HR 2.0

According to the US Census Bureau, 3.2 million students are expected to graduate from college this school year. With an increasingly large candidate pool applying for significantly less jobs than previously available, it may be hard to sift through a plethora of applications to find the perfect candidate. Corporations are taking advantage of the popularity of social media to recruit and screen qualified candidates.

Social media, or Web 2.0, has been around since the late 90s but truly gained momentum within the past five years. The Internet used to be a place to find information, but with the rise of Web 2.0 it transformed into a place to hold a conversation. No one has embraced these conversations more than those in Generation Y (born between 1982 and 1995). While it is common nowadays for people to have Facebook and Twitter^™ accounts, there are many other places one can be found online like Yelp, Foursquare, Flickr^® and YouTube^® communities. Not only are Gen Yers active in social media, but they’re active in more places. Take advantage of this online activity to find the best candidates for your organization.

Get the word out

If you want to find quality candidates, go where the candidates already are – online. While job boards are still a popular destination for job-seekers, people searching for employment are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the success rate of job boards. An emerging alternative is using social media, also known as social networks, to get the word out about a job opening. The added benefit of using social media over a traditional job board is that social media is just that – social. While an ideal candidate may not see your original job posting, a friend of your ideal candidate may see it and share it with his or her network. A candidate is more likely to apply for a position if they receive the tip directly from someone in their personal network.

Ideal places to post job openings are sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn® groups. Encourage friends and followers to share your job posting with their own networks. Also consider blogs in your industry, as many blogs will post job openings as a service to their readers. Make sure you do your research so you don’t alienate an industry insider who refuses to post job openings as policy. Hopefully, your open position will see an increase in quality applications from being posted in conversational spaces instead of conventional places.

Using social media to vet candidates

When President Barack Obama was staffing the White House, he had all interested candidates fill out a seven-page, 63-question survey that required them to reveal in-depth details of both their public and private lives, including social media profiles and any potentially embarrassing or damaging blog posts or emails they may have written. While this extensive search may seem like overkill, the Obama administration was simply doing what many organizations do to a (much) lesser extent. Though most organizations don’t require candidates to provide personal blog URLs or a link to their Facebook page, companies frequently use information found online to make a decision in the hiring process. The easiest way to find this information? Google.

Many social networking sites give users the option to control how public or private the information on their pages is. Though you probably should not “friend” a candidate to view his or her profile, information that is made public is often used in hiring decisions. Be conscious when viewing candidates’ social media sites as you could potentially be viewing protected information, such as age, race, marital status or religion. Consider having an employee in a non-decision making role do the initial search, only reporting findings that may legitimately (and legally) exclude a candidate from getting a job. Legitimate reasons include evidence of illegal activity, discriminatory statements and even poor judgment in online personas. Be sure to contact your organization’s legal counsel for guidance in this matter.

How your HRIS can help

Social media makes it easier to reach qualified candidates, while SPECTRUM Human Resource Systems Corporation’s best-of-class iVantage^® HRIS makes it easier to screen candidates. The first step is creating a requisition within iVantage. When you have created your requisition, complete with knockout questions to predetermine unqualified candidates, iVantage will generate a unique URL for the open position which you can then post to social media sites. Using the Candidate Self-Service module, allow candidates to complete a position-specific application directly online. Candidates can even upload files such as resumes or work samples to their applications.

Once you have your pool of candidates, iVantage offers powerful candidate screening tools. Create a list of keywords, and iVantage will search both the field data and any attachments uploaded by candidates applying for a specific position. iVantage will then create a list of its own, ranking candidates according to the number of keyword matches in their applications. From this pared down list, take a closer look at top candidates, and decide which candidates to interview and which to pass over. iVantage also helps manage the recruiting process by noting who has contacted a candidate, how much money has been spent on the hiring process thus far, and allowing for additional notes such as any findings from a social media search.

Once you’ve decided the best candidate for a job, iVantage makes onboarding easy. Seamlessly convert candidate data to employee data, enroll new employees in absence plans and benefit plans, and allow new employees to view company handbooks online. Encourage employees to use Employee Self-Service to browse growth opportunities and to view their total compensation reports. iVantage doesn’t stop working for you after you hire an employee – it continues working for you for the entirety of the employee lifecycle. From application to retirement, iVantage has you covered. For more information on iVantage, call us at 800.477.3287, and a Spectrum representative will be happy to speak with you.

After you’ve hired all these Gen Yers, how are you going to keep them happy? Click here to download our white paper “Talent Management in the Coming Decade.”