The following article was written by Allen Smith, J.D., SHRM’s manager of workplace law content. I was interviewed by Allen as a source for the story based on our involvement with the award-winning job help television show JobQuest on Blue Ridge PBS.
A few years ago, Stuart Mease was attending a lecture where he heard a professor recommend a new web site called Twitter. “What a waste of time,” Mease initially thought.
Fast forward to 2010. Mease is now recruiting manager at a Rackspace Email and Apps office in Blacksburg, Va., and using Twitter to help fill positions.
Twitter is a great tool for promotion and getting information quickly, Mease said in a Feb. 3, 2010, interview. While he thinks that relatively few companies use Twitter as a recruiting tool, he said it is becoming common in high-tech areas.
Mease quickly rattled off some of the benefits of recruiting by Twitter, including its speed in getting the word out about open positions, the possibility of a message about a job vacancy going viral on Twitter if it starts to get retweeted, the ability to reach a community’s thought leaders, the usefulness of searching key buzzwords in an industry to find candidates with rare expertise, Twitter’s potential use as a prescreening tool and the fact that it’s free.
Using hashtags like #jobs or #RKE for the Roanoke area, Twitter’s “powerful” search feature can be used to refine a search for possible candidates further, Mease noted.
With a unique URL (shortened on such sites as bit.ly) for each open position to a link that explains the application process, an employer can get useful data about who clicks through to job postings, including the location of those who click through.
But there can be downsides to recruiting on Twitter, Mease noted. Sometimes a posting might go viral in a negative way quickly, requiring fast damage control.
And management attorneys caution that there are some legal speed bumps when recruiting on Twitter.
Diversity and TMI
Christine Walters, J.D., SPHR, and owner of HR consulting firm FiveL Co. in Westminster, Md., cautioned that HR should use Twitter to recruit “in moderation.”
She recommended that HR ensure that new media recruiting tools such as Twitter do not become an employer’s sole or even primary source for recruiting. “This may adversely impact the diversity of your applicants and, consequently, hinder progress under your affirmative action plans, if you have them, and/or lead to claims of disparate impact in your recruiting practices,” she said.
There also is the risk, as with other new media, of getting too much information about applicants. “Watch your use of personal information that you glean from viewing candidates’ social pages that may be legally protected, such as their use of lawful products like tobacco, medical use of marijuana, political opinions, associations or familial relationships,” Walters said. “These and more are protected under some state and local laws.”
Lisa Harpe, senior consultant and industrial psychologist with the Peopleclick Research Institute and author of the e-book Social Networks and Employment Law, warned in a Feb. 4 interview that using Twitter to screen can raise a host of legal issues under anti-discrimination laws. If there is a photograph on the person’s Twitter site, for example, she noted that the employer instantly would have access to information about someone’s race, gender, age, disability or other protected categories that it ordinarily wouldn’t have in the application process.
“Probably the safest use” of Twitter is to disseminate information about job vacancies, she said. But if employers do decide to use it to screen, she cautioned that HR should standardize the process by allowing only a select group of individuals who are trained on employment laws to use Twitter for screening and then provide other decision-makers only with job-related information found on Twitter. Harpe also cautioned that there may be privacy and PR issues involved with using information posted on Twitter without the individual tweeters’ knowledge. Some state laws also prohibit the use of lawful nonjob activities in employment decisions, she added.
Federal contractors should ensure compliance with the U.S. Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Internet applicant rule when recruiting via Twitter. Employers also should follow the record-keeping requirements set by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), reminded Chris Mills, an attorney with Fisher & Phillips in Murray Hill, N.J. Employers that follow UGESP guidelines are better able to defend themselves from discrimination claims, he observed.
Business Needs
“Always let business needs drive your employment decisions,” Walters said. “Ask yourself: Who do you monitor? How often? Why?” Even in an informal venue like Twitter, where the tone often is like an online cocktail party, employers should “require respectful communications in all forms: verbal, written or electronic, and prohibit offhand disclosure of confidential information or disparaging remarks about the company, customers or employees.”
The business need for trying to fill some positions through Twitter is readily apparent.
Mease noted that when Rackspace sought to fill a social media managing position, it used Twitter to help broaden its applicant pool. Technology jobs often are natural fits for recruiting by Twitter as well, he added, noting that one Rackspace employee has thousands of followers and a list on his Twitter site of all the people he knows who are programmers.
Marketing and business development are other jobs that already seem natural candidates for recruiting by Twitter. Besides, Mease remarked, the people on Twitter tend to be “very proactive, more educated and tech savvy,” characteristics that are highly desirable for a wide range of employers.
The value of Twitter as a recruiting tool is easy to miss though, particularly for those who just visit the Twitter web site but don’t use an application like TweetDeck or JobDeck, Mease said.
Additional Tool
Of course, Twitter isn’t the be-all, end-all—it’s just one more recruiting tool.
“In order to be successful recruiting, you have to use multiple methods and tools, Just one way doesn’t cut it,” noted Sharlyn Lauby (@sharlyn_lauby on Twitter), SPHR, president of ITM Group in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., who blogs on HR Bartender. But she said, “there’s definitely a recruiting presence on Twitter. The interaction makes it an ideal option. As far as results, I think that comes down to the individual using it and their goals. You need to have a strategy.”
Lauby added, “Twitter can be perceived as having a long learning curve. To be successful, it takes some time to build relationships,” she said. “People tell me all the time, ‘I’ve been on Twitter and I see people tweeting what they ate for breakfast. That’s why I’m not on Twitter.’” Her response is, “that’s the same stuff we talk about in the office. Sometimes those casual remarks help start meaningful dialogue.”
Mease (@stuartmease on Twitter) has shown he’s game for innovative ways to help with job recruiting, even helping with a television show, JobQuest, on a local PBS station. The monthly show features job openings and tips on job hunting and is sponsored by several community partners, including the Roanoke Economic Development Office (where Mease used to work) and Roanoke Valley Society for Human Resource Management chapter. The last show will air Feb. 16 and Feb. 23, 2010, at 7 p.m. Mease said viewers typically tweet to fill job openings while they watch. The show doesn’t stream live on the Internet, he said, but it can be tracked on Twitter by following @BlueRidgePBS.
What’s actually going to work when filling a job often is as surprising as Twitter’s overnight popularity. Many avenues might be tried before the right candidate is found, and Twitter isn’t likely to change that. Though Rackspace has used Twitter to help broaden its applicant pool, Mease noted that the company wound up offering the social marketing position to someone who did not apply through Twitter.
And it was clear that the applicant had done her research on the company—always a good sign, using a tool that’s becoming a popular way for applicants to decide whether they would enjoy working for prospective employers. With Twitter, Mease noted, vetting is “a two-way street.”
