 "Job-wise: Spending time on FB, Twitter may not be all that bad")
Mumbai: The social media has moved rapidly from being ‘purely social’ to a ‘business tool’ as more and more companies are now using the platform to recruit the right people for specific jobs and this trend is expected to grow by about 50 percent this year from 2013, according to experts.
“In day-to-day busy schedules, people only get social media platform to know about what is happening in the industry and their social network and they also update about their ownstatus and change of roles. This trend began almost in 2010, and is growing by 50 percent every year,” leading executive search firm GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel said.
Most of the updates, he opined, give the recruiter an information link to reach to the right people for the specific job of for their client companies.
“Mid and senior-level professionals do not want to project themselves as easily available resources but by putting up their resume in job portals or an agency makes them easily available resources, which affects their role and compensation negotiations,” he added.
Sectors like IT, ITES, banking and financial have been recruiting across levels using this platform, he said.
However, even FMCG, manufacturing, power and energy, retail, automobile are also using the social media for mid to senior level hiring, he added.
Career adviser firm Michael Page’s India Regional Director Alf Harris said social media is obviously a much-talked about aspect of recruitment and it undoubtedly offers individuals an excellent opportunity to access opportunities and for companies to reach out to talent.
“However, one must keep in mind that social media is part of the recruitment process. Once the recruitment process moves into the assessment cycle, there is limited impact from social media,” he said.
The advantage of social media is the ability to reach a significant number of people quickly and easily compared to traditional recruitment process, he said.
KPMG India Partner and Head- People and Change - Nishchae Suri said almost 80 percent of companies use social media for recruitment.
“This trend is more prevalent in Fortune 500 and global firms. We expect social media to play a stronger role, particularly in India. A number of companies here have only recently started posting vacancies on websites building company-specific pages. Recruitment till now has largely been through direct approaches from specialist recruiters and company websites,” he added.
Suri said since the advent of online applications, the recruitment process has become much quicker. “The interactive aspect of social media is also extremely attractive - most companies have pages on social networking websites where candidates and recruiters converse real-time,” he added.
PTI
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