Finding the right man for the job: The ideology behind social media as tools for recruitment

Abstract

Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, look for our vacancies on LinkedIn, these sentences are well adopted by companies at the moment. These days we find all sorts of companies on social media, although it is not always clear why they have chosen to be visible on such platforms. They are just kind of there, trying to ‘connect’ to us by offering us discounts, opportunities to win things, offering something for free. Always asking something in return, namely to recognize to our network of friends, family and colleagues that we ‘like’ their company. But why? The ongoing buzzing of encouraging, spurring, positive but even critical messages, and research that focus on the growing percentages of businesses who have integrated social media into their communication strategy and are aiming to become a ‘social company’ certainly makes you feel like you are missing out. The power of the discourse surrounding social media as tools for recruitment appears to be strong as we are witnessing an ‘unsatisfying’ self-fulfilling prophecy in which companies are massively integrating social media into their recruitment strategies without getting the claimed, expected and promised results, as mentioned in discourse surrounding social media for recruitment.