SOCIAL MEDIA IN

SELECTION
CHRISTIAN SCOTT – OCTOBER 23, 2020
CONTENTS

• Introduction
• 1st Study
• Takeaways

• 2nd Study
• Conclusions and General Takeaways
• Limitations and Future Research
• Theoretical and Practical Implications
INTRODUCTION

• Social Media (SM): Online platforms that people use to create their own content and share
it (Landers & Schmidt, 2016)
• As of 2020, Facebook has now hit over 2.7 billion active users (Clement, 2020)
• Twitter: 330 million
• LinkedIn: 500 million

• Selection: the process of selecting people to fill positions in an organization (Cascio &
Aguinis, 2019)
• Ignoring it has been compared to ignoring email 20 years ago (Segal, 2014)
RELEVANT STUDIES

• What’s on job seekers’ social media sites?

• 3-part study that looked at:
• What information could be found on job seekers’ SM websites?
• Examined if job seekers’ SM info correlated with recruitment judgments of hireability
• Examined whether structuring SM assessments affects criterion-related validity

• Social Media for Selection?

• Focused on the relationships between recruiter ratings and supervisor ratings
STUDY 1 – WHAT INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND?

• Hiring managers more likely to review SM info than administer personality tests
(Henderson, 2018)
• Information on SM sites may be considered more insightful to true character (Bangerter
et al., 2012)
• Recruiters went through and coded what type of info found on SM sites (Zhang et al.,
2020)
• Results showed that lots of information can be gleamed from SM sites – including info
illegal or questionable to use in selection (Zhang et al., 2020)
STUDY II – DOES IT AFFECT RECRUITERS?

• 140 job seekers’ Facebook were analyzed by recruiters

• Rated hireability using 5-item Likert scale
• Hierarchical linear modeling was used test for significant between-recruiter variance in ratings
• Results showed ratings were higher for females (p < 0.05) and participants in relationships (p <
0.05)
• Ratings were lower for people with religious beliefs included (p < 0.05) profanity (p < 0.05)
alcohol use (p < 0.05), drug use (p < 0.05), sexual behavior (p < 0.05), violence (p < 0.05),
illegal activities (p < 0.05)

(Zhang et al., 2020)

STUDY III – STRUCTURING ASSESSMENTS OF SM
INFORMATION
• Researchers argue adding structure to interviews can increase reliability, enhance criterion-
related validity, and reduce subgroup differences
• SM sites could be assessed using similar structure
• Recruiters were split into two groups and in first group asked to assess SM info using five
and seven points scales
• Second group used structured assessment
• Results showed structuring SM assessments did not improve criterion-related validity (r =
-.06, p = .58)

(Zhang et al., 2020)

TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS STUDY

• The way organizations recruit and assess job applicants is changing due to social media
(Roth et al., 2016)
• Results suggest that using SM info in selection allows for possibility for personal info to
influence who gets hired (Brown et al., 2011)
• Recruiters penalize those who have substance abuse, sexual behavior, alcohol use, etc. on
SM sites (Zhang et al., 2020)
• Overall, organizations should hold off on using SM sites like Facebook for staffing until
further research is done (Zhang et al., 2020)
STUDY: SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SELECTION?

• Researchers had recruiters rate SM sites for students soon to be looking for jobs
• Some time after students were hired, researchers gathered supervisor ratings about their
performance
• Results showed that recruiters ratings of student's SM sites were unrelated to supervisor
ratings of job performance (rs = -.13 to -.04)
• Evidence for subgroup differences that favored female and White applicants

(Van Iddekinge et al., 2016)

CONCLUSIONS AND GENERAL KEY TAKEAWAYS

•Social media data did not predict job success (Zhang et al., 2020)
•75% of recruiters required to do online research on applicants (Cascio et al., 2020)
•70% of recruiters surveyed reported rejecting individuals as a result
•51% of employers have found social media content that has led to rejection of an
applicant (Grasz, 2014)
•What remains unclear for both researchers and practitioners is what that
information truly represents and how to best take advantage of it
CONCLUSIONS AND
GENERAL KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Uncertainty for researchers and

recruiters as to what SM information
means and how to use it (Landers &
Schmidt, 2016)
• Overall, the use of social media in
selection currently is informal,
unsystematic, and anecdotal
(Landers & Schmidt, 2016)
LIMITATIONS IN CURRENT RESEARCH/FUTURE
DIRECTION
• Lack of research
• Subjective judgements used when assessing SM sites (Zhang et al., 2020)
• High degree of error in making judgements off SM sites, even if information is relevant
to their character (Connelly et al., 2010)
• Explore alternative ways to evaluate SM info (Zhang et al., 2020)
• Does content on SM sites predict a person’s true integrity?
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

• Theoretical Implications
• SM assessments influence recruiters' ratings on job seekers’ attitudes (Van Iddekinge et al., 2016)
• SM assessments may be useful for selection someday, but not until more research is done

• Practical Implications
• Be careful what you post on the internet (Margolis, 2017)
• Clean up sites before you begin job search (Zhang et al., 2020)
• Regularly monitor and update your social media available (Zhang et al., 2020)
• Organizations can inform and train recruiters not to use SM assessments in selection
REFERENCES

•Bangerter, A., Roulin, N., & König, C. J. (2012). Personnel selection as a signaling game. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(4), 719-738.
•Brown, V. R., & Vaughn, E. D. (2011). The writing on the (Facebook) wall: The use of social networking sites in hiring decisions. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26(2), 219-225.
•Cascio, W. F., & Aguinis, H. (2019). Applied Psychology in Talent Management. SAGE Publications.
•Clement, J. (2020, August 10). Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 2nd quarter 2020. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-
facebook-users- worldwide/#:~:text=With%20over%202.7%20billion%20monthly,network%20ever%20to%20do%20so.
•Connelly, B. S., & Ones, D. S. (2010). An other perspective on personality: Meta-analytic integration of observers’ accuracy and predictive validity. Psychological Bulletin, 136 , 1092–1122.
•Grasz, J. (2014). Number of employers passing on applicants due to social media posts continues to rise, according to new CareerBuilder survey. http://www.careerbuilder.com/
share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?sd=6%2F26%2F2014&id=pr829&ed=12%2F31 %2F2014
•Henderson, K.E. (2018). They posted what? An examination of the use of social media in hiring. Organizational Dynamics. Advance online publication.
•Lander, R. N., & Schmidt, G. B. (Ed.). (2016). Social media in employee selection and recruitment: Theory, practice, and current challenges. Springer.
•Margolis, J. (2017). Be careful with social media — employers are watching. https://www.ft.com/content/5b8bb3b0-6aca-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0.
•Roth, P. L., Bobko, P., Van Iddekinge, C. H., & Thatcher, J. B. (2016). Social media in employee-selection-related decisions: A research agenda for uncharted territory. Journal of Management,
42(1), 269-298.
•Segal, J. A. (2014). Social media use in hiring: Assessing the risks. HR Magazine, 59 (9). Retrieved from
https://www.shrm.org/publications/hrmagazine/editorialcontent/2014/0914/pages/0914- social- media-hiring.aspx
•Van Iddekinge, C. H., Lanivich, S. E., Roth, P. L., & Junco, E. (2016). Social media for selection? Validity and adverse impact potential of a Facebook-based assessment. Jounral of Management
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•Zhang, L., Iddekinge, C. H. V., Arnold, J. D., Roth, P. L., Lievens, F., Lanivich, S. E., & Jordan, S. L. (2020). What’s on job seekers’ social media sites? A content analysis and effects of structure on
recruiter judgments and predictive validity. Journal of Applied Psychology. doi: 10.1037/apl0000490