Social media recruiting and online personal reputation evaluation by recruiters in Israel
Description
Online Reputation (OR) is the public evaluation of an individual, based on his behavior and the information published online by himself or shared by others. The elements of a person's online reputation may include pictures and movies, online résumé and posts or comments in blogs. Online Reputation is an important element when recruiters gather relevant and credible personal information in order to evaluate and screen candidates. Evaluation and screening with Online Reputation is widely used by recruiters in USA and Europe (Haefner, 2009; Cross-Tab, 2010; Madden & Smith, 2010). However, such a study was never performed in Israel. This research examines the attitudes of recruiters and HR professionals concerning online reputation information in their candidate evaluation processes by asking the following questions: Do Israeli recruiters use online reputation in the recruitment process? To what extent online reputation components are perceived as relevant, credible and affecting the decision to screen candidates? What are the goals and online resources used by recruiters in Online Reputation search? Are recruiters willing to pay for such and information? Do organizations use Online Reputation in their formal procedure of recruitment? An innovative approach was required to recruit randomly selected Israeli recruiters thru connections within the LinkedIn Network. This method resulted in a 31.3% (N=104) participation rate (valid answers only). The participants (age: 25 to 58, 87 women) filled an online questionnaire, mainly about the impact of online reputation on candidate screening, the relevance and the credibility of online reputation information, free and paid sources used in their tasks and their goals in social media recruiting. Highlights of the study’s findings show that 85% of the Israeli recruiters use Online Reputation Search in the recruitment process. Means of relevancy and credibility of professional values and norms (like writing about a previous employer or being a member of professional community) were high (M=3.9, SD-0.9) on a Lickert scale of 1-5, compared to pictures and hobbies which were unexpectedly low (M=2.6, SD=1.0). While a positive correlation was found between credibility and relevancy (r=0.32, p < .001, n=97), no significant correlation was found between these variables and the impact on the decision to screen candidates. Other findings show that recruiters use principally free resources like Google (79%) and LinkedIn (96%) for online reputation search and are only 9% are willing to pay for information about candidates (N=8). This study also indicates that only a small number of Israeli companies have made online reputation screening a formal requirement of their hiring process (13%).
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MEANS TABLES=IMPACT_SQ001 IMPACT_SQ002 IMPACT_SQ003 IMPACT_SQ004 IMPACT_SQ005 IMPACT_SQ006 IMPACT_SQ007 BY GENDER AGE_GROUPS JOB_TITLE VETEK_GROUPS NUMBER_OF_EMPLOYEES_GROUPS NUMBER_OF_RECRUITS_GROUPS /CELLS MEAN COUNT STDDEV /STATISTICS ANOVA LINEARITY.