Review of Literature
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 to 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 company 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 coming of the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 shaped the phases and portfolio of organizations.
The challenges of workplace relationships expand the knowledge of HR managers. E-recruitment benefits the hired worker and the companies implementing such frameworks in the running of day-to-day activities. Newman et al. (2021) commend that the recruitment process determines employees’ commitment to new workspaces. Comparing the traditional forms of recruitment to the modern digital tools used in the employment of individuals showcases the impacts of online recruitment. Deploying online tools and social media platforms in developing staff directly affects existing workers. The intensity of interviews offered through the physical hiring process creates biases in cases where online platforms replace the interview of new staff. Old members feel left out; the group believes that online interviews make job access easier than traditional processes of hiring workers (Barber, 1998). There is no scientific evidence on the efficacy of online recruitment being better than the traditional hiring process.
Although several disadvantages characterize online recruitment of workers benefits organizations, the model of hiring employees remains popular. First, developing online hiring tools is expensive and complicated. Unlike the traditional hiring process, social media in creating jobs for youth exposes organizations to additional costs that could otherwise be used to increase the productivity of the welfare of workers. Subscription fees are required for online recruitment; Facebook, for example, earns money through gigs; as such, advertising a job vacancy online puts organizations in challenging positions of using extra funding. In addition, membership fees needed on Twitter and Instagram complicates the hiring process. Furthermore, Marinaki (n.d) suggests that measuring the effectiveness of online hiring of employees can be difficult. Coming to a consensus on the best platform to use makes the framework challenging and almost impossible for global companies. Employment is a formal issue in business and management; however, the online recruitment process application makes the tool an informal approach. A company using the online job posting technique can post the wrong organizational portfolios (Gilch and Sieweke, 2020). Therefore, the e-recruitment of workers distances competitive workers from making applications.
Research Philosophy
Enticing and recollecting talent remains one of the significant issues in the talent management of many institutions. According to Islam et al. (2019), traditional recruitment methods do not function appropriately when attracting new employees to any available job vacancy. The principal explanation for this is that the methodologies used in job applications only concentrate on a constrained number of action potentials, failing to provide organizations with appropriate access to essential individuals. Such methods only result in less talented individuals and passive employees who fail to push the company to the next level (Vedapradha et al., 2019). Modern tools have been formulated in the social media form to help come up with new employees appropriate for any job.
Growing globalization and modern technologies have led to considerable transformations in the employment market. Through this transforming context, modern technologies have a quick advancement where online recruitment comes from. According to Stamolampros et al. (2019), online recruitment is a current procedure based on the internet’s usage and tools that permit vacancy applications, online reception, triage, and response. Online recruitment occurs through the Internet using either an advanced communication structure or an email. The procedure aims at attaining the attention of individuals who have the adequate profile required for the job vacancy.
Online recruitment is associated with sustaining an updated and effective database that assists human resource professionals in looking for specific requirements in a candidateâs profile. The procedure includes publishing employment vacancies online, possessing an online form available for candidates to fill in, and an electronic database to help store the received information (Chase-Lansdale et al., 2019). According to Intindola et al. (2019), the process occurs through various platforms whereby organizations can use their formal website to alert candidates on available vacancies. Organizational websites operate as the central communication channel in-between job candidates and the organization itself. However, several websites exist for purposes of job applications and opportunities. An individual can use such sites to seek their desired employment.
The job websites specialize in the supply and demand for jobs, linking candidates and organizations to their desired opportunities. According to Collier (2019), candidates’ responses to the available data during job hunting are affected by their apparent competence and simplicity of utilization. Furthermore, a candidateâs consideration operates as their perception of fairness in the job application when it narrows down to equal chances, predominantly when the recruitment process consists of the selection phase (Islam et al., 2019). Recruitment consists of the selection stage, where one has to organizationâs image and portraits of themselves both in the internet advertisement and the job itself. Through this notion, an organizationâs desire to have a successful candidate can be easily attained.
Overall, since this research is conducted as a scientific investigation, it aims to achieve observable and quantifiable results, which is why the philosophy of positivism is the most appropriate to follow for the purposes of this study. Various web platforms are created to assist people in job hunting (from the potential employeeâs perspective) and seeking candidates (from the employerâs perspective). Analysis of the impact of those platforms on recruitment processes can only be conducted based on trustworthy knowledge using factual data collection, which is why this study follows positivism as the research philosophy.
Research Methodology
Research Approach
Based on the scarcity of research in the recruitment field, descriptive analysis was steered to attain insights into the probable influence of social media during recruitment. Information on the utilization of social media for recruitment purposes occurred through a semi-structured interview with the human resource officials in charge of recruitment. The interviewsâ main goal focused on exploring the recruitersâ sourcing methodologies and the means used to acquire insights into their methodologies. Semi-structured interviews worked well in this research because they could provoke detailed descriptions of the subject (Bloomberg and Volpe 2012). Semi-structured interviews allow an interviewer to collect detailed information as they offer a positioned activity that traces the witness in the participantâs world, involving them in an explanatory approach. In this analysis, in-depth data classifies as a comprehension held by real-life individuals in a specific activity, and a deductive research approach and mixed-method are implemented to conduct a scientific investigation.
Research Strategy and Sample
The study follows the strategy of qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. Semi-structured interviews happened with twelve recruiters from five various recruitment agencies. The strategy aimed to involve all the recruiters with expertise in the field and those who took part in the background when social media had not come into place yet in ancient times. The second category consisted of six recruiters who had less than three years of experience. The strategy signified that this second group had individuals who started recruiting others when social media had evolved. All group members were aged between 20 to 30 years old and worked on behalf of recruiters from different agencies. The participants were also chosen to stand for the various concentration areas and industries to permit any financial and social services variations.
Measuring Instrument
All participants took part in interviews, which had thirteen questions. That applied the recruitment strategy, schedule, and social media influence in choosing candidates. The thirteen compulsory questions evolved from the abstracting structures of relevance to the research and the trends associated with the procedural recruitment practices from any other area in the world. The questionnaire had both the traditional and current questions on utilizing social media to attain better employees according to various specified questions relating to social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, which offer essential information on the use of recruitment to acquire knowledge. According to Meijerink et al. (2019) and MeliĂĄn-GonzĂĄlez (2019), Twitter and Linkedin operate as the crucial social media strategies for any candidate recruitment. The asked questions were based on the recruiter’s appropriate languages and jargon that they commonly applied. Some of the questions included:
- Could you construct a diagram of how you used to hire your candidates?
- What tools do you use for hiring new candidates?
- Which is the most appropriate social media platform in your recruitment process?
- Why do you prefer the mentioned social media platform?
- How successful is your online recruitment procedure?
Data Collection
Social science researchers have put a lot of resources into determining the impacts of social media on employee recruitment. In the paper’s scenario, secondary and primary resources formulated the more significant part of the collected data. All the first-hand accounts of actual events were observed in by participants to ensure a smooth flow of the initial proposal. Artistic work, eyewitnesses, and original literary sources also helped participants isolate the effects of e-recruitment among employees. The comprehensive reviews of social networking tools and software simplify the research on the online recruitment of employees via social media. The studyâs findings lean on the methods of data collection; as such, Narang et al. (2020) and Chabbra et al. (2020) commended the adoption of social media scraping analysis in this research segment. According to Frampton et al. (2020), the unit structural textual data incorporated in the experiment requires a clear definition before settling for the existing data tools. News analytics, natural language processing, mining of people’s opinions, sentiment analysis, analysis of texts, and scraping are vital terms that learners must familiarize themselves with.
Mining accurate data for the study requires participants to implement the concepts of text analytics in gathering data and information. Artero et al. (2020) illustrate that the retrieval of data from online platforms depends not only on facts but also on propaganda. In the study, participants were divided into individual sampling units to enhance the team’s retrieval of accurate data. The sampling of texts from online platforms facilitated the study participants to be divided into two groups. The first category included HRs interns between the age group of 20-25-year-olds, while the second group targeted HR interns between the ages of 28 and 40. The control experiment population was targeted HR professionals between the ages of 20 and 25. Text analytics techniques facilitate the research team to obtain lexical analysis and word study frequency. Text analytics data collection design helped in the mastery and recording of pattern recognition of the HR professionals and the workers employed on internship bases. Kang et al. (2020) support the research framework in connecting the relationships between employment and online usage of data. Visualization of e-employment and predictive analytics was also derived through the text analytics form of data collection.
Opinion Mining
Opinions are part of qualitative data needed in contemporary scientific research. In this case, the participants divided each other into small groups to mine information from workers, investors, companies, and well-wishers in the labor department. Extracting sentiments from employees who got their jobs through online applications related well to the responsible team of the study. According to Van Esch and Black (2019), opinion mining was effective in extracting cordial relationships between organizations and their bosses. The direct observations made during the time exposed participants to more data searches. The automatic system of linking opinions from facts was escalated by implementing the opinion mining method of data collection.
Natural Language Processing played a significant role in isolating and storing data and information during the research. The computer-science-related data mining method helped the team to link information received online and physically to the common good of the research’s objective. The adoption of natural information alongside the computer-aided language assisted in the understanding of data mining techniques in modern research. Computers were used to extract information from the internet; the achieved data further guided the individuals associated with the research to link news analytics and scraping.
Methodological Issues and Ethical Considerations
For the successful running of the project, the researchers needed to consider research ethics in the publication of the results. Golovko and Schumann (2019) suggest that standardized scientific research incorporates moral and ethical considerations supporting particular hypotheses. In this case, various methodological priorities were set to foresee the experiment’s success. First, the adequate preparations for the fieldwork marshaled the larger concentration of methodological considerations. The people involved in data collection were adequately prepared for the project two weeks before the actual visit to the spotted areas. A survey was conducted on the seven companies associated with the research. In addition, all the participants in the research were prepared for their roles before the onset of data mining and interactions with each other. A grace period was issued to the researchers to allow the individuals to familiarize themselves with each other. The teams formed during the research were developed a week before the actual field trip. Van Esch et al. (2019) argue that methodological preparedness exposes teams to the expected challenges earlier enough. As such, the project manager certified the recommendation on fieldwork preparedness.
Appropriateness and data sampling approach was also part of the methodological preparation made during the research. The sampling units incorporated in the research were designed correctly and at the right time. The adequacy of the team contributed to the lack of panic in the last minutes of departures to organize research samples on time. Data collection smoothly occurred based on the abilities of participants to acknowledge the significance of methodological rights and preparedness in research. Moreover, the practical organization of teams with skilled and experienced personnel in data collection facilitated positive data and information achievability.
Even though many challenges characterized the research, the organizers of the experiment took proper care of the ethical demands in research: the research practice and design guided participants in achieving the studyâs goals and objectives. Briscariu (2019) highlights that the experiment obeyed the ethical policies of scientific research by honoring the voluntary participation of people in the study. Secondly, the sampling units incorporated in the study participated in the experiment with their informed consent. Nobody was forced to take a particular role in data collection. The population was only educated on the various roles of computers in data mining and interactions with people. The listening and communication skills impacted participants and facilitated the teams to work towards the common goal of achieving the research aims. Result communication, confidentiality, and potential harm are other components of ethics considered in work.
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