iNM Volume 8 | Page 28

INM MAGAZINE VOLUME 8 | FEBRUARY 2016 #Emerging Trends SOCIAL MEDIA HIRING Megha Jain MBA (2014-16) L.M. Thapar School of Management T oday, continuously evolving business scenario are being witnessed owing to the global movement of multinationals, progress of novel strategies and management practices from all over the world. Organizations are being pushed to smart thinking and hiring the right kind of skilled workforce who can keep up with such developments. The war for talent is on due to the increasing pressure of changes, the type of industry does not matter when it comes to hiring people of the right caliber and the practices being used to hire them. Consequently, the past few years have seen innovation in the various hiring techniques and one of them is hiring through social media platforms. Recruitment via social networking websites or SNWs is a more user friendly, tech savvy and a cost effective approach. As the world shifts towards an era where almost anything and everything is available online, the HR professionals are also now recruiting their human capital via such mediums. According to Robert Walters in their white paper Using Social Media in the Recruitment Process, 69% of the recruiters have a profile on professional social media (like LinkedIn), 43% on Twitter, 42% on Facebook, 9% on Google+ and 3% are active on Instagram. As indicated by LinkedIn in their 4th Annual Report Global Recruiting Trends (2015), in the last four years, social professional networks have become top source of quality hires. With the increasing penetration of social media, professional social networking websites like LinkedIn have carved a new platform for HR, wherein they can invite applications for a particular job vacancy, scan a candidate's profile for suitability, validate details and subsequently conduct a selection process. This trend has already become apparent in the West and is picking pace in other parts of the world. The table below shows a list of SNWs (both globally recognized and locally famous) popular with the recruiters in Western and Asian countries: 23