Does Restricting The Use Of Social Media Come In The Way Of Employee Referrals?

By Author: Savio Vadakkan
Total Articles: 58
Comment this article

While organizations are known to restrict the usage of social media in the interest of conserving time and resources, it can often be a self-defeating exercise. On the one hand is the argument that social media actually gives us a worldview and which organization would mind having employees with a 360- degree vision of the world? Even if one does not stretch the argument this far, the usage of social media is the modern day equivalent of the water cooler break.

A great casualty of this restriction, among other things, is the marginalization of an employee referral program. Traditional recruitment methods have long been discarded for being too costly, time consuming, requiring too much staff, and with limited reach and impact. Two relatively recent trends have brought about a dramatic change in the recruitment function. Firstly, the use of employee referrals in hiring talent has led organizations to revamp their recruitment outlook towards successfully leveraging the power of employee networks for recruitment. Secondly, the widespread use of internet and widening online presence of people has brought about a paradigm ...
... shift in the recruitment function. The use of internet has spawned many new channels and sources which provide easy access to a global database of candidates at highly cost effective prices. Organizations with a proactive recruitment outlook have cleverly used technology to marry the two to ensure open positions are filled quickly with high quality candidates and at half the cost previously incurred.

The use of social media in recruiting particularly enables:

• Reaching out to a host of passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a change of job but are by no stretch of the imagination, not interested in furthering their career prospects

• Reaching relevant candidates in the lowest possible time and at optimal cost.

• Real time tracking of the success of the employee referral program

• Importantly, it offers the scope for a whole lot of positive employer branding. The very fact that employees are sharing or tweeting company requirements is demonstrative of their empowerment as well as the comfort level of working with the organization.

The inability to use social media in organizations leads to constricting the ability of employees to help the organization search for relevant talent, in a milieu where there is a clear talent crunch. Unless organizations make it simple for employees to refer candidates, the employee referral program is bound not to meet with the desired success. On the other hand, by unlocking the vast potential of social networking, organizations tend to gain on both the number and quality of referrals.

As per Research Data, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and corporate blogs, in this order, form an important part of the recruitment strategy of successful organizations.

If one believes in the adage that good people know other good people, restricting social networking in organizations clearly works against this principle as you are effectively restricting the ability of your trusted people to spread word about your company to other trusted contacts.

Infact today more and more employee referral tools come with advanced social media capabilities to equip employees with a quick access to social media to make referrals.

There is definitely a wave of change that the industry is witnessing with more and more organizations becoming tolerant to the use of social platforms. Using Linkedin and Facebook for recruiting is infact one of the hottest recruitment trends currently.

Author Bio :

Savio Vadakkan is the Marketing Professional at ZALP, a unique employee referrals booster. ZALP helps organizations tap the full potential of their use of employee referrals in hiring also the use of social media in recruiting, recruitment strategy of successful organizations and interesting features like gamification.