Social Media is becoming one of the most important tools to use every day for news, socializing, research purposes, shopping, and it’s even stretching out its benefits to recruiting services. Recent studies have shown that 76% of companies use or consider using social media sites for recruiting. HR departments and employees describe it as being very efficient and effective; it helps employers select the best candidates for them, keeps a strong brand awareness in the market, it reduces recruitment costs, and it definitely shortens hiring times.
That being said, it is important to understand how to use social media for recruiting. Going through candidates’ information can be misleading, unreliable, and provides you with inconsistent information. Considering that, if you use this social media screening company, the process of gathering reliable information will become easier and faster. A professional third party works hard and fast to come up with a certain criteria and legal methods to help you efficiently screen your potential employees and protect you from unnecessary risks.
Here are five reasons why social media screening is important for your company:
1. Know your candidate more
Candidates in an interview can pull out a great smile and a perfect resume, or get nervous and forget to show their true qualities. Today through social media, you can know more about their communication and social skills: how do they behave, how do they take criticism, communicate their feelings and how they treat people around them.
2. Find passionate employees
It will show you more about their ambition, by checking who they follow and what their interests are for example. If they follow companies that have the same work environment, it is more likely that this employee care and will seek a certain company culture. Social media can reveal creative and curious candidates who are most likely to be outstanding in problem-solving.
3. Fast background checking your candidate
Traditional recruiting methods took a long time and cost tons of money to background check applicants, wasting both employer and the employees’ time. However, social media has made this step too fast and easy. Screening companies can check their backgrounds through their profile, videos and tagged posts to learn about their opinions and personal thoughts, their military records, banking, and medical records.
4. Discovering red flags
Companies want to have a calm, safe, and productive work environment, with guidelines that everyone agrees on. Anything that will raise your red flag during a social media screening will affect potential hiring. For example, you may find him/her lying on their resume, or have been accused of drug use, stealing, sexual abuse or sharing the company’s confidential information. It’s sad to eliminate good candidates because of red flags, but it is better to do it early.
5. Know your Candidate’s leading skills
Some social media platforms provide users with receiving endorsements from network, colleagues, and companies. Those recommendations are reliable and can help you in positioning your candidate in your company based on his / her leading skills.
To summarize, social media screening is the key to successful hiring methods nowadays. Experts state that it manages the companies’ risks. Considering this, they recommend hiring a professional third-party company, who would have the ability to screen more webs than conducting screening in-house.
