Workspace. When HR meets social media: brave new world of recruitments

A major factor determining hiring these days is the growing influence and reach of social media and big data. However, human resource (HR) experts insist that conventional and new age practices tend to co-exist when it comes to hiring.

Though social recruiting was big last year, it is set to get even bigger this year, especially given the widening gap between demand and supply of skilled workers. HR chiefs are also using advanced metrics that alert them about upcoming recruiting problems and opportunities, so that they can act appropriately. A lot of jobs today are being posted on social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc, and a lot of people are being hired through these platforms,” says Rajeev Bhardwaj, Vice President-Human Resource, Sun Life Financial Asia Service Centre, a leading financial services company that has made India the headquarters of its services arm in Asia.

Bhardwaj went on to add: “The (job) postings often move from circle to circle, are forwarded to job seekers and eventually connect the recruiter with the right talent. However, a lot of direct hiring is also happening via walk in and cold calling.” He pointed out that companies also tend to offer exciting referral schemes to their employees, “entailing incentives for good referrals. If an existing employee refers a few talented individuals, he or she stands to benefit from the referrals.”

This, the VP explains, not only helps the company better align its requirement and hiring, it also enables them to have access to people from a similar educational and skilled backgrounds.

The use of big data has also moved from being an interesting phenomenon to an essential factor at most corporates. Big data can actually identify hundreds of top performers, who are not currently looking for a job, and the advanced metric developments are shifting recruiting practices toward a data supported HR model across most companies.

At Mahindra & Mahindra, HR analytics is the new buzzword. The company is tapping into employee data and employing HR analytics so as to get an optimal return on investment (ROI) on their human capital.

Rajeshwar Tripathi, Chief People Officer, Automotive and Farm Equipment Sectors, M&M Ltd says the company plunged into HR analytics very heavily last year. “We would be looking at predictive models for HR to help us drive business better,” he told BusinessLine .

Though big data has attracted the attention of HR managers, the aim is to analyse structured and unstructured data, and answer important questions regarding workforce productivity.

Analysing the data also helps identify potential leaders in the workplace, check on the impact of training programmes on the organisation’s progress in the marketplace, as well as workforce attrition.

“Data is not just important, but is non negotiable for better decision making and business impact. We aim to rely heavily on data, not just for hindsight and actionable insights, but also for foresight,” said Tripathi. He added that the dearth of right talent continues to be a major worry at most corporates.

Though social media is one of the most ripe platforms to source top candidates, with both quality and quantity of candidates proven to improve when a social recruiting strategy is put in place, Sun Life’s Bhardwaj insists that while it makes the process quicker and more efficient, “not all valuable and skilled people are active on social media, or all looking for a professional change.”

Social media is also “a key to reach out to the passive job seeker, somebody who is not actively looking for a job, even though they may be better qualified and employable than most others. How one connects with such talent is an interesting and an important aspect of the talent selection chain,” he adds.