Feature

Using social networking sites for hiring

Social networking sites are a good tool to tap passive candidates who are not actively looking for a job opportunity, writes Vinita Gupta

The growth of social networking sites is getting wider; as of February 2008, LinkedIn had more than 19 million registered users, spanning across 150 industries. These sites, especially the business-oriented social networking sites, provide instant credibility to a professional’s profile, with the referrals and recommendations of the person, thus aiding recruiters in captivating their mindshare. Thus, today many job seekers and recruiters in India are making use of sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Orkut, Big Adda, Hi5, Brijj, Yaari, Fropper, Ryze, Xing, etc., to identify the right and potential candidates, including international talent, at minimal cost.

Advantage for recruiters

For recruiters, social networking sites come to the rescue when one is looking out for candidates having niche skills or for roles based in alien geographies. For instance, if an IT services firm wants to hire a regional head for its Media and Entertainment business based in Boston, it won’t find much value in uploading this position on job sites and that’s where networking sites come into play when one is looking for candidates for roles based in far-off places.

“India is one of LinkedIn’s largest and fastest-growing countries, and recruitment plays a big role in that. Social networking sites are quite useful on a global basis. I heard of one Indian company which used LinkedIn to target candidates in Singapore who might be interested in coming back to India for senior level roles,” said Elisabeth O’Donnell, International Director, LinkedIn.

Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com, mentioned that social networking sites are also about professional or business networking. Sites like linkedin.com and ryze.com are dedicated to business networking, where people put up their professional details and get an opportunity to interact with other professionals. Such sites become a breeding ground from which recruiters can select the best of the pack.

Social networking sites vs job sites

Are social networking sites more effective than job sites? Vishal Taneja, Senior Consultant at Redileon believed that networking sites as well as job sites cater to different spectrum of skills and levels. Both have well defined and seemingly well demarcated (by design) user defined solutions and hence effectiveness of one over the other cannot be generalized. He felt that credibility is the key benefit of a social networking site, as users are able to view public endorsements by former colleagues and business partners, which are available on the person’s profile.

But Rajaram Agarwal, MD of TalentAhead India, disagreed with it as he felt that credibility is same for job sites and social networking sites and hence they make sure to do credibility check of the person. According to him, social networking sites can be used by recruitment agencies as people who are not very active job seekers can be contacted and offered job proposals, since these people usually don’t put up their CV on job sites. But he agreed that getting senior and experienced people through these sites is quite difficult. He added, “Very few senior employees are using social networking sites; it is mostly accessed by the younger generation and hence it is beneficial for the IT/ BPO companies as they are usually in search of young talent. But tools such as job preference, location required, etc. that are available on job sites are not available at the networking sites.” TalentAhead India first looks at the person’s profile present on these networking sites and if it matches the job requirement, they mail the job offer to the person.

Rajesh A R, Vice-president, TeamLease Services stated, “In the long run, social networking sites would be a key differentiator in the recruitment market. All corporates can pay a subscription fee and get access to Naukri, JobsAhead or Monster to access the candidate database. The ability to tap passive job seekers through the Internet is a skill and would be a key differentiator in the coming years.”

According to Rajesh, there are lots of open e-groups for various interest levels like mountaineering, supply chain management, cycling, etc. Most of the members in these e-groups are working executives with more than three-four years of experience and would not have posted their CV’s in job portals. He added, “As we are present in these e-groups as silent spectators, we get to know about these candidates. For example, if the recruiters are looking for admin executives, they might log into e-groups group of people in the domain of facilities—admin. They can also go through blog sites to understand the various profiles and interest areas of the candidates.”

Most job sites will have a larger quantity of jobs posted than a site like LinkedIn does. However, in terms of the size of the candidate pool, and the contextual information that a recruiter can find out about a candidate, and vice-versa, social networking sites are definitely better on this front, mentioned O’Donnell. She said, “The fact is that many people are not active on the job market; therefore they aren’t proactively visiting jobs boards. Hence much hiring is done through a network of referrals, job portals cannot fulfill all of the needs in the hiring process.”

Direct hiring by companies

Hiring is a very important decision for both the company and the candidate, and it involves a large degree of trust on both sides. Even before the advent of online, referrals played a large role in the hiring process but the companies’ HR department making direct use of these sites for hiring people is still at the nascent stage.

“Searching blogs or social networking sites can be time consuming and may not yield the ROI in a shorter time frame. As we invest time and resources, we would be able to identify patterns to tap passive candidates who fit into the requirement. Like any other profession, e-sourcing requires considerable skill set. This is one of the reasons the acceptance levels would be slow among corporates or small-time recruiters,” mentioned Rajesh.

But O’Donnell said, “Many of our corporate customers use LinkedIn precisely for that. Companies like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft are some of our largest customers, and they largely use LinkedIn for their HR and recruiting functions; other functions that subscribe to LinkedIn are sales and business development. If you look at the jobs listed on LinkedIn for India, you will see companies like Sapient, Electronic Arts, and Wipro posting vacancies. Additionally, many companies purchase subscriptions on LinkedIn to source candidates who are not necessarily looking at jobs boards.”

Some of the HR consultants and HR managers have started checking out candidate’s profiles on Orkut, which is in line with the international trend followed on MySpace, etc.. There are also large communities of corporate companies which give access to information on people working in the same organization, even their discussions, etc., revealed Puneet Johar, MD, Tangerine Digital Entertainment Campus18.com.

Satya Prabhakar, CEO of Sulekha.com said, “Many companies succeed by looking for future employees on social networking sites. HR managers feel that the quality of response is good and helps create a good database of candidates to be tapped subsequently. Easy accessibility to the service, plus the market pull that India holds right now on the international community means that it is feasible to use the service for hiring. Corporate alumni networks can be a powerful tool for recruitment and even brand building.”

Candidates can include keywords and descriptions about themselves that will enable their profile to be easily accessed when recruiters and hiring managers search for a specific skill on these sites. Thus, online social networking sites are an another platform to find the right fit for job seekers and recruiters and it seems beneficial to all—the recruitment agencies, companies, candidates and not to forget the sites themselves.

vinita.gupta@expressindia.com