to relate itself with its fans
Citi Bank Financial Services 250000+  Strong Alumni network
 Uniquely designed Career page w.r.t.
the Corporate site to provide a better
emphasis on Recruits
 Uses a Scramble game to attract
people and get their data
(gamification)
Conoco Phillips Oil and gas 16000+  Clearly explains about their
University Recruitment programme
and procedure on the career page
Converse Apparels  Used Branchout to promote
panoramic view of office space and
work culture
Cummins Heavy Equipment 45000+  Easy access to talent community,
Taleo profile aggregator
Dell IT 100000+  Dell career page has an Our People
Video area and also links Career
Development Programmes, Facebook
community is too evolved into a
proper talent community and uses ‘is
& is not’ posts to engage
Deloitte Professional 190000+  Uses Alumni network effectively for
services referrals
 LinkedIn consists of a team of
recruiters that tap experienced
candidates
 Facebook is used for passive players
and Twitter for postings
 Dedicated staff for Social Media
recruiting
Ernst & Young Professional 170000+  Uses a neatly embedded Facebook
services page to integrate various efforts it
does with its employees
 Publishes the Social efforts and
achievements of the employees as
posts
Freescale Semiconductors 16000+  Uses a Promotional Video that
Semiconductors graphically shows the techs and
gadgets in which they are active
Gartner Research 5000+  Facebook Page for posting Webinars
and videos to get email ids of
interested people
224 A. Khullar and P. Pandey

Table 1 Data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation (continued)

Employee
Company Industry Best social media activity
strength
GE Conglomerate 300000+  Uses Facebook optimally by sharing
all the efforts on its career page and
also shares great quotes or videos
from other pages and people
General Mills Food Processing 30000+  Uses a “Find Your Fit” 5-point
questionnaire to assess the candidates
while applying
GT Bank Financial Services 3000+  Uses Facebook page to promote tip
of the day, quotes, national event
updates, etc.
Honeywell Conglomerate 100000+  Interactive Career page, Facebook
page updated with funny Friday and
video of the week, uses LinkedIn
API
HP IT 300000+  Uses huge and attractive images to
promote its blogs and events
IBM IT 400000+  Facebook page talks about the “Good
Company” that promotes companies
using IBM tools or technologies, they
have a talent community signup,
IBMers in action area promoting jobs
ICICI Direct Financial Services 80000+  Uses Facebook to promote bank
activities and achievements to keep
people attracted
Infineon Semiconductors 10000+  Uses Linkedin page to promote
where all its products are… also uses
Youtube videos to promote intern
experiences
Ingram Micro Electronics 10000+  Facebook page with Glassdoor jobs
and wonder full fact activity
ITV Networks  Uses Connect with LinkedIn API to
show related people to the visitor
LinkedIn Social Network 3000+  Promotes the LinkedIn Celebrations
and Intern Hires through LinkedIn
official page
Mahindra & Mahindra Automotive 15000+  Uses WarRoom for hiring freshers
Marriott Hospitality 120000+  Associates can post ideas for
corporate changes to the “Did You
Think of This” internal website
 Its officers hold question and
answers sessions online, such as a
human resources executive
providing insight into the job
search.
 Effective use of social media recruiting 225

Table 1 Data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation (continued)

Employee
Company Industry Best social media activity
strength
Marvell Semiconductors 7000+  Uses Youtube to promote its
Semiconductors company culture and organisational
working covering the development
of chips
PepsiCo Beverages 290000+  Uses LinkedIn API for signup into
its Talent Community
SAB Miller Beverages 70000+  Uses attractive slides to detail about
SAB in quick smart manner on
Linkedin
SAP Enterprise software 60000+  On career site employees share their
experiences and trip photos with the
public in form of short posts
 Site has links of all Social profiles
they have
 Excellent Youtube page
 Uses WorkForUs APP on Facebook
SAS Software & 11000+  SAS Community for blogging on all
Programming industry insights
 SAS for SAS Community just like
Yammer
Sodexo Hospitality 400000+  Excellent Alumni Network
functionalities, Uses Facebook page
to help past-current-future
employees to interact
Sony Conglomerate 140000+  Uses a FreshMinds page for
promoting its Internship activities
and training programme on career
site
SouthWest Airlines Airlines 40000+  Uses “Star of the Month” campaign
to promote employees on Facebook
Sprint Telecom 40000+  Facebook page has app of the day
posts and updates on gadgets and
cellphones
Starbucks Restaurants 140000+  Facebook page uses Friend referral
API
Synopsys Software & 8000+  Promoting its own recently
Programming launched University on Facebook
TATA AIG Financial Services 60000+  Facebook page filled with events
for employees and fans
226 A. Khullar and P. Pandey

Table 1 Data collected in the first stage along with analysis for each organisation (continued)

Employee
Company Industry Best social media activity
strength
TI Semiconductors 30000+  Has a differentiated Site view for the
Careers page on the corporate
website with colour variations,
clearly mentions about freshers,
work experience, interns on the
page, strongly promoting University
programmes, on Facebook
 Uses Do U Speak Geek posts to
engage, similar posts updated on
Google+ accounts as well
T-Mobile Telecom 30000+  Career page uses a job search
refining process
Unilever Consumer Goods 170000+  Facebook page uses a Do Gooders
campaign for the fans
Vmware Computer Software 13000+  Have a well planned career page,
university relations page on
Facebook, TCS run updated on
Facebook, Social Matcher to search
profiles
Vodafone Telecom 80000+  Employee centric posts on Facebook
Wipro IT services 140000+  Separate and Unique page for
campus activities, Facebook page
updated with polls and quizzes

9 Conclusion

As per the current stage of research, the first phase has been accomplished. The
secondary data points the burgeoning need for change towards more cost effective
practices. HR professionals across the globe have claimed social media recruiting as not
only cost effective but also efficient in terms of time and other resources involved
(TalentMinded, 2014).
It is important for organisations to set a business case for social media recruiting by
measuring the ROI of social media recruitment.
As we dwell into our second phase, the data shall be collected from organisations
across India about what benefits they received from the shift to social media recruiting
and what concerns them the most regarding the future of social networking.

References
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HRPULSE (2013) Jumping on the b(r)andwagon. Available online at: http://www.hrpulse.co.za/
employee-management/employee-branding/229361-jumping-on-the-brandwagon
 Effective use of social media recruiting 227

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