Human Resource Management -- Facebook

Human Resource Management -- Facebook in Recruitment

Since the turn of the 21st century, the online medium has radically changed many aspects of modern business. Today's business organizations must compete in an increasingly global environment for revenue streams as well as for employees. Traditional processes for employee recruitment have had to adapt to the growing popularity of the online social networking phenomena such as Facebook, in particular (Alessie, 2008; Leader-Chivee, Hamilton, & Cowan, 2008). In some respects, this evolution of modern business has contributed obvious benefits to professional organizations.

However, there are also challenges and potential downsides to the increasing reliance of prospective employees on online job searching. In particular, established human resource management theory suggests that employers who are capable of establishing a unified and consistent vocational experience for all of their employees are more successful in recruitment and retention with fewer expenses related to turnover than similarly situated employers who do not provide a consistent vocational experience (Alessie, 2008; Leader-Chivee, Hamilton, & Cowan, 2008). In those respects, the dominance of Facebook in contemporary social culture provides both valuable tools for establishing and maintaining employee satisfaction as well as a potential liability for human resource considerations where the organization fails to do so.

Within the first decade of the introduction of the online medium, Internet social networking has grown exponentially, with approximately 170 million subscribers before the end of 2008 (Leader-Chivee, Hamilton, & Cowan, 2008). By far, Facebook has emerged as the most dominant of those online vehicles. Initially, Facebook was used primarily for social purposes, but it has quickly become the most popular method for individuals to exploit personal and professional connections to conduct job searches and to share their experiences and opinions of their current employers. Contemporary employers are quickly discovering that there are two sides to the coin in so far as Facebook in connection with HRM practices. More specifically, the growing ability of employees to share their opinions about their employers means that employers who fail to provide a uniformly consistent and positive vocational experience will have greater difficulty recruiting and retaining the best-qualified talent (Alessie, 2008). Three-quarters of contemporary business executives polled have expressed concern about their ability to recruit and retain good employees and as many as eighty percent have concerns that may not be able to maintain the enough talented employees to sustain their organizations (Alessie, 2008).