Social Media: The Future of Recruitment?

The future of hiring and firing is digital, but how big of an impact will social media have on the recruitment process?

If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that the digital world is essential to continue our day-to-day work. Remote work isn’t just the way of the future any longer. Remote work is here and now. Cloud computing is allowing us to hire staff from all the way across the world. We can recruit from wider talent pools than we have ever had access to before. On the back of all this, social media has become a real place for Gen Z to find work.

How Gen Z use the Internet to find jobs?

While millennials tend to browse online for work, Gen Z have gone an extra step beyond this. They can find work through social media platforms instead of browsing through job sites. This is best exemplified in the rise and success of social media professional app, LinkedIn. The modern job hunters upload their CV to LinkedIn and wait for work to come to them. This has revolutionized the entire recruitment process.

Aside from finding work through social media platforms, Gen Z have forced job sites to emulate this. Platforms which previously advertised jobs to the consumer now use consumer CVs to advertise members of staff to businesses. If we look at the Hays Technology Jobs site, we see a notable example of this. You can both advertise for a position and browse through applicants while you are on this site.

In short, the Millennial generation and the Gen Z generation have created a two-way stream of job hunting, whereas the process was previously all one way.

The future of job hunting

Given how much job hunting has changed in the last two decades, we can only speculate as to what will come next. Using social media as a platform for your professional career is not such a bad idea. If you were to consistently record your achievements onto such a platform, you could theoretically create a CV which updates as you do.

Perhaps that social media account could feasibly be used as your CV of the future, like a digital record of everything that you’ve ever worked on. Two decades from now, we won’t be sitting here talking about CVs because the curriculum vitae will no longer be in use. The possibilities are endless.

On an employer’s end, what we’re seeing more and more of is algorithm-based position fulfilment. This is where a computer will browse through lists of potential applicants to match an exact skill set which you have outlined. Any candidates that do not match this outline skill set will be immediately dismissed. You would then be left with a selection of applicants which more closely represented what you wanted.

Algorithms have even reportedly fired employees already. Criteria can be set up like a KPI to ensure that employees are giving their best. If employees fall below the outlined KPIs then they may be dismissed or in need of disciplinary action or further training.

One thing’s for certain, and that’s that AI and business automation are going to be heavily involved in the future of recruitment – whether or not social media is too. In the meantime, let’s not put our CVS in the bin just yet.