The use of Social Media in employee recruitment activities

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Università degli studi di Pisa

Dipartimento di Economia e Management

Corso di laurea magistrale in Strategia, Management e Controllo

The use of Social Media in employee recruitment activities

Relatore: Prof.ssa Mariacristina Bonti

Correlatore: Prof. Giulio Greco

Candidato: Giada Zagni

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Alla mia famiglia,

Per tutti i Grazie non detti.

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INTRODUCTION

People are the most important part of the organization. Withouth the right people, a company can’t achieve its objectives. It is, therefore, crucial for an employer to find and hire the right person. In this scenario, the recruitment activities become very important for the organizational success.

The recruiting landscape has changed a lot in the last few years and the hunt to find the best candidates available in the marketplace has become more competitive than ever. Companies are struggling to attract valuable candidates and they are facing new challenges every day. With the advent of Internet, geographical restrincions are eliminated and recruiters can now have access to a wider pool of candidates with a simple click of a button, making the competition for talents tougher. However, it is with the booming of social media that the recruitment process had a rapid change. Social Media have become part of our every day life and they have impacted and changed the nature of the traditional recruitment process, opening up new opportunities but also new risks. Companies had to reinvent their way to do recruiting, by learning how to use social media for recruitment purposes and changing their strategies according to these new tools.

This work aims to show and explain how social media enter to be part of the recruiting process and how they can be used effectively by employers to find the best candidates. It will be first analysed the recruitment process (Chapter 1) with a particular focus on the initial phases such as the analysis of the job opening and the recruiting. A detailed and comprehensive job description and person specification are the start point of a successful recruitment process. It will be further discussed some best practices with regard to the preparation of the mentioned documents. It will be, subsequently, described all the instruments at company’s disposal before and after the advent of Internet as well as the benefits and the challenges connected to the use of these tools. It will be first explained the difference between the internal and external marketplace, with a focus on the tools available for employers and the associated advantages and disadvantages, and secondly, it will be presented the instruments most used by employers to do recruiting in the era of Internet, with the associated benefits and challenges.

The second part of this work (Chapter 2) will be focused on Social Media. It will be introduced Social Media and their implications. Social Media have become the norm and

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they have forced organizations to reinvent their way to do recruiting. This implies a change of the employers’ mentality and large investments of time and resources in these new tools in order to be able to attract and engage the best candidates available. It has been shown that Social Media can be a source of competitive advantage if effectively used. In particular, the focus in this chapter will be on “what”, “when”, “why” and “how”: what are Social Media? When do companies use Social Media to recruit and for what purpose? How do companies build an effective Social Media recruiting stratregy? The intention is to give an overview of the most used sources of candidates at recruiters and Human Resources professionals disposal and how they can be effectively used to attract, recruit and engage candidates. Subsequently, it will be further discussed what the use of Social Media in recruitment implies, including all the benefits that it brings to employers, but also the challenges that recruiters need to face on daily basis. Accuracy, reliability and legality are the main issues that employers have to face on daily basis and they will be further discussed.

Finally, in the last part of this work (Chapter 3), it will be analysed a business case: Fluidigm Corporation. Fluidigm Corporation is an American public company, based in South San Francisco (California), that manifactures and markets life science tools, provided for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures. I had the honor to be part of the Human Resources team for one year as an Intern in Talent Acquisition, reporting directly to the Associate Director, Global Talent Acquisition. During my internship I had the chance to participate in every team’s activity, including meetings, calls and projects and to give my contribution in every day job. I would like to thank the Vice President, Human Resources who accepted my internship and gave me the opportunity to do this experience. I also would like to thank the Associate Director, Global Talent Acquisition, who became my mentor. I would finally like to thank all the Human resources team that welcomed me and supported me from the beginning. In this last chapter, after giving an overview of the company and its main businesses, it will be analysed what sources the organization uses for its recruiting activities and the effectiveness of its recruiting strategy. The specific field of Fluidigm makes sourcing and recruiting candidates pretty difficult. Applicants come through the job boards, the corporate website, the employees referrals and from LinkedIn, due to the continuous proactive search of passive candidates. However, there is a large room for improvement with regard to the tools and sources that Fluidigm could use in its recruitment process. It’s obvious that this would imply an investment in terms of time and resources but, given the great and

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smart people who work in the Human Resources team, I am sure that the company will make soon better use of the variety of tools made available by Social Media platforms.

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CHAPTER 1 THE EVOLUTION OF RECRUITING

1.1 The Recruitment process: an overview

The importance of finding the best resources and having an effective recruitment strategy aligned with the business strategy, has increased in the last years. Finding and hiring the quality candidate has never been so critical, due to competition, economic uncertainty and high costs. In order to ensure business success, organizations have to make sure to recruit the right people.

Companies need to face different questions before starting a recruitment process: what are the resources needed in order to achieve the goals? Does the company have the necessary resources to achieve the objectives? Are the resources inside the company or outside the company? How the company will gather these resources? What tools does the company have to use? What is the budget needed?

Recruitment can be defined as “those practices and activities carried out by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees” (Boxall, Purcell, Wright, 2008:274). Recruitment can also be defined as “the process of attracting, screening, selecting and hiring the best employee based on skill, experience, and organization fit” (Melanthiou, Pavlou, Constantinou, 2015:33). In other words, the recruitment process has the purpose of finding the best qualified talent available in the market and hiring them, trying to be as more effective as possible from a time and cost standpoint. The recruitment process includes multiple activities, such as the analysis of the job requirements, the advertisement of the job opening, the development of the strategy to attract the candidates, screen and selection of the applicants, and, eventually, the hire and the integration of the new employee into the organization.

The recruitment process starts with the identification of the hiring needs and it ends with the hiring and the on-boarding of the new employee. However, recruitment should ideally take the approach of continuity, meaning that it shouldn’t be activated only when there is a need of hiring but it should be an ongoing process (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Holbeche, 2001). Companies should be focused proactively on bringing into the organization the skills and experience which can’t easily be built from within, trying to anticipate the future needs. (Auteri, 2004; Arthur, 2004). A company, that operates in an impredictable, turbulent and

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fast changing environment, should always have a pool of potential candidate in its pocket just in case of need, in order to avoid lengthy gaps between the time a vacancy occurs and someone new is hired (Arthur, 2004). If the company looks for candidates only when there is need, it risks of losing competitiveness in the market. Therefore, the approach of continuity is a must have in those companies that aim to a high-quality recruitment process, constantly monitoring the environment in order to catch all the opportunities it offers.

However, taking the approach of continuity is not exempt on risks: a shift of the management or a change of the environment, for instance, can erase all the work done to prepare to a possible recruitment process, rendering the indentified resources inadequate (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

In addition to that, the company could, also, go against regulatory changes that oblige the organization to modify the recruitment strategy and the process itself (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

It is possible to divide the recruitment process into four main steps (Fig. 1.1) (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009):

- Analysis - Recruiting - Selection

- Hiring and On-boarding.

The first step consists in the identification of the hiring needs, the analysis of the position, the identification of the requirements and the description of the ideal profile, and the identification of the segment of the labour market in which companies search for condidates (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003). The human resource planning consists in the forecast of the future availability as well as the future needs of resources (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, Wright, 2006). Once a company has identified the hiring needs, especially with regard to the positions already opened (or about to open), it starts preparing a Job description, where to specify the features of the vacancy, and a Person specification (on the basis of the Job description), in which there will be described the requirements of the ideal candidate (competences, skills, experience).

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Finally, the company decides where to look for candidates (internally and/or externally1₎

according to the age range, the location, the level of education, the experience required (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Auteri, 2004).

Fig. 1.1 Steps of the recruitment process (Personal elaboration)

The recruiting and selection steps are extremely interconnected. In fact, already at the recruiting stage, companies perform a first screening of all the candidates (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). The separation between these two phases is more formal than real, since the recruiting process is always a sort of prior screening that influences the following activities of selection of the candidate (Rebora, 2009).

During the recruiting phase, the company points out the hiring need/needs and it identifies the sources and the best tools to collect all the potential and suitable candidates. Subsequently, the company selects the candidate that better fits in a particular position (Pilati, Tosi, 2002). The selection stage, in particular, is a really important moment in the recruitment process because there is a risk of making significant mistakes. Costa and Gianecchini (2009) explain that it is possibile to make two types of mistakes: on the one side, the organization might hire a person that is not enough qualified for that particular position and that is not able to obtain a certain performance; on the other side, the company might discard a candidate that, in other contests, during his carrier, shows competencies and professional skills not identified by the organization during the recruiting process. For this reason, the choice between the different selection techniques is very important since an accurate exchange of information between the applicant and the recruiter helps to avoid some mistakes in the evaluation of the candidate. In other words, the intention is to make a

1_{The internal market is made up of the company’s employees; the external market is made up of all}

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comparison between job matching: it is necessary to have a correspondence both in terms of quality and quantity with regard to the competences, the knowledge, the skills of the candidates in order to carry out the activities required by the company (Boldizzoni, 2003; Pilati, Tosi, 2002). Boldizzoni (2003:54) states that “la selezione rappresenta un’occasione di confronto e scambio tra organizzazione e candidato e rispecchia due necessità di “esplorazione” reciproca”. Indeed, if, on the one hand, the company needs to assess the competences, the knowledge and the skills required to fulfill a position, on the oher hand, the candidate evaluates the company itself, in order to figure out if the work environment fits to his personality and expectations.

The last step is the moment of the hire and on-boarding of the new employee in the organization, through the work contract. At this point, the company defines the expectations of the new employee as well as those of the company towards the new hire2_(Costa,

Gianecchini, 2009). The success of the introduction of the new employee in the organization depends also on the presence of an effective on-boarding program. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines the employee onboarding as “the process by which an organization assimilates its new employees. It is one of the means for improving productivity, building loyalty and engagement, and helping employees become successful early in their careers with the new organization”. On-boarding is, therefore, a strategic process that should last at least one year, starting from the date of hire, since the new employee’s experience during the first year is crucial to ensure retention (Society For Human Resource Management, 2017).

In this work, it won’t be analyzed the entire recruitment process. It will be focused, instead, on the recruiting, meaning the activities of attracting applicants and searching for active and passive candidates that better fit the company needs, and on the new tools at company’s disposal (in particular this work will be focused on the social media recruiting). It will be examined the initial steps of the recruitment process, that is the analysis stage (analysis of the position, the definition of the ideal candidate profile and the choice between the internal or external research) and the recruiting stage.

1.1.1 Job analysis and person specification

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Poor hiring decisions can influence the success of the recruitment process (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). In addition to unnecessary expenses, wrong decisions badly afflict the recruitment process in terms of time lost in the recruiting and selection process and poor performance of the new hire (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). Once a company identifies the staffing need, it moves forward with the analysis of the role and the definition of the ideal candidate. This moment is particularly important and crucial since it is the start point of the entire recruitment process. Depending on the features of the position and the candidate profile, the company implements some search engines and indentifies a target pool of potential candidates. Therefore, it is necessary that the organization focuses on the correct and comprehensive description of the vacancy as well as the description of the ideal candidate profile, since, otherwise, there is a risk of affecting the success of the recruitment strategy (Auteri, 2004).

The first step consists in having a job analysis that will be translated in the job description. The job analysis is based on the observation of the employees carrying out their activities and duties and it focuses on the competences required to satisfy the expectations connected to the position as well as those to improve the performance (Rebora, 2009). Doing a job analysis means learning about the daily tasks and the special assignements required to do that specific job. It is, therefore, recommended to observe the employee at work and discuss with him what the job requirements are from his point of view (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). The job description is, instead, the written explanation of the job analysis: it includes the activities, the duties, the responsibilities, the methodology and the relations with other departments within the organization.

A comprehensive job description allows to identify what the essential and the desiderable requirements are3_{. The establishment of the features of the position is, therefore, prior to the}

identification of the ideal candidate profile (Rebora, 2009).

The job description includes (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Irwin, 2004): - Job title

- Role’s objectives - Duties

- Placing of the role

3_{This distiction between essential requirements and desiderable requirements is fundamental in order}

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- Relationships and contacts (internal and external), that is the group of people with which the position interacts

- Responsibilities assigned and autonomy on making decisions - Instruments, tools, methodology and systems used

- Professional requirements needed to fulfill the tasks properly.

The purpose of the job description is to communicate, more or less in detail, what the main professional requirements, that candidates must have, are and describe the position to fill in order to organize the job and give the opportunity to potential candidates to evaluate the role itself.

Subsequently to the job analysis and the job description, companies prepare the person specification (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009). The person specification provides the outline of the skills, competences and knowledge required by the position to fulfill and they are depending on the job description. In other words, it is the written explanation of the personal features related to the vacancy. Therefore, the person specification should profile the ideal person for that specific job and it can be effectively used to assess job applicants in an objective manner (Irwin, 2004).

A comprehensive person specification activates a sort of “autoselection”, since the potential candidate is able to assess, since the beginning, his suitability to fill the position and, in the same time, it helps the company to screen faster (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). However, an effective person specification can’t avoid not suitable candidates to apply or the statement of the false during the application.

The description of the ideal candidate must be shared with those who asked for recruitment, that could be the customer outside the company4_{or the customer within the organization}5

(Rebora, 2009).

The person specification defines some indicators that guide the recruiters in their job (Rebora, 2009):

- Personal qualities and elements of the character that could affect the possibility to reach a certain performance

- Past experiences, especially in particular fields or roles

- Degrees, qualifications, certifications required to be in a particular role - Willingness to travel or to work extra hour.

4_{In this case the recruiter is a consultant and the customer is the company itself}

5_{In this case the recruiter is an employee working in the Human Resources department and the}

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All the information above, that are included in a job description and in a person specification, are not always the same: it is not excluded the possibility to present different information in these documents. However, these are the most relevant information that should be included in an effective job description and person specification in order to target the right people. It should be best practice to partner with the hiring manager to clarify and define the features of the position as well as the features of the ideal profile (Pritchard, 2007). Pritchard (2007:107) says that the “hiring manager holds the key to a successful recruiting efforts”. The hiring manager is the person that knows better that particular job and the person that would perfectly fit into the team, since he is the most expert regarding the position he is hiring for. Moreover, the hiring manager has the final decision on whether extend an offer or reject a candidate (Pritchard, 2007). Therefore, in order to succeed in the recruiting activity, recruiters and Human Resources professionals should partner with the hiring manager.

Ultimately, the company needs to decide “where” to find the person to hire: it is the choice of the market where to look for candidates (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003). The time to dedicate to the research of candidates and the routes to reach them will be different according to the professional profile required: for instance, expensive methods of recruitment, that also require a large investment of energy and time, will be used to look for high levels of professionalism, because it is very critical to identify a perfect correspondence bewtween the feautres of the job and the candidate. The potential of the ideal profile must be as close as possible to the potential required for a certain position.

Therefore, companies have to make a choice between internal research or external research (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni 2003). In particular, companies have to face a trade-off between make or buy: first, the organization must evaluate the opportunities of the internal labor market and whether there is the availability of the profiles required (Boldizzoni, 2003). Even if the company has, internally, the availability of the professional resources to fill the position, it is not given that it is the right choice to consider only the interal market.

In fact, even though the person in already working for the organization, the company will have to put in place training courses. Therefore, it is important for the organization to conduct a series of considerations and evaluations, in particular with regard to benefits and costs and advantages and disadvantages before chosing the internal market rather than the external market.

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The internal market is composed by those workers that are already employed in the company and that could move internally to fulfill the vacancy, through transfers or promotions (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni 2003). Hence, when there is an open position in an organization, the first step is to check if, between the employees, there is a potential candidate with all the required competences and skills. It is not necessary that the potential candidate is ready to be transferred or promoted: the company can also consider of starting a training course specifically for the employee, in order to eliminate the deficiencies (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

The goal of the internal mobility is to optimize the staff management and to keep the employees’ motivation going, by promoting the career development (Rebora, 2009). The external market, instead, is the group of unemployed people or employed in other companies, outside of the organizational boundaries (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni 2003). Organizations use the external market for a lot of reasons: for instance, the limit of the internal market in terms of quantity (number of people that could be move internally from a position to another) and of quality (lack of competences and skills of the internal employees for a particular job), lack of resources to manage the recruitment, costs of the process (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). However, internal and external market are not mutually exclusive.

The company will select the way that better allows to identify the resources required (usually both ways are used).

1.1.2 The recruiting stage

The recruiting phase can be described as “il processo di individuazione e di contatto di candidati aventi determinate caratteristiche, attraverso l’utilizzo degli strumenti più appropriati, che si conclude con un pool di nominativi” (Rebora, 2009:160). As mentioned before, the recruiting phase is closely related to the screening and selection phase: indeed, according to the tools that will be used, a company automatically identifies a pool of candidates with particular features and skills and it excludes others. For instance, the use of internet excludes everyone who don’t use internet to look for a job6_.

It is possibile to identify four steps of the recruiting process (Rebora, 2009): - Identify the target of candidates to contact and their features

- Define the content of the information to distribute

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- Define the research methods to use - Collect the pool of candidates to screen.

With regard to the identification of the targeted candidates, the company needs to define who are the people to reach out to, both in terms of quantity (a larger group of people or a smaller group of people) and quality (features and requirements) (Rebora, 2009). In terms of quantity, the number of potential candidates to contact is also connected to the number of vacancies that an organization has and to the level of importance of the position: in this case, indeed, the more critical is the role, the larger will be the target of people reached in order to have more opportunities to identify the best candidate.

In terms of quality, the organization should base the research on the job description and the person specification in order to segment the market. With reference to the target of people to contact, it is necessary to make a distinction between active job seekers and passive job seekers (Rebora, 2009). Active job seekers are those people who reply to online job offers and apply online to open positions, in addition to send the resume to the companies. In other words, active job seekers are those people that are actively looking for a job. Passive job seekers, instead, are those people already employed that are not looking for a job or a new opportunity. If the company wants to reach out to active job seekers, it will be only required to advertise the vacancy and the candidate will apply for the position. On the contrary, if the company needs to reach out to passive job seekers, it will be necessary to use a series of instruments and tools to track down the passive candidates.

The second step is to define the message that is the information that have to reach the labor market (Rebora, 2009). The message must be carefully composed both in the contents and in the structure since it has to impress the pool of potential candidates. The message is different according to the method that the organization wants to use for the distribution of it: for instance, if the company uses the newspaper, the message needs to be short, with few but essential and highlighted information. On the contrary, if the message is distributed through a virtual tool, the company can use its creativity to create an engaging and comprehensive message.

Finally, the organization has to choose the sources for the research: this step is very important because it will influence the pool of potential candidates and, consequently, the real opportunities to acquire the best resources available (Rebora, 2009). Therefore, it is important that the organization doesn’t immediately exclude entire segments of the market without making a valid evaluation. It is necessary to conduct a proper analysis before choosing between different research sources in order to reach out to the more qualified

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candidates. Therefore, it is very challenging for a company to choose between sources, especially in a high competitive market, also because sources that work very well one day may become uneffective in the near future (Diane, 2004).

However, the choice between the instruments of the internal research and the instrument of the external research has to be made.

As explained above, internal recruiting refers to the research that is made internally; external recruiting refers to the research that is made outside the company, in the external labour market (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003).

The two sources mentioned above are not mutually exclusive: the organization can use only one source for the research or both in the same time (Tab 1.1).

Internal Recruiting External Recruiting

- Internal Job Posting - Advertising and Media

- Internal Employee Referrals - Applications

- Review of old applications - Employee Referrals - Schools and Universities - Public Intermediaries - Professional and Business

Associations, Trade Unions - Specialized Agencies - Internet

Tab 1.1 Internal and External Recruiting (Personal Elaboration)

Internal Recruiting

When there is an open position within the organization, step one is to verify if, within the company itself, there is one or more people with the potential to fulfill a certain role, immediately or after a training course (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003). In this way, the company gives priority to the consolidation of the work relationship and encourages career development (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). Moreover, from the employee perspective,

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the internal mobility and the career development is perceived as a prize for the employee’s performance and, for this reason, they are often used to improve the retention and the commitment: in fact, the internal mobility is seen as an actual strategy to improve retention (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

The instruments of the internal recruiting are analyzed below (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Pritchard, 2007; Fink, Berryman-Fink, 1996).

The first tool that could be used by an organization to communicate a vacancy is the internal job posting: the open position is advertised within the organization through the internal job board. The advertisement must include a detailed description of the role as well as the requirements that the ideal candidate must have (Rebora, 2009). Moreover, it is common sense to provide with clear rules to the employees in order to avoid misunderstandings and/or future complains (Pritchard, 2007). In the case of internal job posting, it is the employee to apply by sending the resume. If the company decides to use this method, whenever the internal candidate is rejected, it is very important to explain the reason why this decision has been made (Prandstraller, Quacquarelli, 2011). In fact, a failure can be demotivating (Pritchard, 2007). Moreover, if the job posting is not well handled, it could generate internal competition and, consequently, it might create a negative work environment (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

A second instrument is the employee referral. The employee referral within the organization is rarely used as an internal source (Rebora 2009). The reason is that, usually, within an organization, there is always a competition between employees and, consequently, they are rarely willing to refer a co-worker. However, this doesn’t mean that the referrals aren’t happening. Especially in small companies or in a family business, employees are more willing to cooperate than in a bigger company.

It is also included in the category of referrals, those coming from a manager who identifies an employee able to fulfill a certain position.

The review of the applications stored in the database of the company, is another method of internal recruiting (Boldizzoni, 2003). It consists in reviewing all the old applications of the candidates that haven’t been hired. It is not recommended to use only this source because there is a risk of leaving out some employees that, during the years, have improved their competences, knowledge, skills required to do the job.

The internal mobility takes shape with promotions and transfers: promotions are the employee’s shift from a lower position to a higher position (vertical shift); transfers are, instead, the employee’s shift from a position to another with the same level (orizontal shift).

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Internal mobility, especially with regard to promotions, allows a company to “challenge, reward and develop its best internal talent” (Pritchard, 2007:85). In order to use the internal mobility in the right way, that means without creating dissatisfaction and useless competition, it is required that the company has a valid and structured career management system (Rebora, 2009).

External recruiting

In contrast to the tools at company’s disposal for internal recruiting, the instruments used for external recruiting are a quite larger number and they can be combined in different ways, according to the needs and the goals of the organization.

An organization decides to source externally for at least two reasons (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009):

- It is often hard to find internally the competences required, in terms of quantity and quality

- The organization is looking for the best talent available and it prefers to explore more segments of the market instead of limiting itself only to internal resources.

Some of the most used tools for external recruiting are examined below (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009; Pritchard, 2007; Boldizzoni, 2003; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). A first tool is the advertising and the media. Through this instrument, the company advertises the job opening on the press (television, newspaper, radio) in the appropriate job advertisement section. An advertisement must follow some fundamental key points in order to be effective. It is really important, as explained above, that the message is well structured (Rebora, 2009). Indeed, the message must be able to make an impression on the interested candidates through an appropriate graphic and an appropriate information content. Moreover, in the same time, it has to leave out some information so that the potential candidates have the need to contact directly the organization to ask for more details (Rebora, 2009). It is necessary also that the advertising uses a certain vocabulary, by which the company should leave a positive impression but realistic (Rebora, 2009). If, on the one side, this source allows to reach out to a lot of people, on the other side, it doesn’t operate any filter in the research and that means that someone has to take the time necessary to review and screen a potentially large number of applicants (it is very time-consuming) (Berryman-Fink, (Berryman-Fink, 1996). Moreover, if the company needs to fulfill a position in a short periof of time, this source is not recommended since it doesn’t have an immediate outcome. A plausible alternative could be to advertise the vacancy on specialized newspapers or

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magazines in order to be able to reach a specific target of skilled people: for instance, if the company needs a software engineer, it si recommended to advertise the job opening on a magazine specialized in that particular segment in order to reach only that category of people (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). In fact, nowadays, every profession has magazines and journals that reach its particular niche audience and many of these maganizes and journals have an advertisement section (Pritchard, 2007). However, the cost of publishing on these professional magazines/journals is very high so companies don’t advertise their job openings within professional publications very often (Pritchard, 2007). Nevertheless, organizations, since they have access to articles and other contents, can utilize this source to build their network and direct recruit information (Pritchard, 2007).

Job seekers can apply to a job by sending the resume to the company or by bringing it in person. This happens either when the active job seeker finds the job advertise really interesting and, consequently, he decides to apply for that particular position and when the active job seeker wants to share his interest in the company and he wants to be kept in mind for a future job opening (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). However, it is necessary that the company adopts a database where to store all the resumes collected, because it has to be able to have access to it anytime and anywhere, according to the company’s needs.

Employee referral is one of the companies’ favourites method to gather candidates (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, Wright, 2006). A well structured and implemented employee referral program is a crucial element for building a successful recruitment strategy (Pritchard, 2007). The employee referral is based on interpersonal networks: employees themselves have personal interest in the success of the company, so they have interest in helping find the right fit for a job opening. According to the Society of Human Resources Management (Maurer, 2017), employee referrals is the employer’s top source of hires, delivering more than 30% of all hires overall in 2016 and 45% of internal hires. A Linkedin research shows that the employee referrals are the top source of hire in 2017 (Schnidman, Hester, Pluntke, 2016): according to the research, the 48% of new hires are hired through employee referrals. Organizations don’t have any costs, since the employees themselves promulgate to the outside the news of the hiring needs, and they will most likely receive valid applications, since the employees will refer only qualified candidates for that particular role (otherwise, the employees will look bad to the company’s eyes). Moreover, employees know well the reality of their company and the working environment, so they can provide an accurate description of the job the company is hiring for to the potential candidates, in order to avoid applications from non-qualified candidates (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996).

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Some organizations stimulate their employees to refer a professional and skilled candidate by establishing a referral prize (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, Wright, 2006; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996): in fact, if the referred person is hired, the employee who referred will get a prize7_{. According to a research conducted by Jobvite (Jobvite Recruiter Nation Report 2016),}

this method decreases the time of recruiting8_{and it results in more stable work relationships.}

Finally, the candidate knows directly the person who referred him and, consequently, he knows the work environment quite well. For these reasons, the candidate will be more inclined to apply for the job. Employee referrals are a matter of matching who looks for a job and who offers a job (companies) that work really well (De Paola, Scoppa, 2008). Placement services of schools and universities are often used by the companies since these istitutions usually have a large database with the resumes of all the students. An organization can, thus, use this service to find the right candidate. The main advantage of this source is that the company can easly have access to the education programmes of schools and universities and compare them with its expectations and needs in terms of requirements and professional skills (Rebora, 2009). However, on the other hand, organizations will mostly use this source to find entry-level candidates with no experience (or few years of professional experience) (Boldizzoni, 2003; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). Companies can choose between different ways to contact the universities (Rebora, 2009): internships, for instance, are one way to get to know deeply a potential candidate, by letting this person work inside the organization and assessing the real potential.

Another moment of meeting between companies, universities and candidates are the career days, where companies give the possibility to students and/or candidates to introduce themselves and viceversa (Rebora, 2009). The school campus is the ideal location for a career day (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, Wright, 2006). However, career days happen sporadically, once or twice a year, so it is not possible to rely on them to find candidates, even if they are really useful for the organizations since they are good solutions to gather resumes to store in the company’s database.

Public intermediaries are another way of sourcing candidates that the company can use (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009). The public intermediary aimes to facilitate the meeting between labour offer and labour demand, helping to decrease the unemployment

7_{It is, very often, a cash prize.}

8_{According to Jobvite, an applicant hired by referral begins his job faster then applicants hired via}

job boards or career sites: on average, it takes 29 days to hire a referred candidate compared to 39 days to hire a candidate through job boards or 55 days to hire a candidate via career sites.

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(Rebora, 2009; Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, Wright, 2006). Two examples of public intermediaries are the job centers and temp agencies: the firs mentioned are public structures that provide services, for free, to people that look for a job (information, career guidance, pre-selection etc) and to companies that offer a job (consultancy, assistance in administrative tasks etc) (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009); the second mentioned are persons authorized to provide services like the provision of temporary or permanent employment, mediation between labour demand and labour offer, recruitment services, support for transfers of resources (Consiglio, Moschera, 2008 citato in Costa, Gianecchini 2009).

Other sources that companies can activate are the professional and business associations and trade unions. People with a particular profession and skills usually belong to associations that are affiliated with their specialty (Pritchard, 2007; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). These are organizations that put in touch, for free (for those registered), companies and people looking for a job. They also offer services such as screening service, for instance, that helps to decrease costs of recruitment and has a positive impact on the time spent for recruitment (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). This source is very useful to source and recruit high skilled and specialized positions (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996).

Companies can also contact specialized agencies, commissioning them a particular kind of research. Usually, this kind of agencies provide with the entire recruitment process and they are responsible to provide with a short list of candidates among which the company has to choose the final one (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Rebora, 2009). The staffing agency, in order to provide the company with good candidates, should take the necessary time to first understand the organization’s needs, analyse the labor market for qualified candidates and screen them before referring the final profiles (Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). If, on the one hand, this source is effective and time-saving for the company, on the other hand, it is also quite expensive (Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996): for this reason, organizations usually contact this kind of agencies when they are looking for professional and high skilled profiles who are critical for the business, such as executives. The executive search, also called head hunting, follows the same steps of the traditional recruitment process but it focuses more on the identification of a particular target of people, who, in most cases, are already employed in other companies (Prandstraller, Quacquarelli, 2011; Rebora, 2009).

Frequently, for this reason, this category of people is approached directly and confidentially by these agencies of executive search (Rebora, 2009; Berryman-Fink, Fink, 1996). These agencies finally send a short list of candidates to the company with the objective of

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facilitating the choice of the right and final candidate. These agencies do a targeted search that allows them to find those candidates that otherwise would be ignored by the company (due to the lack of time at company’s disposal or the lack of resources to do the search). The last tool, but not the less important, is Internet. Internet has become the most used instrument by any company since it has proven to be really effective and to generate benefits such as the cost-effectiveness, the speed to promote an information and the ease and speed of the research (Rebora 2009; Costa, Gianecchini, 2009). The use of internet in the recruiting process, the instruments as well as the costs and benefits will be analysed in the next chapter. As mentioned before, the internal source and the external source are not mutually exclusive but, on the contrary, are often used in a complementary manner. Both sources have positive and negative aspects (Fig. 1.2) (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003).

We will analyse first the benefits and costs of the internal research and subsequently the benefits and the costs of the external research.

Benefits and costs of internal recruiting

With reference to the internal market, the exclusive use of it, it is not going to work since the company needs new skills, abilities and ideas that are not available inside the organization and that, often, are not even available after training courses. However, the internal search could obtain good results and benefits (Prandstraller, Quacquarelli, 2011; Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003):

- Decrease of the costs related to the selection and the introduction of the new employee, compared to the external labour market. However, these costs are not completely set at zero since the organization has costs anyway due to the evaluation of the candidate, the transfer of him in another role and for the potential training course

- Awareness of the performance and personality of the employee that should avoid unpleasant situations

- Reinforcement of the sense of belonging, since the employee has the opportunity of strengthening the existing relations, and the feeling of integration with the collegues - Improvement of the relations with the trade unions, in particular when they control the

hiring process

- Increase of the return on investment related to the staff development since the employee acquires competences that will be used whithin the organization to obtain a certain performance (this brings value to the company through the employee’s performance).

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In response to these benefits, there are also costs that has to be considered (Rebora, 2009; Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003):

- Risk of obsolescence of the resources present in the company since there is not a turnover in the organization’s staff. It would be necessary to have ongoing training courses, but this solution ends to be expensive and time consuming

- Rigidity in the internal mobility system

- High administrative costs due to the management of the internal mobility system, the career development and the staff training

- Costs related to the activities needed to make a plan of the future hiring needs.

Benefits and costs of external recruiting

The search on the external labor market is more used by companies than the internal search due to the fact that it gives the opportunity to activate more sources to find candidates (Rebora, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003).

Companies gain the following benefits (Prandstraller, Quacquarelli, 2011; Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003):

- Outsourcing of part of the costs of the training used to create the professional skills and competencies required for a position, since, in this case, other companies have the responsibility to train the candidates9_{. In other words, the market has the task of develop}

the professional skills required

- Outsourcing of part of the risk of obsolescence of the resources, since, hiring from outside the company, results in a replacement of the internal resources

- Increase of the competition between employees and external candidates, facilitating, in theory, better performances

- Introduction of new competences and knowledge inside the organization, as well as new ideas and values that help companies to be more flexible.

In response to these benefits, there are also costs to be considered (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003):

- Costs related to the collection and distribution of the information to the outside

- Costs related to recruitment. Those costs are in relation to the segment of the labor market that the company wants to contact

9_{Sometimes, the candidates themselves apply for training courses by using personal funds or public}

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- Costs related to the selection. Those costs increase with the increase of the number of candidates to screen and according to the selection techniques used

- Administrative costs related to inputs and outputs

- Costs related to the introduction and the training courses of the new hires (it is impossible to have zero costs since a new employee always needs to adjust his professional skills to the company requirements)

- Conflicts due to the controls of the trade unions on the inputs and outputs.

The choice, between the instruments at company’s disposal, is usually made starting from an anlysis of the benefits and the costs of both sources (internal and external) (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009; Boldizzoni, 2003). After evaluating the advantages and the disadvantages of the methodologies examined above, the company needs to think about how to achieve the goal of involving those who are valid candidates and discouraging those who are not qualified or too much qualified for that particular position (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009).

There are some elements that a company should evaluate before making any decision (Rebora, 2009; Arthur, 2004):

- Cost: the budget defines if the company is able to activate a source or not (for instance, in case of executive search). Spending a huge amount of money doesn’t necessarily ensure a good number of qualified candidates. Therefore, if the budget is tight, organizations should use, for instance, the corporate website, the employee referrals or any other source that doesn’t have any cost (or low cost).

- Time: some research sources require more time than others. For instance, in case of a very critical position for the business that needs to be filled in a short period of time, some sources will be preferred against others (employee referrals, postings on social media and coporate website, staffing agencies).

- Audience: the organization chooses a source or another based on the target of candidates to reach out to.

- Skills: the level of education required influences the choice of the source to be used in the search (it is the case of positions that require a specific set of skills, knowledge and competencies that most likely only few candidates possess).

- Availability of the different sources: not each source is available anytime

- Past experiences with the different sources: if the organization had positive (or negative) experiences and results with some sources against others, it will move

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towards those that had a positive outcome and exclude those that had negative outcomes.

- Legal obligations: for instance, a deal with trade unions could influence the choice of the source.

Fig. 1.2 The use of internal/external labour market in recruiting (Costa, Gianecchini, 2009:184)

1.2 The evolution of recruiting

The advent of the internet and the removal of the space-time barrier have originated a real web revolution. It is not questioned the revolutionary impact that Internet has had in the job market (Arthur, 2004). In fact, internet and the new technologies have transformed the processes and the social interactions. Consequently, also in the labor market, the introduction of the new technologies has changed the perception of work. The opportunity to access to

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the labor market through the web has been streamlined since, nowadays, it is possible to have access to a larger number of work opportunities and to manage more information in a shorter period of time. Hence, the labor market has changed (Fig.1.3), from a market characterized by rigidity and information asymmetry, to a market characterized by flexibility and plenty of information (Camporesi, Mossenta, 2014). This is due to the creation of communities, that is virtual channels where people cooperate and exchange information without space-time barriers.

Figure 1.3 The change of the labour market (Camporesi, Mossenta, 2014:12)

Internet is a relatively new invention and, before the advent of it, company had to rely on those “old” sources such as personal networks, newspapers, local agencies, radio and so forth. In particular, in the past, companies relied on the proper section of their local newspaper to advertise open requisitions (Pritchard, 2007). Organizations main purpose was to connect to a wider pool of potential candidates (Lewis, Thomas, James, 2015; Singh, 2011).

At the beginning of XXI century, the new technologies allow companies to use Internet beside the traditional tools for recruiting, such as newspapers, local agencies and radio. The emergence of the online job boards and the possibility of applying for a job with a click have represented a real evolution in the search for a job. In the 1990s, the recruitment

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strategies involved mainly the use of the job boards to advertise online open positions (Phillips-Wren, Doran, Merrill, 2016).

The years between 2000 and 2010 mark a historic change in trend (Page, 2017). The economic crises, the decrease of the job opportunities, the lower company’s budget, and the technological progress, have contributed to break into a new phase of recruiting. Starting from the second half of 2000, in fact, due to globalization, the potential of the web opens new spatial and temporal borders. Social and mobile technologies start to grow at exponential rates (Phillips-Wren, Doran, Merrill, 2016). Companies need, therefore, to invent a new way of communicating with the candidates and a new way of recruiting: in fact, job boards were the primary source of candidates until technologies created and improved networking platforms (Phillips-Wren, Doran, Merrill, 2016). In this new era, social networks (such as, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter) become a very used tool in recruiting (Phillips-Wren, Doran, Merrill, 2016). The creation of professional networks becomes easier and easier as well as the search for passive candidates. In contrast to the traditional methods of e-recruiting, social networks produce engagement and companies start to build an online reputation.

Therefore, in the last few years, organizations have adapted to the new technologies and the variety of tools offered by the digital world to carry out the recruiting activities. However, companies have to understand that they are operating in a very fast changing environment and they have to face a new reality where new recruiting tools are created on daily basis. An example is Just Knock, Italian start up, that has changed the focus of recruiting from the professional background to the talent. The breakthrough is in the change of the application process: candidates don’t send anymore their resume to the company, but they offer a project or an idea, making the application process more dynamic, personal and creative.

Another example is Google (Scagliarini, 2015) that gives the opportunity to job seekers to apply by picking up a challenge. This is testified by the true story of Max Rosett: Max was looking for information on Google regarding a project he was working on, when, all of a sudden, the web page becomes completely black. Suddenly, a text saying “You are speaking our language. Up for a challenge?” appears. Then three options “I want to play”, “No thanks” and “Don’t show this message again”. Max accepted the challenge, he complied with the tests in 48 hours and, after few onsite interviews, he was hired by Google. A brilliant and not conventional method used by Google to do recruiting: in this way, the candidate has the

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opportunity to demonstrate his abilities since the beginning. The gamification10_{of the}

recruiting is due to the necessity of attract the future generations and to the constant evolution of the labour market. The competences, that the organizations are looking for, are, nowadays, harder to find on resumes or to identify during an interview. Therefore, it becomes strategic the use of the new technologies for recruiting (White, 2015).

Lou Adler, CEO and founder of the Adler Group, in one of his articles, explains why relying on the resume to assess a candidate is the way to prevent from hiring the best talent available (Talent Management and HR, 2014). He says that “traditional skills-intensive resumes were equally dangerous, since they also filter out some really good people who might be more competent but possess a slightly different mix of skills” (Talent Management and HR, 2014). This means that recruiters have to be able to read between the lines, focusing more on what the candidate accomplished with its skills and experiences.

Silvia Zanella, Global Social Media & Online Marketing Director for Adecco, was interviewed (In-recruiting, 2017) regarding the future of recruiting. She claims that the recruiting world is changing very fast and that it is going in a more difficult and complex direction. “Mentre si fa recruiting è necessario prendere in considerazione una molteplicità di fattori in contemporanea, e questo aumenta enormemente il grado di complessità. In particolare, da un lato sono cambiate le esigenze e le aspettative dei candidati; dall’altra si sono evolute le competenze richieste per fare il recruiter” Silvia Zanella says (In-recruiting, 2017). In particular, the advent of internet has changed the expectations of the candidates that expects now less formal and distant contacts and more direct contact with the companies. “Soprattutto per quanto riguarda la generazione dei Millennial11_{, sono cambiati i valori: la}

nuova generazione si aspetta di gestire in modo differente sia il tempo che gli spazi di lavoro, ma anche i device. Vorrebbero poter lavorare da casa e condividere i propri device personali anche al lavoro. La sfida che attende gli HR manager nei prossimi anni è significativa, perché dovranno gestire in azienda almeno 2 generazioni, con esigenze e aspettative molto diverse”, says Zanella (In-recruiting, 2017).

1.3 Internet and the E-Recruiting

As mentioned at the beginning of this work, Internet plays a fundamental role in the recruiting process. Recruiters, job seekers, companies, the recruiting process itself, changed

10_{Gamification is the introduction of techniques, close to the concepts of the game, in a different}

area/field (Menduini, Nencioni, Pannozzo, 2011).

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a lot with the introduction of the use of internet in the Human Resources environment. Thanks to internet, organizations have at their disposal a large number of new tools to use in the recruiting process. In the 21st_{century, the use of internet itself has become an}

integrated and dynamic tool in today’s business world (Melanthiou, Pavlou, Constantinou, 2015).

E-Recruitment is the use of electronic resources and Internet in the recruiting process, to attract, screen and eventually hire the right candidate (Allden, Harris, 2013). E-recruitment is also defined as “l’insieme di strumenti tecnologici e organizzativi che consentono di fornire un valido support per gestire il processo di reclutamento e selezione (Cappelli, 2001, quoted in Costa, Gianecchini, 2009:180).

Steve Roop, general manager of Glassdoor for Employers, said that “The old methods of recruitment and job search just aren’t working well enough. Potential candidates are researching opportunities through new, interactive channels, and hiring decision-makers are planning to invest more in these channels to attract more qualified candidates” (Fister Gale, 2015). There is an ongoing war for top talent and companies need to use the best tools and strategies to secure the best talents.

Internet has changed significantly the way in which the recruitment process is conducted. Historically, the emphasis in the recruitment was on the correct assessment of the candidates (Lievens, Harris, 2003). Nowadays, attracting candidates and persuading them to apply for a job is as important as assessing candidates. In fact, recruiters can’t be exclusively expert in choosing between candidates, but they have to develop good communication skills and be able to transmit the mission and the values of the company. (Cortese, Cipolletti, 2015). For this reason, the marketing strategy become part of the recruiting process.

Internet has changed the recruitment also with regard to the costs (Lievens, Harris, 2003): it has been shown that internet recruitment is less expensive than traditional recruitment. However, Internet recruitment and traditional recruitment are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, companies have the ability to reach out to a larger pool of potential candidates, since the geographical constraints are no more existents. Also, from the candidate’s perspective, internet makes the process of looking for a job and applying to it easier and quicker. In fact, in the past, job search and candidates sourcing were a time-consuming activity.

Finally, Internet has changed the way in which information are exchanged between candidates and employers, not only regarding the job offers, but also regarding the working environment itself (Lievens, Harris, 2003). The use of internet allows organizations to share

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more information with candidates, in a more dynamic way, regarding the company itself, the working environment, as well as the values and the mission. As a result, candidates have much more information at their disposal even before they decide to apply for a job (Lievens, Harris, 2003). The web reputation becomes a really important aspect of the recruiting process because, not only the company has to choose between candidates, but also the candidates has to choose the organization that better reflects their expectations (it’s a two-way assessment). In fact, the reputation that a company has in the job market activates a sort of autoselection between the potential candidates (Pilati, Tosi, 2002).

However, as already mentioned, this work focuses on the recruiting process, intended as finding the best qualified candidates in the market.

1.3.1 The influence of Internet in the recruiting process

At this point, it is highlighted that internet has changed the way in which organizations think of the recruiting process. Nowadays, it would be unusual to think about a recruiting process developed exclusively with the traditional tools: the cost effectiveness, the worldwide growth and the speed with which information are exchanged, has made internet the main tool to communicate and share information all over the globe.

Although the steps of the recruitment process stay the same, Internet influenced it in five main different ways:

- Attracting Candidates (Kapse, Patil, Patil, 2012; Cappelli, 2001): this is one of the most important moment in the recruiting process. Companies have to be able to attract candidates and in order to do that, they have to be present online since candidates need to collect as much information as possible before applying for a job. Thanks to internet, organizations can choose between a good variety of channels to reach potential candidates. The main channel at companies’ disposal is the website where candidates can find all the information they are looking for regarding the company they might apply to. This implies that the strategy to attract the candidates doesn’t involve only the Human Resources department but also the Marketing department. In this sense, the marketing communication strategy has a key role to play: the understanding of the company and its web reputation affect the choices of the potential candidates. This refers to the concept of employer branding that will be analyzed in the next chapters.12

12_{The concept of employer branding has become really important in order to attract good candidates.}

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- Sourcing candidates: companies can choose what role to play. This means that organizations can decide to have an active role in the sourcing phase or a passive role (Cortese, Cipolletti, 2015). In the first case, companies look actively for potential candidates, not only when there is a need but in a proactive way, so that they can anticipate the recruiting needs. This active way of sourcing candidates, also allows organizations to find and reach out to a larger pool of candidates, in particular those workers that are not even looking for new opportunities. In the second case (passive role), companies only communicate the job opportunity and wait for candidates to apply. - Sorting candidates (Kapse, Patil, Patil, 2012; Cappelli, 2001): it consists in using internet

to sort the applicants and screen the candidates faster. This allows to relieve the screening phase, in contrast to the past where this phase was extremely time-consuming and resource-consuming.

- Managing applicants (Cappelli, 2001): internet has introduced instruments that allow to manage all the resumes in an online database and to track the applicants during the recruiting process. This allows to have not only a clear vision of the health of the recruitment process but also to share the profiles identified with those who have to interview. Moreover, the system allows to gather and analyze data for a more accurate recruitment process assessment (Breaugh, 2009).

- Making contacts (Kapse, Patil, Patil, 2012; Cappelli, 2001): the speed and the ease with which companies can contact the candidates that better reflects the perfect profile, are one of the main aspect of e-recruitment. Nowadays, it is extremely easy to contact the candidates: for instance, with internet it has been indtroduced the e-mail that allows to contact easly and faster than in the past those who have an e-mail address.

As stated before, the steps of the traditional recruitment process are the same of the e-recruitment. The most relevant changes are the mehotodology through which these steps are implemented, facilitating a switch from a one-way and sequential process to a process in which the tasks and activities can be performed concurrently (Holm, 2012). Thanks to that, companies can manage the process according to their needs and according to their timing and resources.

1.3.2 E-Recruiting tools

This paragraph focuses on some of the E-Recruiting tools (Cortese, Cipolletti, 2015; Lievens, Harris, 2003). However, the following list is not meant to be exhaustive and/or comprehensive.

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Company websites

Company websites represents one of the first internet-based tools for e-recruiting (Lievens, Harris, 2003). Corporate websites play a central role in terms of providing information about an organization to candidates, enabling companies to track and measure the success of recruitment communication campaigns and provide a platform through which to assess candidates in the early stages of the recruitment process.

On the website, companies reserve a section (career section) where all the job openings are posted and where potential candidates can apply. Adding a job opportunity section on the corporate website is relatively simple and inexpensive for each organization (Arthur, 2004). An advantage of using the corporate website for recruiting is that the company can adjust the website as it pleases, by being able to distribute a potentially unlimited quantity of information through which attracting candidates. According to Oracle “The goal is to attract potential candidates to your company, build long-term relationships, assess candidate fit for open jobs, and finally capture and process candidate information in a structured way” (Oracle, 2013).

Usually, in this section of the website is either possible to send/upload the resume or fill in a form with all the information that the company needs to subsequently screen the applicants. Filling in a pre-structured form allows companies to gather information easily, by allowing to save time and, afterwards, to store all the candidates’ information in a more effective manner. Hence, it would be preferred to prepare a section on the website where the candidate has only to fill in the gaps with his own personal information. However, a corporate website must give also the possibility to send or upload the resume even if, due to the different fileformats, the organizations risks of being unable to read the document.

The company website also allows to advertise the job openings, in addition to manage the recruitment process. The integration with the IT technologies enables corporations to use the website like a virtual window and handle the gathering and storing of the information through a central system that is accessible from any office of the company, streamlining, therefore, the transmission of information (Arthur, 2004).

The use of the corporate website for recruiting purposes has changed, decreasing the time dedicated to the search of the candidates and increasing the power of communication of the website (in fact a lot of companies have strong strategies to attract candidates).

The company website is the first thing that potential candidates check to find information about an organization: nowadays, first impressions count. “It’s about credibility,” says Chad

The use of Social Media in employee recruitment activities

Università degli studi di Pisa

Dipartimento di Economia e Management

Corso di laurea magistrale in Strategia, Management e Controllo

The use of Social Media in employee recruitment activities

Relatore: Prof.ssa Mariacristina Bonti

Correlatore: Prof. Giulio Greco

Candidato: Giada Zagni

Alla mia famiglia,

Per tutti i Grazie non detti.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

THE EVOLUTION OF RECRUITING