Abstract:

Due to their proliferation in the last couple of years, social media platforms have had a tremendous impact on nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives. These online applications have affected not only how people interact or communicate with each other, but also the way many processes are conducted. Nevertheless, one of the major processes in which the use of social media is very promising is employment. Therefore, our purpose in this work is to explore the opportunities of using social media in screening job candidates. In this respect, the findings of the present study revealed that these online communities give employers an opportunity to have access to a large pool of highly qualified and highly skilled candidates at a lower cost or even for free. These web-based platforms have also proven to enable recruiters to gain insights of the real qualifications and work experience of applicants as well as significant information about their personal, interpersonal, and communication skills. Despite all these opportunities, the retrieval and processing of the huge amounts of data usually generated by prospective employees on social media is not an easy task. Moreover, the restriction of headhunters to candidates’ information that is solely available on these virtual spaces may not only discard skilled employees but may also cause to hire under-qualified applicants. In spite of all these limitations, we strongly believe that social media is a valuable resource that employers will never ignore in the hiring process. Therefore, teachers and universities should equip their students to use or navigate around these virtual channels.

Keywords:

Social media, employment, job applicants, students, opportunities.