Social media recruitment: a study based on the perceptions of HR professionals in online blogs from 2011-2015

No Thumbnail Available

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Business | Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi

Authors

Date

2016

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Management and International Business (MIB)

Language

en

Pages

92

Series

Abstract

Nowadays, recruitment is the main HR activity that has been impacted by the rise of social media. Social media came as a transparent platform between the recruiter and candidates. The main ob-jective of this study is to examine social media recruitment based on the perceptions of HR profes-sionals in global online HR communities, and more specifically, how it has evolved over the past several years as technology and legislation have been evolving and changing. The study identifies aspects of this process; for example, the development trends and major elements of the social me-dia recruitment framework. In addition, through the literature and empirical study, this study aims to contribute to a definition of the phenomenon- social media recruitment - and a concept map that illustrates the key elements of the social media recruitment framework. This thesis has applied a mix-methodology research design in which, first of all, the data is from well-established US and Europe online communities. In total, 1337 blogs were collected from three major online HR blogs. The collection of blog posts was based on a keyword search in the predefined recruitment focused blog category, and the key word was ‘social media’. Data analysis used a mix-methodology that employed quantitative re-search utilizing Leximancer software, and qualitative research by conducting blog content analysis, providing a thorough understanding of the data. Apart from reaching a consensus on the various dynamics of the phenomena highlighted, summa-rized and presented in this study, the discussion and relevant arguments based on the empirical findings are substantial. As a longitudinal study, one can observe a fundamental shift where tradi-tional recruitment strategies have given way to evolving recruitment trends and social media re-cruitment is definitely a step forward. Social media changes applicant relationship management considerably. This study has endeavored to generate and offer a comprehensive and up-to-date un-derstanding of social media recruitment, even though this study has clear limitations. For instance, the sample/data is still very limited though the findings of this study offer some insightful perspec-tives for further research.

Description

Thesis advisor

Beletskiy, Anton
Mäkelä, Kristiina

Keywords

recruitment, social media, social media recruitment, human resources management

Other note

Citation