Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.
Abstract
The primary goal of many organizations recruitment process is to attract and retain the best available talent. The implementation of this key strategic issue has been defined by the rise of online recruiting platforms in the internet age. The research purpose is to investigate the impact and use of online platforms in the recruitment process. The motivation for the study aims to establish the effectiveness of the use of online platforms in the recruitment process. The objectives include investigating the online platforms used in the recruitment process and determining the impact of employer advertisement on attracting the best-suited candidates. This studys model is based on three hypotheses: how valuable the online platforms are in the recruitment process, how easy they are to use, and the reasonableness of trusting the online platforms. The research employs a qualitative interviewing and quantitative survey strategy. The researcher used thirty respondents from small, medium, and large enterprises for the online survey. The research results indicate recruiters can use data analysis tools built into online platforms to make more informed decisions, reach many potential employees and increase recruiter trust. The studys implication highlights that recruiters need to apply social media tools such as LinkedIn since it has a significant impact on the recruitment process.
Introduction
Few changes in business and society profoundly impacted how organizations function and create value as digitalization (Loebbecke and Picot, 2015). Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of online platforms has been growing (Popov, 2021). New opportunities are emerging, and various services are being integrated. Online platforms change how recruiters better hire efficiently. Marinakis (n.d) research defines digital transformation as disrupting business by completely changing the way the business operates internally or how they connect with customers. However, digital transformation is adopting technology and data solutions, such as applicant tracking systems, to reduce or eliminate administrative processes and improve operational efficiency in and across departments and hiring teams. Digitalisation affected the recruitment process (Baykal, 2020). According to Statista (Online and social media recruiting, 2022), more people are applying for employment online or via email. The increased number of online applications correlates with the increased proliferation of the internet globally.
The digital age has given rise to several recruitment activities, which companies employ to attract applicants throughout the initial stages of the recruitment process. There are two significant modes of recruitment: printed recruitment advertisements (Collins and Stevens, 2002) and recruitment websites (Allen, Mahto, and Otondo, 2007). Both are highly beneficial in attracting potential employees, but according to (Karácsony et al., 2020) research, more young people choose to hunt for a job online. It is then necessary to study which digital channels can attract employees and how they may be utilized.
The growing ubiquity of social media is prompting H.R. departments to incorporate fully-fledged social media recruiting strategies as part of their organizations overall human capital management practices. Social media recruiting entails using social media platforms to identify, engage, and screen employees. Social media has made a significant impact on how employers build brand awareness, attract talent and ultimately hire. Social media is primarily a platform from which to share your brand. Over time, that brand awareness will lead to candidates who actively seek out your company when theyre ready to make a career change. Utilizing social media networks will affect the recruitment processs effectiveness since networks play a significant role in peoples lives and the recruitment process.
Today, almost all job seekers are active on social media and use it to find a vacancy or company theyre interested in. Employers have realized that many working-age individuals are millennials and generation Z, who spend significant time on social media sites. Recruiters can post about open positions on the companys social media handles. The first part a recruiter uses social media is to get the attention of people who want to work for the organization. This allows recruiters to tap into a much broader network of candidates. This has been an incredible journey for recruiters to get more relevant profiles for their jobs. This is also important because social media reflects the candidates personality.
On the other hand, some applicant tracking systems started providing external add-ins for social media like LinkedIn. To make it easier for recruiters to manage the profiles. The online recruitment process identifies candidates by targeted job ads, social media sourcing, and talent engagement widgets. The candidates profiles are analyzed and calculated to ensure they fit the role and our company culture. The online recruitment process impacts the H.R. department as it streamlines its work.
The main goal of online recruitment is efficiency, as organizations rely on artificial technology to screen keywords before they reach the human recruiter. Online recruitment speeds up the hiring process and saves time by automating numerous manual procedures. The system develops comprehensive candidates profiles based on social media networking and incorporates those that meet the organizations criteria. It streamlines the hiring process and helps organizations manage the recruitment process by bringing all recruiting duties and tools together. These tools include job boards, company websites, video interviewing, and applicant testing tools. All these tools are accessible through a single interface and thus are simple to use. In addition, online recruitment enables organizations to monitor, track and manage candidates progress from a single location. The online recruitment processs impact on the candidate allows continuous engagement, thus limiting the lack of reaction from organizations. Online recruiters build search engine optimized career sites onto the social media sites, thus keeping track of all applicants and prospective candidates who view the job adverts. Online recruitment platforms integrate powerful analytics that optimizes the hiring process.
The platforms collect a massive amount of data, calculate recruiting indicators and generate reports. These reports provide valuable information regarding the components of the recruiting process, such as bottlenecks that need to be tweaked. This data-driven approach avoids bias in recruitment. The online recruiting platforms analyze the underlying recruitment factors automated and unbiasedly. The platforms showcase an unbiased perspective regarding gender, ethnicity, or nationality. LinkedIn uses this system to estimate attrition rates and employee metrics such as former workplaces. Social media recruiting supplements other conventional recruitment methods. The complementary system enables employers to identify passive candidates who fit the organizations culture. The objective of this study is to explore how social media influence the online recruitment process with a focus on LinkedIn.
Literature Review
The study focuses on investigating the use of online platforms in recruiting employees. Digital transformation is a term used to describe bringing new technologies into the realm of human resources. The theoretical framework presented by Mahmood and Ling (2017, p. 179) can be used, which consists of three independent variables (I.V.s) such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and trust towards dependent variables (DV) intention to use. Considering these elements, certain hypotheses may be made concerning the role of online platforms in the recruitment process.
Individuals searching for a job need something to make them feel like it is the right organization. People nowadays think much when choosing the work environment, which, in some cases, can slow down the recruiting process (Kusuma et al., 2020; Team, Bugeja, and Weller, 2018). Thus, managers need to advertise their brands online (Newman et al., 2021). Similar to strategic positioning, creating awareness by reminding who someone is and what they do guarantees reaching new candidates and retaining those already employed. As a result, it is appropriate to utilize the theoretical framework chosen for this study.
Recruitment is among the human resource elements that significantly impact an organization by bringing potential employees into an institution. Barreto and Alturas (2018) described recruitment as an activity conducted by an organization to bring new employees into the company. Recruitment is a necessary measure accompanied by the selection that helps bring in a new balance into finding and sustaining the quality of staff in any given organization. The process used to hire workers varies from one organization to another; nonetheless, the modern occupational environment stresses the relevance of technology in completing workplace responsibilities. According to Mahmood and Ling (2017), workplace stress exposes investors and companies owners to the challenges of picking the right workers. On the other hand, Laroche et al. (2012) challenge the economic world on the essence of e-recruitment. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 shaped the phases and portfolio of organizations.
The challenges of workplace relationships broadened H.R. managers knowledge. E-recruitment benefits both the hired employee and the businesses implementing such frameworks in their day-to-day operations. According to Newman et al. (2021), the recruitment process influences employees commitment to new workspaces. Comparing traditional recruitment methods to the modern digital tools used in individual employment demonstrates the impact of online recruitment. Using online tools and social media platforms to develop staff directly impacts current employees. The intensity of physical hiring interviews creates biases in cases where online platforms are used to interview new employees. The group believes that online interviews make job access easier than traditional hiring processes (Barber, 1998). There is no scientific evidence that online recruitment is more effective than traditional hiring.
Although, there are platforms available to managers and business owners to attract top talent to the candidate pool. As Laroche et al. (2012) point out, the most famous is LinkedIn, which allows companies to connect with potential employees. This type of platform enables internal recruiting teams to attract and source people who convert to applicants (Laroche et al., 2012). They offer a variety of tools to aid with marketing activities, including job distribution, social recruiting, and candidate relationship management (Koch, Gerber, and De Klerk, 2018; Newman et al., 2021). The majority of these are comparable to those that enable inbound promotion within the relevant departments. Businesses utilize them to advertise job positions, cultivate interest and participation, and solicit submissions.
The organizations processes and activities with the primary goal of discovering and attracting potential employees are what recruitment means (Barber, 1998). For organizations to be more selective in the hiring process and assure high-quality recruits, recruitment activities and practices are designed to develop a broad pool of competent candidates (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998). Candidates job choice decisions and the many techniques that can assist in recruiting become more efficient were studied by researchers like (Barber, 1998; Dineen and Soltis, 2011). According to Strohmeier (2020), there has been a significant increase in research on digital HRM and digital transformation, although most past studies have focused on how digital technologies affect HR-related tasks. (Baum and Kabst, 2014; Nikolaou, 2014) examines how well company websites and social networking sites attract job applicants. However, (Baum and Kabst, 2014) research states that the influence of recruiting activities on applicant attraction influences employer knowledge by combining high (website) and low (printed) information activities. In addition, the use of high-information recruitment procedures has greater favorable benefits on the employers understanding of possible applicants than utilizing low-information recruitment practices, according to Baum and Kabst (2014). As a result, it is critical to evaluate the importance of online platforms and their ease of use in the organizations staff recruitment process (Gilch and Sieweke, 2020). This evaluation is key in leveraging the employment market as it shifts online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the sudden economic slowdown has led to a global recession that changed business approaches and the labor market. At such a time, companies have had to adopt an agile workflow approach to sustain their operations (Dupré, Chatry, Kornprobst, and Michalun, 2020). As the lockdown became mandatory in most countries (Dupré, Chatry, Kornprobst, and Michalun, 2020), multiple organizations had to transition to a remote working environment. The worst issue in this situation is that majority of them were not prepared. This increased the desire for digital transformation. The phenomenon named digital transformation represents the integration of technology into human resource work (Marinaki, n.d.) states that it is acquiring data solutions and technology to reduce or simplify administrator tasks while improving the efficiency of operations across multiple departments of an organization. In the process of recruiting, it is a way of reducing the workload. Managing numerous job submissions becomes easier in employee recruitment (Spychaa et al., 2019, p.282). Additionally, it can be argued that it is the primary reason for some firms low staff turnover rates (Barreto and Alturas, 2018). Before the use of technical assistance to recruit individuals to work for a particular company, the process was tedious (Van Esch and Mente, 2018, p.270). Handling many people simultaneously strained recruiters, which often led to the selection of the wrong candidates.
Recruiting new employees online allows a business to utilize internet-based solutions, such as job listings, advertising, social media, and company websites, to source and employ the top candidates. Using the internet to search for new employees (Nichols, 2019) has made it easier to get candidates and do interviews and the necessary paperwork to hire and train them. It provides an organization with an inexpensive and efficient way (Okolie and Irabor, 2022) to fill positions. Some benefits offered by this approach include helping a brand gain a competitive edge, a better applicant pool, and fewer resources being consumed. Additionally, (Okolie and Irabor, 2022) argued that automation could be utilized to interact with a great number of applicants at the same time. Nevertheless, for 2021, it is forecasted that approximately two hundred million full-time employees are no longer in employment (Newman et al., 2021, p.1381). Recruiters, thus, must prepare to receive a large number of applications. With the assistance of the proper technology, they can easily sift through the submissions and shortlist the most qualified candidates. It also allows one to sustain high hiring standards regardless of the number of applications.
Many technologies exist that can aid in managing many individuals, such as interview scheduling and pre-employment testing. As a result, the more digitized the companys recruitment process is, the easier it can be utilized. An effective tool helps people achieve a certain goal with less effort, and so far, the online platforms have proven successful (Okolie and Irabor, 2022). Carrying out recruitment digitally ensures that one can easily handle numerous applications (Saad et al., 2021, p.3). By the start of 2016, the number of people per opening was fifty-nine on average, reducing further to thirty, three years later. This was due to a growing economy and a drop in the rate of unemployment (Brandão et al., 2019, p.274). (Wessel et al., 2021) contends that simply digitizing the firms products, services, and procedures is insufficient; rather, the organization itself needs to adapt and embrace a digital identity and culture to achieve the goal of attracting and retaining employees.
Another factor that makes online recruiting effective is that analytics are easier to find. Recruitment technology offers one exclusive access to real-time and updated information overview (Nichols, 2019). It allows an individual to locate any areas of growth that aid in executing the best strategy (Newman et al., 2021, p.1382). Moreover, it will also offer instant updates as well as data on issues happening with the employees that guarantee adjustment according to requirements (Brandão et al., 2019, p.276). It has simple and easily comprehended dashboards that permit one to view critical metrics and reach quicker conclusions.
This, in turn, allows one to make necessary changes in the recruiting tactics faster. With the assistance of the information from the technologies, for example, assessment scores, it is possible to automate interview schedules. According to Mahmood and Ling (2017, p. 479), one of the elements influencing Jobseekers intention to use online recruitment websites for job-seeking reasons is trust, which refers to online users overall perception of the trustworthiness of online service providers (Amin et al. 2014). They also concluded in their theory about Factors Influencing Job Seekers Intention to use online recruitment websites; such online recruitment websites will increase individual motivation to apply for jobs online because they trust the website and secure their information. This should then be beneficial and valuable to a recruiter, allowing for more convenient management of applicants information. But the need to analyze whether trusting internet platforms with our information is necessary as the more a corporation digitizes its recruitment process, the more concern for trust.
Although online recruitment of workers has several disadvantages, it benefits organizations as a method of hiring employees. To begin, developing online hiring tools is an expensive and time-consuming process. In comparison to the traditional hiring process, using social media to create jobs for youth exposes organizations to additional costs that could be used to boost productivity or employee welfare. Online recruitment requires a subscription fee. Facebook, for example, makes money through gigs; as a result, advertising job openings online puts organizations in the difficult position of needing additional funding. Additionally, the requirement for Twitter and Instagram membership complicates the hiring process. Additionally, Marinaki (n.d.) suggests that determining the effectiveness of online employee hiring can be challenging. Consensus on the best platform to use makes the framework difficult, if not impossible, for multinational corporations. While employment is a formal issue in business and management, the application of the online recruitment process gives the tool an informal feel. A business that utilizes the online job posting technique may present an inaccurate picture of the affected organizations (Gilch and Sieweke, 2020). As a result, e-recruitment removes the incentive for competitive workers to apply.
In this study, three hypotheses will be tested to see if they use of online platforms in this post-pandemic era will have a significant impact on the recruitment process:
-
H1: Online platforms are valuable in the recruitment process
-
H2: Online platforms are easy to use
-
H3: Trusting online platforms will be completely reasonable.
Methodology
Research Philosophy
Attracting and retaining talent is still a major issue in many organizations talent management strategies. According to Islam et al. (2019), traditional recruitment methods do not work well in attracting new employees to any available job vacancy. The main reason for this is that job application methodologies only focus on a limited number of action potentials, failing to provide organizations with appropriate access to critical individuals. Such methods only produce less talented individuals and passive employees who cannot propel the company forward (Vedapradha et al., 2019). Modern tools have been developed in the form of social media to assist in recruiting new employees suitable for any job.
Growing globalization and modern technology have resulted in significant changes in the labor market. With the rapid advancement of modern technology, online recruitment is now a viable option. According to Stamolampros et al. (2019), online recruitment is a current procedure that uses the internet and tools to allow for vacancy applications, online reception, triage, and response. Online recruitment takes place over the internet via advanced communication structures or email. The procedure is designed to attract the attention of people who meet the qualifications for the job opening.
Online recruitment also entails maintaining an up-to-date and efficient database that aids human resource professionals in searching for specific requirements in a candidates profile. The procedure entails posting job openings on the internet, having an online form for candidates to fill out, and having an electronic database to store the information received (Chase-Lansdale et al., 2019). According to Intindola et al. (2019), the process takes place on a variety of platforms, with organizations using their official website to notify candidates of open positions. Organizational websites serve as the primary means of communication between job seekers and the organization. However, there are several websites dedicated to job applications and opportunities. Individuals can use such websites to find the job they want.
Job websites specialize in the supply and demand for jobs, connecting candidates and employers to their ideal positions. Candidates responses to available data during job hunting are influenced by their apparent competence and ease of use, according to Collier (2019). Furthermore, when the job application is narrowed down to equal chances, a candidates consideration functions as their perception of fairness in the job application, most common when the recruitment process consists of the selection phase (Islam et al. 2019). The selection stage of recruitment entails using the organizations image and portraits of oneself in both the internet advertisement and the job itself. The desire of an organization to have a successful candidate can be easily attained using this concept.
Research method
Research Approach
Descriptive analysis was used to gain insight into the potential impact of social media on the recruitment process. A semi-structured interview with human resource personnel responsible for recruitment elicited information about the use of social media for recruitment. The interviews primary objective was to gain insight into the recruiters sourcing strategies and how they discovered them. Semi-structured interviews were beneficial in this study because they allowed for detailed descriptions of the subject (Bloomberg and Volpe 2012). When an interviewer provides a positioned activity that immerses the witness in their world and engages them in an explanatory approach, the interviewer can elicit more detailed information. In-depth data is defined in this analysis as an understanding of a specific activity held by actual individuals, and a scientific investigation is conducted using a deductive research approach and a mixed-method approach.
Research Strategy and Sample
The research employs a qualitative interviewing and quantitative survey strategy. The researcher used thirty respondents from small, medium, and large enterprises for the online survey; these organizations group influences how and/or what they do with online platforms. Taking into account the respondents work experience. Recruiters with more than three years of experience were placed in the first category. Respondents with less than three years of work experience were placed in the second category. All of the respondents were from the Philippines, and they were recruited through the respondents network, previous H.R. contacts, and former colleagues. The research strategy aimed to include all recruiters with experience in the field and those who participated in the background when social media was not yet in use in the olden days. One respondent from the United Kingdom was included in the second category. The respondent has more than three years of work experience. Furthermore, the respondent could provide brief responses to research questions. The interviewee was recruited by contacting the researchers supervisor and the universitys human resources department. According to the strategy, this second group had individuals who began recruiting others after social media had developed. Everyone in the group was between the ages of 18 and 57. However, the majority of the respondents were over the age of twenty-six. The majority of participants were female, and participants were recruited according to their job experience and age category.
Measuring Instrument
A 45-question uniform questionnaire was given to all of the respondents. There were both open-ended and closed-ended questions on the survey. Respondents were given five options for the questions: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, and (5)
strongly agree. The open-ended questions were aimed at obtaining opinions from participants on topics. The questionnaires were made available to respondents via a link sent to them personally. Multiple responses were not allowed to avoid data bias and inaccurate information from uninvited guests. The recruitment strategy, schedule, and social media influence were all used to select candidates. The forty-five questions required respondents to respond pertinent to the studys theme. The questionnaire included both traditional and current questions about using social media to recruit better employees and specific questions about social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, all of which provide useful information on how to use recruitment to gain knowledge. Twitter and LinkedIn, according to Meijerink et al. (2019) and Melián-González (2019), are critical social media strategies for any candidate recruitment. The questions were constructed using the recruiters preferred languages and jargon. The research questions were based on four main constructs: perceived usefulness of online platforms, perceived ease of use, perceived trust, and recruiters intention to use the platforms. As discussed in the data analysis chapter, each of the four constructs had a set of three main questions that assisted the researcher in coding the responses in SPSS software.
Data collection
Secondary and primary resources constituted the greater part of the collected data in the papers scenario. Researchers like (HOSAIN and LIU, 2020) have devoted a lot of time and effort to determine the effects of social media on employee recruitment. To ensure a smooth flow of the initial proposal, participants observed all first-hand accounts of actual events. Participants were also able to isolate the effects of e-recruitment among employees using artistic work, eyewitness testimony, and original literary sources. The in-depth reviews of social networking tools and software make it easier to research employee recruitment via social media. The studys findings are based on the data collection methods used; as a result, Narang et al. (2020) and Chabbra et al. (2020) commended the use of social media scraping analysis in this research segment. The unit structural textual data incorporated in the experiment, according to Frampton et al. (2020), requires a clear definition before settling for the existing data tools. News analytics, natural language processing, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, text analysis, and scraping are all terms that learners should be familiar with.
Participants must use text analytics concepts to gather data and information to mine accurate data for the study. Artero et al. (2020) shows that facts and propaganda influence data retrieval from online platforms. Participants were divided into groups based on their ages and years of experience in the study. Because the studys participants were mostly women, there was a risk of data bias. The researcher can obtain lexical analysis and word study frequency using text analytics techniques. The mastery and recording of pattern recognition by H.R. professionals were aided by the use of text analytics data collection design. Kang et al. (2020) contribute to the research framework by establishing links between employment and data usage online. The text analytics method of data collection was also used to create re-employment and predictive analytics visualizations.
Opinion Mining
Opinions are a type of qualitative data needed in modern scientific research. In this case, the participants were divided into small groups to gather data within the organization. Opinion mining was effective in extracting cordial relationships between organizations and their bosses, according to Van Esch and Black (2019). Participants were exposed to more data searching as a result of their direct observations made during the time. Implementing the opinion mining method of data collection accelerated the automatic linking of opinions to facts.
During the research, software such as Microsoft Excel and IBMs SPSS played an important role in isolating and storing data and information. The researcher could link information received online and physically to the common good of the researchs goal using a computer science-related data mining method. The use of natural information in conjunction with computer-assisted language aided in the comprehension of data mining techniques in contemporary research. Computers were used to extract information from the internet, and the resulting data helped those involved in the study link news analytics and scraping.
Methodological Issues and Ethical considerations
The researchers had to consider research ethics in the publication of the results for the project to run smoothly. Golovko and Schumann (2019), standardized scientific research includes moral and ethical considerations that support specific hypotheses. Various methodological priorities were set in this case to ensure the experiments success. First, adequate fieldwork preparations allowed for a greater concentration of methodological considerations. The researcher had a set of work hours that allowed for efficient data collection. The researcher set aside time for data collection and ensured that every participant responded to the question because the study used online questionnaires. The researcher also conducted an online interview with one of the respondents in the United Kingdom. Van Esch et al. (2019), methodological preparedness exposes teams to anticipated challenges early enough. As a result, the project manager approved the fieldwork readiness recommendation.
Appropriateness and a data sampling
Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.