Professional Documents
Culture Documents
COMMENTARIES
presents preliminary
research, review of
literature and comments
on published papers or on
any relevant subject
here is consensus in research that there exists a war for talent and that winning this war is critical for an organization to gain strategic and competitive
advantage (Chambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin, & Michaels, 1998;
Gatewood, Gowan, & Lautenschlager, 1993; Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod,
2001; Rynes, 1991; Turban & Greening, 1997). Early stages of applicant attraction thus
become critical, especially in a robust job market, as the potential recruits have a number
of choices about where to employ their human capital (Aiman-Smith, Bauer, & Cable,
2001).
Human resource management has been unknowingly using marketing strategies to
sell the employment product and job offer (Price, 1996). Moving forward, talent acquisition leaders would be required to think like marketers while developing media
and sourcing strategies. Competencies traditionally considered as marketing and sales
skills (e.g. competitive analysis, product positioning, and target group segmentation)
are increasingly becoming a part of the required talent acquisition skill set. To measure
the corresponding outcomes through a different yardstick than what is conventionally used by HR functions to measure recruitment efficiencies requires the development of appropriate metrics.
Job seekers psychologically engage with an organization through various sources of
information which shape their attitude and beliefs, and hence their image of the organization. In todays age, social networking as a recruitment tool is gaining popularity (Doherty, 2010). Organizations embracing this channel are perceived as evolving,
innovative, and open to technological change. With the growing interaction of the
current generation on social media sites, organizations are waking up to the potential
of leveraging these channels to build their brand images and attract applicants to their
organizations.
KEY WORDS
Social Networking
Strategic Recruitment
Applicant Attraction
Employer Branding
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Recruitment
Recruitment has always been a critical function responsible for attracting and selecting the right talent for organizations (Schneider, 1987). So, while an organizations
human resources are perfectly inimitable (Lippman &
Rumelt, 1982), organizations that succeed in winning the
war for talent are able to attract larger pools of quality
applicants and achieve a huge competitive advantage over
their rivals (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001).
These organizations have a clear two-fold strategic advantage over their competitors, i.e. the ability to be more
selective in their hiring decisions, which increases the
effectiveness of their overall staffing systems (Boudreau
& Rynes, 1985) and the ability to earn above-normal returns through the acquisition and deployment of human
talent (Barney, 1986; Lado & Wilson, 1994). Thus, the
competence to attract, recruit, develop, and retain high
calibre talent is the single-most important determinant of
organizational effectiveness and a source of competitive
advantage (Borstorff, Marker, & Bennett, 2007). The recruitment function of an organization serves as the engine focused on winning this war and providing the
competitive advantage.
Recruitment has been defined in multiple ways. Rynes
(1991) defined it as encompassing all organizational
practices and decisions that affect either the number or
types of individuals that are willing to apply for, or to
accept, a given vacancy(p. 429). The definition proposed
by Barber (1998) was much narrower in scope and included only the purposeful actions taken by the organizations. According to Breaugh & Starke (2000), Recruitment
consists of those organizational practices with the primary purpose of identifying potential employees, informing them about the job and organizational attributes, and
persuading them to join the organization. A more recent
definition by Breaugh (2013) says that recruitment is defined as an employers actions that are intended to (1)
bring a job opening to the attention of potential job candidates who do not currently work for the organization, (2)
influence whether these individuals apply for the opening, (3) affect whether they maintain interest in the position until a job offer is extended, and (4) influence whether
a job offer is accepted. While this definition appears to be
the most relevant in extending the realm of recruitment to
encompass the influence of social media, it does not ad-
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Applicant Attraction
The whole purpose of an organizations communication
before and during the process of recruitment is to attract
potential job applicants to the organization (Breaugh &
Starke, 2000). Thus recruitment communication can be
VIKALPA VOLUME 39 NO 3 JULY - SEPTEMBER 2014
defined as any recruitment information which is personally relevant to an applicant and messages received during interactive communication (Breaugh & Starke, 2000)
to attract applicants. Allen, VanScotter, and Otondo (2004)
found face-to-face interactive communication being rated
as the richest medium to attract applicants, followed by
text communication which was rated higher than pure
audio communication in richness. The Psychology literature indicates that more the information (both positive
and negative) prior to the start of employment, lower is
the turnover (Farr, OLeary, & Bartlett, 1973; Gannon,
1971; Wanous, 1973; 1975). All of this indicates that the
information about when and how the applicant receives
his information about the organization and the role can
influence the applicants behaviour after joining the organization. The power of social media emerges as a rich
interactive channel for contextualizing and personalizing the communication at an individual level.
The antecedents to job application are the cognitive and
affective processing of information about job choices,
wherein a congruency is sought between applicants
needs and the perceived job and organizations offerings.
What people construe as distinctive, central, and enduring about the organization helps define the organizational image (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994). An
organizations image plays an important role in the minds
of the applicant and helps him differentiate the organization from its competitors (Aaker, 1997; Cable & Turban,
2003; Scott & Lane, 2000). Hence, being able to establish a
favourable image in the mind of the applicant can help
an organization attract a larger and more qualified talent
pool to its door.
Employer branding has been defined as the sum of a
companys efforts to communicate to existing and prospective staff that it is a desirable place to work (Edwards,
2010). This is analogous to customer-based brand equity
(Aaker, 1997) which helps in creating a unique favourable brand image in the target customers mind and helps
increase the likelihood of the product or service being
chosen over other similar products or services; employer
branding also works in a similar fashion for the applicant pool. Employer attractiveness or the perceived benefit that the applicant may get by being employed by an
organization, is the antecedent to the development of an
effective employer brand (Arachchige & Robertson, 2011).
Rynes (1991) suggested that given the small amount of
information available to applicants early in the job choice
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media was defined by Marketo (2010) as the production, consumption and exchange of information
through online social interactions and platforms.
OReilly (2010) defined Web 2.0 as the second generation of Internet-based services that facilitate interactive
information sharing, social networking, collaboration and
end user participation. Hoffman and Fodor (2010) identified the 4 Cs of connection, creation, consumption, and
control as the motivators behind social media engagement. The common denominator therefore is the social
media, which is a platform for communication and collaboration. Since engagement and collaboration are the two
sides of the social media coin, a clear understanding of
the potential job applicants needs and commensurate
degree of information sharing is required.
The primary and secondary value creating activities of
an organization in its value chain can be significantly
influenced by social media (Yang & Mason, 1998). The
growing popularity of social networking websites like
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are forcing organizations to recognize the potential it provides in attracting
todays Generation Y workforce. With over millions of
users on LinkedIn and Twitter, and over a whopping 800
million users on Facebook (Hunt, 2010), clearly the large
segment available for talent acquisition is too attractive
for any HR function to ignore. The power of the internet,
of which social media is a part, is increasingly being
leveraged by HR functions for the purposes of recruitment, selection and training and interacting and engaging with the current and potential employees (Florkowski
& Olivas-Lujan, 2006). Research suggests HR 2.0 as a
new term for the collective human resource management
processes enabled and facilitated by Web 2.0 based applications (McAdams, 2010) and especially used in recruitment through passive job seekers, branding, and
relationship building before and during the selection process. Web 2.0 based tools and techniques like corporate
TWEET YOUR TUNE SOCIAL MEDIA, THE NEW PIED PIPER IN TALENT ACQUISITION
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An important measure of recruitment effectiveness is defined by the quality of hire a parameter which organizations are slowly and increasingly beginning to recognize,
while the efficiency metrics (time to fill, cost per hire, attrition rate) are still measured and are still relevant. The
quality of hire measure has two dimensions: the measures of recruitment-focused quality (assessments, fit
against defined job competencies, and skills) and posthire contribution and performance quality index. These
measures are necessarily contextual and cannot be standardized. However, the metrics aligned to business outcomes are generally accepted as valid measures for quality
of hire. These may be the strength of the talent pipeline
(talent mapping, sourcing, knowing the competition, and
presenting the most qualified candidates), new hire attrition, assessment scores for critical roles, candidate experience (measure of perceived and actual fit), employer
experience (measure of assessed and actual fit), percentage of diversity, etc. These measures of quality remain
relevant even for social media recruitment.
Additionally, customized targeting of potential applicants
of defined demographics through social media lends itself for affirmative action in specific areas of recruitment
like increasing diversity (gender, disability, racial, etc.).
The fundamental differences between conventional recruitment channels and social media recruitment are
given in Table 1.
The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2012) postulates that a difference in age, gender, experience, habit, etc., of individual
users can result in a significant difference in the behavioural intention and technology use. The performance
expectancy (degree of benefit technology will provide),
Conventional Recruitment
Objective / Utility
Channels of communication
Metrics of measure
Locus of control
HR function
Level of individualization
Medium to low
Very high
Tenure of engagement
Continuous engagement
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Philosophy
Operational Investment
Tactical Outcome
Relationship strategy
Employer branding
Organization perceived
as preferred employer
of choice
Active recruitment
Active recruitment
positions closed
Cost optimization
Reduce recruitment
spend on more
expensive channels
Choice of Channels
Metrics
Operational Investment
Performance
Market research online communities, dubbed MROCs by Forrester Research in 2008, was initially pioneered by Communispace and
became mainstream by 2010.
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social media as well as the organizational desired outcomes and then measure the social media investments
made by the potential applicants as they engage with the
organization brand. As Hoffman and Fodor (2010) state,
returns from social media investments will not always
be measured in dollars, but also in (applicant) behaviours and investments tied to particular social media applications. The argument is that this approach takes into
account both short-term (immediate recruitment fulfilment) and long-term returns of significant organization
investment in social media. The key metrics should therefore evolve in terms of job applicants (active and passive) behaviours which are tied to particular social media
applications.. The conventional metrics of advertising of
reach and frequency or an inward-looking view of recruitment cost and fulfilment time will defeat the very
purpose of social media recruiting. The intrinsic challenge is that in this medium, the applicant community
creates and consumes online content, which essentially
makes organization controlled metrics meaningless, as
the control is not with the organizations. As Hoffman
and Fodor (2010) state, the four key motivations which
drive social media are connections, creation, consumption,
and control. A significant difference is that the control
exists with the community and not with the organization. Therefore, organizations which depend on or leverage the social media channels for their active operation
are most likely to gain maximum mileage from social
media recruitment. Additionally, organizations facing
challenges in acquiring key talent may look at building
relationships with potential talent pools. This can be more
easily achieved through social medial channels.
Proposition 4: Organizations which use employer branding and relationship strategy as
predominant recruitment strategies are more
likely to use social media for recruitment.
The relationship strategy is akin to brand engagement in
the marketing context, just as employer branding is analogous to brand awareness, as defined by Hoffman and
Fodor (2010). Depending on the types of social media that
have been adopted for talent acquisition, there will be
different metrics and tools used to measure the impact as
shown in Table 3.
Based on the strategic goal, organizations can choose the
stage, the appropriate channel, define the operational
investments required for each channel, and then set the
TWEET YOUR TUNE SOCIAL MEDIA, THE NEW PIED PIPER IN TALENT ACQUISITION
Suggested Stage
Suggested Channels
Relationship strategy
Blog site
Career page in
company website
No. of members
Average length of time on site
No. of comments
No. of responses to polls, contests, surveys-Amount of user
generated content
No. of RSS feed subscribers
No. of references to blog in other media and re-blogs
Social network
Facebook/LinkedIn page
No. of comments
No. of active users, friends & friends of fans
No. of likes or friends feeds; sources of likes
No. of user generated items-Usage metrics of applications/widgets
No. of posts on wall/reposts and shares-No. of responses to
friend referral invites
Micro-blogging
No. of followers
No. of replies
No. of Re-tweets
Tweet : Re-tweet Ratio
Forum &
Discussion groups
Google groups,
domain groups
Blog site
Career page in
company website
Social network
Facebook/Linked in page
Micro-blogging
Forum &
discussion groups
Google groups,
domain groups
Active recruitment
Career page in
company website
linked with active
jobs on online
recruitment portal
job postings on Facebook/Linked in/Twitter
Cost optimization
Employer branding
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determined metric outcomes. While there clearly are complexities in calculating the ROI for social media recruitment, apart from the issues of size test, control samples
and recruitment outcomes, a longer-term study could link
the quality and tenure of hire to the source, apart from
assessing applicant satisfaction levels in engagement
through various channels. This longitudinal study will
help establish the proxy estimates to generate the calculations necessary to link social media investment to HR
outcomes. What is irrefutable is that without effective
measurement, there will be deterioration in the effectiveness of the medium over time. Without a focused effort to
develop metrics in the context of the 4 cs (Hoffman &
Fodor, 2010), the social media recruitment efforts will remain fuzzy and essentially become just a flash in the pan,
possibly even harming the organization and the employer
brand.
Since the stage for social media could be common across
the various strategies, it becomes important to cite the
appropriate metric for the related strategy. Since relationship strategy is analogous to brand engagement, as defined by Hoffman and Fodor (2010), where a targeted pool
is engaged through personalized relationship, metrics like
number of members, RSS feed subscribers, amount of user
generated content, length of time spent on site, and response to polls/contests/surveys become relevant. However, if the social media strategy is used to increase
employer branding and thereby enhance the organizations image (Aaker, 1997; Arachchige & Robertson, 2011;
Cable & Turban, 2003), the same platforms would require
different yardsticks to measure the impact. Here it becomes more critical to assess the impact on a larger talent
pool vis--vis a targeted talent pool. Hence metrics like
the number of visits, the time spent, the valence of blog
comments, and updates on Facebook and Twitter pages
can be used to measure outcomes like organization brand
awareness and word-of-mouth increase. For relationship
strategy of the same platforms of Facebook and Twitter,
number of comments, active user/followers, would be
more appropriate.
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