Appropriateness of Social Media in Applicant Selection: A Study

In a study conducted by Van Iddeklinge et al. (2013) a total of 416 undergraduate and graduate students at a large university in southern United States who were near graduation and were looking for jobs, or were preparing to look for jobs participated in a study to further examine the potential implications of using social media information for selection. The participants were 62% female and an average age of 23. In terms of ethnicity, the sample was 78.1 % white, 10.8% Hispanic, and 7.0% African American. The few reaming applicants were Asian, Native American, or multiracial.

An initial collection of participant Facebook information was conducted.

Following the collection of information, the researchers contacted recruiters who were scheduled to attend one of the university's career fairs or to conduct interviews at the campus career center. 86 recruiters agreed to participate in the study. Participants were HR staffing specialists (n=40), hiring managers (n=29), or employees in jobs who were assigned to do recruiting (n=17). These participants possessed an average of 6.40 years of experience recruiting and selecting employees (SD=5.

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460). This set of participants was 55.8% female and 82.4% White (other participants were Black, Hispanic, or Asian) and their average age was 33.11 years (SD=9.12).

Recruiters were provided with an overview of the study. Then they were asked to evaluate potential applicants as if their organization was evaluating a process for assessing applicants' Facebook information. The Facebook profiles of the applicants were loaded on each of several laptop computers. There was a separate file for each applicant that contained all of the content recruiter would see if they accessed the Facebook profiles directly from the Internet.

After recruiters reviewed each applicant's profile, they were given a rating form.

Recruiters were asked to rate the suitability of each participant using a five item on a 5-point Likert-type scale with anchors that ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree. In addition, 10 behaviors that are relevant to performance in many types of jobs that are attributes organization can or do evaluate based on social media information (Brown & Vaughn, 2011) were assessed. These included adaptability, creativity, dependability, integrity, intelligence, interpersonal skills, leadership, maturity and professionalism, work ethic, and written communication skills. Recruiter rated the level of each attribute on a scale with anchors that ranged from very low to very high. The recruiters were not provided any additional information about the participants, such as resumes. Their evaluations were based solely on the Facebook profile. Each recruiter evaluated an average of five applicants.

Results suggest that recruiter's ratings generally unrelated to graduates' subsequent job performance, turnover intentions, and turnover. This trend holds across overall suitability ratins, aggregate ratings and conscientious, cognitive and contextual factor which that emerged. In addition Facebook ratings do not provide incremental prediction of these criteria beyond more established predictors, including cognitive ability, personality, self-efficacy, and GPA. The authors also found that Facebook ratings tend to be higher for females that for males, and in several instances higher for white individuals than for Black and Hispanic individuals.

Van Iddekinge et al. (2013) findings suggest serious doubts concerning the appropriateness of considering applicants social media (Facebook) during selection process. Additionally the authors' results indicate there may be subgroup differences in such assessments that could lead to ethnicity-based adverse impact.