Article Preview
TopIntroduction
According to Aral, Dellarocas, and Godes (2013, p. 3), Social Networking Sites (SNS) “represent one of the most transformative impacts of information technology on business, both within and outside firm boundaries.” SNS are primary among the technologies which comprise Web 2.0, which has empowered non-technical users to create web-based content with only minimal effort and no financial cost. The use of SNS has grown substantially over the past decade (Dewan & Ramaprasad, 2014; Pham, Tran, Thipwong, & Huang, 2019), and as SNS use continues to grow, new uses for the information that they contain are being discovered.
Human Resource (HR) professionals are among those turning to SNS in order to augment the effectiveness of their efforts. While job recruiters have been using SNS to attract potential employees for some time (Gibbs, MacDonald, & MacKay, 2015), HR professionals are increasingly using SNS to screen candidates. This raises a number of interesting research questions related to privacy concern and trust formation among job candidates (Suen, 2018).
According to the Bureau of National Affairs (2000), the top three priorities of HR professionals has been the recruiting, selection and placing of new employees for over 15 years. Recruiters are faced with a complex search and optimization problem under uncertainty: they must attempt to match the skill sets of job candidates with the skill needs of their organization, while constrained by their ability to attract candidates and constrained by uncertainty about the ability and motivation of any candidate to perform the activities which the organization needs to be performed.
While the recruiters are likely to have a strong sense of the requirements of the jobs which they are attempting to fill, the majority of the uncertainty that they face is in the ability and motivation of each candidate (Furner & George, 2009). In the interest of securing offers, job candidates endeavor to present themselves in the most positive light possible, often times engaging in deception (Weiss & Feldman, 2006). Increasingly, recruiters are using the social media profiles and activities of candidates as a means to reduce uncertainty about the candidates (Brown & Vaughn, 2011). Through SNS, recruiters may be able to determine if the job candidate spends their free time studying, volunteering, or engaging in recreational behavior. Recruiters may also observe the relative stability of the candidate’s personal relationships, their use of drugs and alcohol, or their proclivity to use language which might not reflect well on the company. Indeed, a few stories have indicated that recruiters have even gone so far as to request the SNS passwords of individuals applying for jobs (e.g. O'Dell, 2012).
Job candidates are also faced with a complex optimization problem under uncertainty. They attempt to elicit offers from multiple companies, then make tradeoffs between compensation, potential career growth opportunities, and potential job satisfaction. Assessing potential career growth and satisfaction is wrought with uncertainty, and as such, job candidates form attitudes about the employer based on their limited interactions with recruiters and managers. In this scenario, trust becomes a factor of primary importance to the job candidate, as it influences their proclivity to accept or decline a job offer (Celani, Deutsch-Salamon, & Singh, 2008). Given the dynamic and evolving nature of SNS use by individuals and organizations, it is no surprise that research on the area is still immature. Indeed, Kluemper, Davison, Cao, and Wu (2015 p.61) contend that the study of the topic “has been substantially outpaced by organizational practice.” As such, Kluemper et al. (2015) directly called for a research effort devoted to understanding the use of SNS in job candidate screening. This study represents a first step in answering that call.
Our research question is motivated by the lack of understanding about the effect of recruiter collection of SNS information about job candidates on the candidate’s trust in the employer and willingness to accept a job offer (Drake, Hall, Becton, & Posey, 2016).