Problems and Prospects of Social Media Recruitment

Recruitment And Different Modes Of Recruitment

From the time that humans first began creating organizations, groups have been working on ways to be more effective at recruitment. In the 21st century, of course, most of the organization’s efforts in recruiting went online. Obviously, this has not always been the case. In fact, the history of recruitment is almost as old as the history of civilization itself. For example, to complete the massive undertakings for the Great Pyramids and Great Wall (Erin Engstrom, 2015), workers were handpicked in ancient Egypt and China.

The first instance of a resume can be found on rock and wooden tablets, dating back to ancient Rome, which had an engraving of what a person worked on, which was the first listing of the professional details of people. Another early evidence of recruitment could be seen in the history of imperial China. Imperial exams were a way of recruiting civil service candidates during the Han dynasty era around 1500 BC. These were one of the toughest assessments for centuries and often termed ‘exams from hell’ by the Britishers. The rise of recruiting did not really start to take shape until after World War II. To help those returning home from the war, new businesses sprouted that worked with job- seekers to find new opportunities. In time, organizations also contracted recruiting companies to help them find the perfect applicants for open positions. With the rise of the internet, these efforts have moved online, creating the job recruitment landscape seen every day (Emily Lennox, 2017).

With the increase in globalization, industrialization, consumerism, and economic growth, the need for the right talent increased many-fold. While these agencies were helping candidates by looking for the right kind of job for them, they realized it made more sense to hire candidates for companies—candidate, who had special skills and were required for a particular industry. It was at this time when recruitment agencies started to tie-up and collaborate with industries and help companies to hire the candidate for them specifically. They used to get job requirements or job descriptions, post them on media and job boards, interview candidates, and hire only the impressive ones. By late 1970s and early 1980s, database and online storage were introduced to the companies, giving them an immense supply of candidates who were interested in working with them. With the huge database and development in the telecom industry, suitable candidates could be found within a few minutes, making it easy for companies to invite them for the hiring process.

The first public job search engine went in operation in 1994. Monster Job board was created, a place where aspirants could browse the job database on internet. Monster Job disrupted the recruitment industry with its vision and ease of use. With the explosion of job boards and the movement of recruitment from print media to online channels, print ads for job requirements have almost become outdated.

The explosion of e-recruitment agencies gave recruiters new ways to reach a global market of candidates. With e-recruitment agencies helping globalize, a new requirement solution to automate the available database popped up, giving way to what we call the ATS (Applicant Tracking System). By the end of the 1990s, the Application Tracking System became a common industry term. The leading and foremost function and service of an ATS is to contribute and come up with a central location and also a database for a company’s recruitment effort where the complete information from sourcing to hiring for the candidate was floated. Most of the e-recruitment agencies decided to upgrade themselves with the evolving requirements, converting them into a fully automated recruitment solution — ATS. With Web 2.0 and the growth of upgrading and enhancement of the social media and also the usage of mobile technology, the recruiter’s ways to approach candidates changed. Now a Twitter/Facebook post with a URL link to the job description is shared with the candidates. Employers are wooing employees by video ads and slides. Many consider this recruitment broken, but I believe it has been always broken. Moving from pen-and-paper to agencies to ATS does not fix the recruitment. A social recruitment strategy does not mean posting a URL; rather it would mean an end-to-end recruitment cycle via social channels or the least by a cell phone. A fixed recruitment process would mean a process where a smart system screens candidate performance; an automated system evaluates their knowledge without any bias and an ATS that hires a candidate in a “true social sense” from media platform.