Being active and maintaining a ‘favourable’ profile on social media could well land you a good job as companies increasingly turn to social media for hiring.

According to industry sources, nearly 30-40 per cent of all recruitments are being sourced through social media platforms. A majority of these recruitments are for mid- to senior-level positions.

“Social media hiring is one of the hot things among companies today. Corporates such as IBM, Accenture and others have social media hiring teams apart from their regular recruitment teams,” Alka Dhingra, General Manager, TeamLease Services, told BusinessLine .

While the ‘plain vanilla’ hiring is being handled by the regular recruitment team, the social media team looks into jobs that require specialised skills, she said.

Sector specific

The trend of social media hiring was earlier largely restricted to services sectors such as IT, ITeS and BFSI. However, manufacturing, pharma and engineering have also clambered onto the bandwagon.

“They may be a little behind, but are clearly adapting to it,” said Sanjay Shetty, Head, Key Clients, Randstad.

Some of the companies across various sectors that BusinessLine spoke to, including a leading private sector bank, IT company Tech Mahindra and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, confirmed that a majority of their hiring for senior positions in the recent past have been routed through social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

“Social media helps us scout for talent, which is not just industry-specific but can bring best practices from across sectors, particularly for non-conventional areas like digital marketing, analytics, and so on,” said Ruben Selvadoray, Chief Human Resources Officer, Bajaj Allianz Life.

One of the advantages of using social media is that it adds ‘pace’ to the traditional referral-based recruitment process, said Tonmoy Shingal, co-founder & COO, Mettl.

Hiring through FB

While hiring junior to mid-level candidates, PNB MetLife considers Facebook an optimal platform alongside the traditional online job portals and offline tools. “On Facebook, there are diverse focussed groups, which enables us to reach faster among interested candidates,” a company spokesperson said.

According to Krishna Gopal, Global Head, Leadership Hiring &Talent Management, Tech Mahindra, social media-based hiring will pick up as it can avoid the costs involved in working through vendors.

“Subscription to LinkedIn’s premium service also opens up larger vistas and provides more access to talent,” he said.

Apart from direct sourcing, social media also plays an important role in analysing and understanding the prospective employee based on his/her social behaviour.

“Companies are accessing the social media profile of an individual to understand how well s/he would align with the job and the organisation,” said Sriram Vaidhyanathan, Chief Human Resource Officer, BankBazaar.

However, using social media for recruitment could also be fraught with risk, especially when the issue of counterfeit profiles comes into play.

According to Vaidhyanathan, privacy is an important factor to be kept in mind. Companies must be transparent and inform the prospective candidate before accessing their profile.

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