Hiring behind profiles: Why social media is an ineffective platform in recruiting talents for employers

Social media has broken barriers and opened the world of seamless communication by allowing users to share life updates and socialize on the platform. With its astronomical growth, it eventually offered many opportunities for businesses not only to promote their service but outsource potential employees.

However, social media can be a double-edged tool when used for business processes, particularly for recruitment. While social media can be a seemingly convenient tool to announce job vacancies, it doesn’t necessarily translate to quality applications.

In line with their latest campaign “Hire Real Talent” dedicated to educating companies in seeking the right talents post-pandemic, the leading online job portal JobStreet Philippines advises companies to reconsider the use of social media in their recruitment processes.

Difficulty in finding skilled and quality candidates

On social media, recruiters may encounter various applicants but finding qualified candidates can be a challenge. Although social media accounts can be helpful in doing background checks, they can result in prejudice, and recruiters may be unable to find relevant information such as credentials, job experiences, and skillset as compared to an actual professional job platform.

Social media profiles exhibit more personal and non-professional activities or information about an individual—ergo, filtering of qualified applicants can be taxing for hirers.

Social media job ads may NOT be targeting active jobseekers

Targeted social media ads get promoted to a specific category of people and are also shown to the general audience. While ads can be specific, social media users who fall under the selected categories are not automatically active jobseekers because the platforms are mainly used for socializing or content streaming. Hence, the costs of boosting job ads on social media may not be as effective in targeting the right candidates and, therefore, could potentially be a waste of company resources.

Filipino workforce prefers online job platforms

According to a recent study by JobStreet, “What Jobseekers Wish Employers Knew: Unlocking the Future of Recruitment” when looking for a job, 28% of Filipinos prefer online recruitment platforms, corporate pages, and websites. This means many job seekers, from entry-level to skilled ones, go straight to the source of job postings when they are actively looking for opportunities.

Legitimate job platforms like JobStreet have specialized filtering capacities for hirers and recruiters to use when looking for a candidate that requires certain skills and experience. Through this, not only is it convenient for hirers but also reliable when looking for a legitimate candidate. Before applicants can post their resume, it is scanned and scored by an Artificial Intelligence tool built upon millions of data points from the JobStreet platform. The AI tool has been vetted by real HR professionals, employers, and corporate leaders.

Additionally, JobStreet offers a consumable budget-based model that allows hirers to set a budget for a certain period of time. With the candidates engaging on the platform specifically for job-hunting purposes, hirers are assured that their boosted job posts are shown to the relevant target audience and converted to legitimate applications.

“As shown in our recent study, it is now a jobseekers’ market. With the changes in preferences and behaviors of our young workforce, we aim for our hirers to be fully equipped and future-ready when it comes to their recruitment practices, and that includes optimizing their resources and utilizing effective platforms that help them get quality talents,” said Kim Viray, JobStreet Philippines Head of Marketing.

JobStreet offers numerous benefits for employers to aid them through their recruitment process and lead them to make great hires. For newly registered hirers, JobStreet offers 30-day free job posting on their platform with access to over 14 million candidates, useful features on multiple channels (e.g. website and mobile app), easy-to-use job advertisement composer, powerful candidate management tools, and many more.

Under the campaign “Hire Real Talent”, the job platform also recently released a fun take on the use of social media in hiring candidates. Watch it here.