Social media has made a strong presence in the job application process, and can be beneficial for both recruiters and job seekers

When most people think about social media and applying for jobs, they think of the numerous warnings from family members, professors, and advisors that employers will look at your Facebook profile. While it is a fact that most companies will screen an applicant's personal profiles, social media has recently become a much larger force in the job application process than just for finding embarrassing pictures or posts. There are numerous positive ways that social media is being used today to recruit employees and help applicants land jobs.

Job boards may be a thing of the past as recruiters are increasingly using social media to find applicants 

Companies are always on the lookout for new employees, and lately social media has been one of the platforms they are using to find them. A study of over 1,000 companies in a variety of industries revealed that an astounding 92% of employers used social media for job recruiting in 2012.

Social media is an attractive recruiting method because it allows companies to both passively and actively recruit possible job candidates.

Companies have turned to sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to passively recruit applicants by posting job openings on their pages. This is beneficial for recruiters and job seekers alike. When job seekers start "liking" company pages on social media, it gives the company publicity and possibly attracts more applicants. It is also beneficial to the job seeker because it gives them a means to interact with people in the company by commenting and liking what is posted on the page.

Social media allows applicants to promote themselves before formally submitting a resume or application. One way to do this is by interacting with a company via their Twitter page. These interactions can give an applicant the chance to make their name stand out to the human resources employees managing these accounts, giving that person an edge simply by making the effort to create dialogue online. Online interactions show that the candidate is motivated and displaying interest in the company, which is viewed favorably by recruiters.

Social media also allows employers to actively recruit candidates by messaging them directly through their profiles. Human resources managers have the ability to browse millions of profiles among the different social networking sites. When they find someone who seems qualified for a job they are looking to fill, contacting that person is as easy as sending a message to their inbox on that site.

Social recruiting has proven to be very beneficial for employers thus far. A survey of 1,600 human resources specialists around the country revealed a 49% increase in quality of employees recruited through social media. Additionally, 33% indicated that the hiring process moved faster when employees were recruited through social media.

The graphic above shows the three most popular
social recruiting sites, and what percent of
employers used each one   

LinkedIn is becoming one of the most powerful recruiting tools and applicants should have strong profiles to remain competitive  

LinkedIn is a social networking website for people in professional occupations, often compared to Facebook of the corporate world. Recently, it has taken the job recruiting world by storm - 93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to look for possible job candidates. Among those who used LinkedIn for recruiting purposes, 89% hired someone who was found or introduced through the site.

One of the main benefits of LinkedIn is the amount of possible connections every user has. The average LinkedIn member has 240 contacts, which seems like a fairly reasonable number. However, those 240 contacts generate 35,000 contacts who are one degree away and 3.2 million who are two degrees away. This allows job seekers to network with employers they otherwise never would have been connected to, which significantly increases the possibility of finding a job.

Due to the sheer number of connections on LinkedIn, it also makes it easy for recruiters to quickly find qualified candidates. Adobe Systems preformed a "talent-scouting race" using two pairs of recruiters to find 50 qualified candidates for a technical job. One pair used LinkedIn to find candidates while the other used traditional methods including job boards.

The pair that used LinkedIn were able to find their 50 candidates in a matter of hours while the traditional pair still hadn't discovered enough talent weeks later. This small experiment shows the power that LinkedIn has to find well-rounded and qualified candidates in a short period of time.

As opposed to recruiting through other social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn is specifically designed for professional use, so it gives employers a better idea about professional skills, experience, tenure, etc.

Since employers look at LinkedIn specifically to find out about an applicant's professional life, it is important to have a complete profile. This mean having recommendations from previous co-workers or employers, and a complete list of skills, accomplishments, education, and work experience.

Kate Juhl, a program director at the University of Maryland Career Center emphasizes the importance of having key words and skills related to an applicant's specific field on their profile. This allows recruiters to search for exactly what they are looking for, giving the applicant a better chance of being discovered.

Some applicants may find it tempting to "inflate" their qualifications in order to impress recruiters. However, job seekers need to realize while many things on the internet tend to be over-exaggerated, LinkedIn is not the place to do so. A study done by two Cornell professors concluded that resume sharing sites like LinkedIn actually foster greater honesty for important claims like experience and responsibility. While having an impressive profile is certainly important, applicants should never resort to lying about their qualifications.

Success of social media sites in recruiting is sparking the creation of new apps and startup companies 

With the success of social media in the recruiting process, it is no surprise that new social media apps and companies are being created to try to make a presence in a growing field.

A startup company called Entelo uses proprietary algorithms to search Twitter, Google+, and other sites to find candidates for specific positions and predict who might accept offers. Something that might indicate that a person is looking for a job would be if a Twitter user changed their location on their profile, indicating they moved and may be searching for a new job.

While Entelo only launched in October of 2012, they are already attracting big-name clients such as ESPN, Facebook, Groupon, Yelp, and more.

Traditional job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder are starting to feel the effects of the rising presence of social media in recruiting - in the first nine months of 2012 Monster alone saw a decrease in revenue of 10%. As a result, job boards like these are starting to introduce social media components.

Monster launched a Facebook app called BeKnown, which helps job seekers find jobs through Facebook connections. They can also invite colleagues to connect professionally and earn endorsements. CareerBuilder created an app called Work@, which uses Facebook referrals to allow workers to share open positions within their company to family and friends.

The creation of new apps and startup give recruiters even more opportunities to find potential employees, and give job seekers the resources to learn about job openings and make connections.

Applicants still need to be aware of how social media can be harmful in job search 

While social media has many positive benefits for recruiting applicants and helping them get jobs, prospective employees need to realize that their personal social media use can come back to bite them if they are not smart about what they post.

Human resources professionals often use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to screen applicants and get a better feel for what they are like as a person and how they would fit in the company. Some companies even go as far as looking at applicant's personal blogs and accounts on sites like Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.

The graphic above shows common postings found on
applicant's social media profiles, and how recruiters react

The statistic that should worry job applicants most is that 69% of employers have rejected an applicant because of something they saw on a social networking site.  Some of the top offenses were for illegal drug references, posts of a sexual nature, mentions of alcohol consumption, as well as bad spelling and grammar. Respectively, these were viewed negatively by 83%, 71%, 47%, and 61% of job recruiters. Ms. Juhl discusses these negative social media posts, but also about how some of the things applicants post on their profiles are viewed favorably by recruiters, and can actually improve their chances of landing a job.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a good idea for applicants to delete their Facebook or Twitter accounts while on the job search. Many employers feel that applicants without social media profiles are trying to hide something, and they can't get a feel for them as a person. 

Edward Lavino is the Director of Admissions for part-time MBA programs at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and also teaches a class called "Career Search Strategies in Business" that focuses on helping students develop job search skills.

Mr. Lavino says that one thing applicants may not realize about their Facebook profiles is that although they may have their settings on "Private", that doesn't stop them from appearing in tagged photos that their friends have uploaded on their profiles. This allows employers to see this potentially harmful photos upon a simple photo search of the applicant.

Although it is likely that employers will search applicant's profiles for alcohol and drug references, research shows that such postings are not necessarily cause to disregard an applicant. A study conducted by the department of psychology at North Carolina State University showed that there is no significant correlation between the responsibility and conscientiousness of an applicant and their tendency to post about drug or alcohol use on social media.

In fact, applicants who posted about drugs and alcohol were often more extroverted, which is a characteristic viewed favorably by most employers. Extroversion is a trait that is necessary for positions in many fields such as sales and marketing, so employers could be rejecting applicants that could potentially benefit their company simply on the basis of pictures on social media.

In recent years social media has become involved in many aspects of everyday life where it was never used before; the job market is no exception. Social media has exploded into the job application process, providing new resources for finding jobs, making connections, and searching for new employees. If job seekers can learn to keep their social networking profiles appropriate for future employers, there are many positives to be gained from using social media in process of finding a job as well as for recruiters looking for new employees.

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