With the ever increasing popularity of Facebook--over 845 MILLION active users a month at the end of December 2011--employers are increasingly turning to Facebook for advertising openings, for sourcing, and for screening. This begs the question: Is Facebook a valid source of information for the recruitment of job candidates?
 | | With the most popular use of Facebook being "just for fun" and for other entertainment purposes, is Facebook a valid source of information for recruiting? |
Let's start out with some basic ideas about employment recruiting. While the lines blur considerably and it is sometimes difficult to separate one from another, there are three basic areas, or steps, to the recruiting process.
Advertising
The first is advertising. With 845 million users looking at Facebook each month--approximately 169 million of which are in the United States--it would seem Facebook would be a reasonable option. By contrast, the daily circulation of the New York Times is just short of 1.2 million while the
combined usage of
Monster,
Beyond.com,
CareerBuilder,
TheLadders, and
Snagajob is slightly over 42 million. The numbers that can be reached using Facebook is astounding. And at Facebook, you can qualify who you want to see the ads by geography, interesst, age bracket (over 18, for example), and several other criteria. And you can choose to be billed by click or by impression and have access to analytics that tell you demographically who is seeing it, percentages of clicks, etc. The idea would be to make your ad clickable, with the option to direct it to your
company's Facebook page (which is free, by the way) or to your
company's career page,
blog,
homepage, or wherever.
Of course, not everyone on Facebook is actually
looking for a job, but the branding and word of mouth referrals is too good a potential to pass up.
Sourcing
The second of the basic areas or phases of recruiting is sourcing. This is differentiated from simply advertising in that the recruiter is actually actively seeking prospective candidates using specific search criteria, keywords, company names, etc. Unlike LinkedIn, which is set-up to be resume-based and more of a professional networking site, sourcing proves to be a little more difficult on Facebook. As stated above, the intent of Facebook is to be a social networking site where participants come to share pictures, keep in touch, arrange parties, or for an online diary. There are some third-party platforms which enable some use of search criteria, but in general, the use of keywords, job titles, etc., is extremely limited. Because of this, there are vastly better uses of time and resources than to attempt to source on Facebook. Examples of better resources would be LinkedIn, job boards, or sites such as Manta and Jigsaw, which can be pay sites but do have some benefit in their free versions.
Screening
Screening is the third basic area or phase of recruiting and where we enter into murky waters when using Facebook. Screening is the step in which we as hiring managers, human resources officials, and recruiting or staffing professionals make decisions as to the viability of a candidate. The question is "
What type of information is present on Facebook that is relevant to a candidate's viability for a position."
Particularly because the purpose and intent of Facebook is to be social, to communicate with friends, and to be "
away from work." the question is a good one. How is what someone does on the weekend,
away from work, relevant to how one will perform on the job site? In conversations recently with other human resource professionals, a common defense of the practice of using Facebook to screen is "
We want to see if Candidate X is culturally or socially a good fit for our organization." In other words, does the candidate's value systems, etc., match those of the group already working.
This, of course, raises several questions.
- How much does the hiring manager know about his current workforce away from work? The point here is that unless the hiring manager spends quite a bit of time with her staff away from work or has also spent quite a bit of time on their Facebook pages, she is comparing the "culture" or "value systems" or "behavior" of the workplace persona of her current employees with that of the applicant's "away from work" time. It's an apples and oranges comparison. This defense of searching Facebook profiles seems to ignore the idea that people are quite able to compartmentalize work time and personal time. In other words, people are very able to adapt their behavior and attitude depending upon whether they are at work, school, church, home, or at a party with friends. Comparing one against the other is probably not a productive practice.
- Exactly what type of information is the hiring manager looking for? Obviously, the manager is looking for behavioral tendencies. Several human resources professionals I've spoken with that do use Facebook explain that since they use structured behavioral interviews anyway, this is just one more source to verify this type of information. But is this actually valid? Once again, the behavior displayed on Facebook is of a social, party, sandbox nature. It is not necessarily a reflection of at-work behavior. So the practice may not pass any kind of validity test. Other hiring people have responded with "I want to see how they talk about previous employers. If a candidate has posts with negative comments about a previous employer or their product, they would be likely to do the same with me. I do not want that." This possibly has some merit. But just because a woman or man has commented negatively about a past boyfriend or girlfriend, it doesn't necessarily indicate the likelihood they will do so in the next relationship. The point would seem to translate to employers, as well. And honestly, if this proclivity doesn't present itself in your interview, you may want to consider altering your interview questions. The practice of searching Facebook for these purposes probably isn't any more beneficial than finding out what your swim team candidate is like while riding a bike on a mountain.
- What does the hiring manager do with information protected by Title VII, ADEA, ADA, and other statutes? By its nature as a social site, Facebook offers pictures of the candidate, information regarding marital status, sexual preferences, age, disabilities, political leanings, religion, etc. Some hiring managers will say, "oh, but I don't look at that information. How does one not look at this when they are on a Facebook profile? Maybe the hiring manager can say he doesn't take such information into consideration, but it may be very difficult to prove in an employment claim, particularly if all other things are fairly similar. It may be best to leave access to such information, or the appearance of such, out of the screening process.
There has been much press recently about hiring managers actually asking or demanding usernames and passwords to Facebook accounts. This practice is already illegal in Maryland and bills are making their way through legislatures elsewhere. Facebook itself has published a
statement opposing this practice and advising its users to refuse such requests. Because of the above and because passwords also give employers access to private emails, private information on the pages of "friends" of the applicant, potentially credit card information, etc., this is
never a good practice and should be avoided.
So what have we learned?Facebook
could be a great source for advertising positions and for branding your company for potential job seekers. Depending on the scope of your advertising, it can be done with very little expense. However, as a sourcing avenue it is limited in scope and cumbersome in effort. Other sites present a much better, much more efficient use of sourcing time. As a screening tool, it may be better to hone your application and interview processes to better uncover the information you might want from Facebook without the information on Facebook that will get you into trouble.
Ted Taylor, SPRH quantumsps.blogspot.com
