Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 62, September 2016, Pages 415-422
Computers in Human Behavior

Full length article
The relationship between recruiter characteristics and applicant assessment on social media

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.04.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Female recruiters assess professional content on applicants' social media more positively.

  • Dutch recruiters assess non-professional content on applicant's social media more negatively.

  • Dutch recruiters tend more to exclude applicants during the social media-based screening.

Abstract

Given the growing practice of social recruiting, this study is an investigation of how job applicant assessment on social media differs based on recruiter characteristics. In particular, this study touches upon how the assessment of both non-professional and professional categories of content on job applicants' social media differs by recruiters' gender and national culture, and whether these characteristics and how recruiters view non-professional content on social media are associated with the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process. The theoretical foundations of this study were based on the selectivity model and the existing literature on national culture. The analysis of data collected from 256 Italian and Dutch recruiters using ANCOVA and logistic regression indicated that the assessment of job candidates' non-professional content differed by recruiters' culture but not by their gender, whereas the assessment of job candidates' professional content on social media differed by recruiters' gender but not by their culture. Factors related to the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude candidates from the recruitment process were also identified. The findings of this study provide practical implications for recruiters and job seekers, and present new suggestions for future research.

Introduction

The rise of social media technologies has led to their use in several organizational functions (El Ouirdi et al., 2015a, Khang et al., 2012). Social media, with their different categories (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) and diverse user base (M. El Ouirdi, El Ouirdi, Segers, & Henderickx, 2014), are also increasingly becoming an integrated part of the recruitment process (Gibbs et al., 2015, El Ouirdi et al., 2014b). Recruiters employ social media to actively source candidates, disseminate job ads, tap into a large pool of talent, and assess applicants among other uses (Caers and Castelyns, 2010, Klier et al., 2015, Melanthiou et al., 2015).

Social media-based assessment of job candidates is different from more traditional practices in several ways. First, employer searches on social media do not necessarily actively elicit job-related information; second, there is a potential mismatch between the purposes of some social media and an organization's use of data drawn from these platforms; and third, it is difficult to structure or standardize social media-based assessments (Roth, Bobko, Van Iddekinge, & Thatcher, 2013). Additionally, recruiters find both professional and non-professional content on social media in larger amounts than usually contained on an applicant's CV. Social media content gives recruiters an additional source of information to assess a candidate's fit with the organization and the job (Chiang & Suen, 2015), and to formulate applicant-related dispositional attributions that may influence interviews and subsequent hiring decisions (Knouse, 1989). Existing research has shown, for example, that relevant education produces more positive perceptions of competence and potential and predicts salary (Knouse, 1994), and that detailed work experience is associated more with employability compared to activities and educational experiences (McNeilly & Barr, 1997). Little is known, however, about the assessments of both non-professional and professional social media content of job applicants, how they differ by recruiter characteristics, and whether they are associated with the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude candidates from the recruitment process.

The primary research questions addressed in this study are therefore as follows: 1) do the assessments of non-professional and professional content on job applicants' social media profiles differ by recruiters' gender and national culture?; 2) is the recruiters' tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process related to how the former assess non-professional content on social media?; and 3) does the recruiters' tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process differ by the former's gender and national culture? The answers to these research questions make a number of contributions to the literature. First, this study contributes to filling an overall gap that exists between practice and research on social media-based assessments (Roth et al., 2013, Van Iddekinge et al., 2013). Second, this investigation covers various items of both non-professional and professional content on social media which were not combined in previous studies on the topic. Third, this study investigates the possible linkage between social media-based assessment and the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process, though without making any causality claims.

This article is structured as follows: a brief overview of the literature on screening job candidates' social media profiles is presented first, followed by a section presenting the research hypotheses pertaining to the associations between recruiter characteristics and applicant assessments on social media, as well as to the factors associated with the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process. Next, the methods section details survey design and dissemination, followed by data analysis and the discussion of the findings. This article is concluded with highlights of its limitations and implications, as well as suggestions for future research.

Section snippets

Recruitment practices in Italy and the Netherlands

Italy and the Netherlands have several similar recruiting practices. According to recent reports, 61% of Italian recruiters consider online professional networks as the most effective tools for employer branding, and 42% find these networks to be an essential and long-lasting trend (LinkedIn, 2016). Between 2012 and 2015, LinkedIn's yearly reports indicated increased rates of Italian recruiters who consider online social networks as the most important source of quality hires (LinkedIn, 2016).

Recruiter characteristics

The present study focuses on two main recruiter characteristics, namely gender and national culture, and examines their relationships with the assessment of applicants' non-professional and professional social media content, as well as with the recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude applicants from the recruitment process. The association between this tendency and the recruiters' assessment of applicants' non-professional social media content is also examined.

Methods

Data were collected using an online survey between March and June 2014 as part of a large social recruiting research project conducted in collaboration with an international recruitment agency. A call for participation was sent by email to the agency's mailing list of recruiters, and a link to the survey was disseminated on the agency's online social networks. The survey used for this data collection was composed of several sub-sections, the first of which included questions about the

Sample characteristics

The sample consisted of 256 recruiters from Italy (N = 135) and the Netherlands (N = 121) (Table 1). Over two thirds of the sample consisted of women, and more than half of the respondents were born between 1965 and 1981. Most recruiters (87.5%) had at least a college degree, and the majority (85.5%) had at least 3 years of work experience. On five-scale points, the responding recruiters had average ratings of 3.21 for non-professional content (SD = 1.05), and 3.59 for professional content

Discussion and implications

This study was set to investigate the associations between recruiters' gender and national culture and their assessments of job applicants' non-professional and professional social media content. Additionally, this study was also aimed at examining the factors associated with recruiters' perceived tendency to exclude applicant from the recruitment process, namely in terms of the assessment of non-professional content on candidates' social media profiles and the recruiters' gender and national

Limitations and future research

Despite this study's contribution to the literature by bringing new knowledge to the topic of social media-based assessment in the recruitment process, it still has a few limitations that need to be pointed out. The main limitation of this study was reliance on self-reported data with its common shortcomings such as the consistency motif and social desirability (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). Furthermore, the measurements of the recruiters' assessments of job candidates' social

Acknowledgment

The first author would like to acknowledge partial funding provided by the COST Action IS1202 – ‘Dynamics of Virtual Work’.

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