Social Media and Employee Recruitment: Too Much Pain For Not Much Gain?

Despite the increased utilization of social media for employee recruitment by organizations, the extent to which potential applicants perceive social media as a useful source of employment information and their reactions to these practices have not yet been studied. This study examined the extent to which potential applicants utilize corporate websites and social media when collecting information for employment decisions. The results indicate that the majority of potential applicants would prefer to use both corporate websites and corporate social media pages when looking for information about employment options. However, among potential applicants who would prefer to use only one source, a strong preference toward corporate websites was observed. As two of the potential antecedents of recruitment source preference, trustworthiness and perceived factualness of the information were examined and higher trustworthiness and perceived factualness of the information in corporate websites than corporate social media pages was observed. These findings indicate that organizations should keep their corporate websites with up-to-date information regarding job openings and complement their recruiting efforts on social media.