Question

Social media gives employers an opportunity to recruit a wide array of candidates that could not be reached prior to this opportunity. Employers receive many applicants through this process and have many applicants to choose from. I have used job sites to recruit applicants for a job and many times I receive applicants, who may not qualify for the job posted. But, because social media provides the opportunity, applicants will apply. Do you feel one of the major drawbacks to social media can be the opportunity to flood the organization with candidates making it difficult to choose the best candidate for the job?

Answer 1

The more the applicants the better for the company because the HR manager can choose the best candidate for the role. The number of people applying for the role might be more but the company can always create very specific KPIs to shortlist the candidates and then hire the right person. Having more options is always better than facing a shortage. The HR department needs to be very patient while going through the profiles of the candidates without having a bias for a specific skill or a language. They should always look for the profile that can meet all the demands of the role. The social media is very easy to use and it can attract the potential candidates so the company should be happy about it instead of complaining about the number of applications. The only disadvantage of this method is that some of the people apply for jobs even after knowing that they do not qualify just because it is easy to apply. This can make things worse for the HR department but they need to consider this as a challenge because they have a great set of applications for the job and they can hire the best. This increase in the number can be a headache but it is also the best way to complete the recruitment successfully. We can take LinkedIn as the example. I have seen thousands of people applying for a single job but we cannot deny the fact that most of them are seriously trying for that job. 10% of those applications might not make any sense but the remaining applications should be considered for the recruitment.