Using Social Media to Assist with Recruiting and Hiring.
Consider the following scenario:
You are the director of HR at New York City’s FirstBank and have been overseeing the process of recruiting candidates for a vice president position. Through an extensive process, 250 applicants have been whittled down to three finalists. The vice president will be in charge of making final decisions on commercial loan approvals among other duties, so he/she will have a public-facing job, meeting with business owners, CEOs, and CFOs on a regular, daily basis. Each finalist has gone through significant background checks, and all are extremely well-qualified for the job. You are well aware that your bank is trying to become more diverse, and while it has succeeded in achieving diversity in the lower levels of employees, the vice presidents, board, and president of the bank are all white males. After multiple call-back interviews, the president and board of directors have asked you for your recommendation as to which finalist to hire. While thinking through your decision, you decide to see if any of the candidates have open Facebook or Twitter accounts. Though this effort didn’t provide you with a lot of information, you did copy and paste what you found into a document to reflect on as you decide on your recommendation.
Note: In the resources area for this week, you will find a file (Fictional Facebook/Twitter Employee Information File) that shows the results of your social media investigation to use for this Discussion.
Assignment
- Analyze the impact of reviewing the candidates’ Facebook and Twitter pages. Explain whether/how their postings affected your judgment about who should or should not be hired.
- Analyze your concerns, including potential risks, as an HR recruiter in learning about the content of applicant’s social media public-facing content.
- Consider a situation where one of the candidates who you did not pick files a discrimination charge and through the legal discovery process, your investigative file is found. Name one potential claim of discrimination that an unpicked candidate could file and why he or she may have a legitimate case against the bank.
- Conclude by stating whether you feel that HR can legally utilize personal and/or professional social media pages of potential employees. Defend your answer. Then, state whether you think HR should ethically utilize public-facing social media content, especially for high level employees in an organization. Defend your answer.
Assignment must have at least three references
