Applicant reactions to social media assessment: A review and conceptual framework
Introduction
Social media (henceforth SM) is ubiquitous and permeates every sphere of social, professional, and organizational life. Recent statistics suggest that more than 2 billion people use SM worldwide, and according to Pew, nearly 70% of Americans are active users (Pew Research Center, 2019). Almost 81% of Americans have a SM presence, the majority of whom are young people under the age of 40. Additionally, almost all of the 157 million people in the US Labor force (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020), of which approximately 72 million are millennials, use some form of SM (Pew Research Center, 2020). Given the spectacular rise of SM in our personal lives, its use in the professional and business world has correspondingly risen especially in the areas of recruitment and selection. Indeed, SM is now the fastest, cheapest, and most effective means to locate potential employees and many employers are turning to SM to find qualified job candidates (JobVite, 2019). A (CareerBuilder Survey, 2018) found that 70% of employers use SM to screen applicants; this number was up from 60% in 2016. Clearly, the prevalence of SM use in screening potential job candidates is on the increase, and practitioners have warned that organizations not using SM are missing a golden opportunity (Roth, Bobko, Iddekinge, & Thatcher, 2016). The Society for Human Resource Management also cautioned that ignoring SM is akin to ignoring emails 20 years ago (SHRM, 2018).
We conceptualize SM assessment as the process of reviewing existing information on job applicants' SM platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to inform hiring decisions (Aguado, Rico, Rubio, & Fernández, 2016). Reactions to SM assessment can have important consequences for the individual jobseeker and the organization (Roth et al., 2016). For example, perceptions of assessment practices can influence whether a jobseeker will withdraw from the selection process, view the organization as a desirable place to work, accept a job offer, recommend the organization to others, purchase a firm's products, or engage in a range of other behaviors (Ryan & Ployhart, 2014). Such reactions are significant in today's technologically driven environment where applicants can easily communicate their feelings and attitudes on SM (Stoughton, Thompson, & Meade, 2015).
Despite the surge in SM assessment in the practitioner community, scholarly research has not kept up with practice. There is little understanding about how employers use SM in the selection process, and research into applicant reactions to SM assessment more specifically is sparse (Roth et al., 2016). This lack of understanding is not only problematic theoretically and practically, but also raises concerns in terms of applicants' perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward SM assessment. From a theoretical perspective, SM assessment is widely regarded as an emerging technology, and presents a context for interaction that is unique and different from traditional personnel selection methods such as cognitive ability or personality tests, interviews, and work samples. As such, the nature of SM features is likely to challenge current applicant reactions theories and frameworks with respect to perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward SM use and requires a new theoretical framework to fully understand applicant reactions in a SM context (McFarland & Ployhart, 2015). From a practical perspective, employers need guidance on how SM assessment might influence reactions in order to create a more favorable experience for applicants and a more positive outcome for organizations. On this note, McFarland and Ployhart (2015) caution that neglecting to examine SM assessment with scientific scrutiny can lessen the impact of psychological science to influence public policy and professional practice. We believe that research on SM assessment is at a critical juncture where it can benefit from a guiding theoretical framework to understand why applicants react the way they do and the consequences of these reactions.
A purpose of this article is to close these gaps in the literature and offer new insights into applicant reactions to SM assessment. To that end, we develop a comprehensive theoretical framework to better understand applicant reactions to SM assessment. The goal is to explicate the process by which various individual, organizational, and labor market antecedents elicit different reactions from job applicants and the resulting behavioral consequences. This process is conceptually illustrated in Fig. 1. Our article makes three contributions to the applicant reactions literature. First, the framework is based on a comprehensive integration of multiple literatures scattered across different research domains such as information technology, work and organizational (w/o) psychology, and social psychology to consider whether SM assessment produce applicant reactions similar to alternative selection methods. The unique context of SM assessment allows researchers to understand why SM assessment may have different effects on applicant perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. Second, drawing on this conceptual framework, we offer theory-based propositions whose implications may call for revisions and modifications to existing models. Third, the series of propositions that follow aim to provide a clear research agenda on which future empirical research may be based. The propositions may also be used to inform organizational practice, specifically around crafting policies and guidelines outlining how SM assessment might be used in a fair, transparent and consistent manner to create a more favorable experience for job candidates.
We begin by setting the theoretical scope of this article, defining applicant reactions, and delineating SM assessment. Next, we discuss the uniqueness of SM assessment compared to traditional assessments, and explicate the need for a new framework to understand applicant reactions. We then review the research, explaining how various antecedents influence reactions, and outcomes, and offer propositions that are consistent with theory and research. Finally, we synthesize the major issues of our theorizing and discuss implications for research and practice.
Section snippets
Applicant reactions defined
Ryan and Ployhart (2000, p. 556) define applicant reactions as “attitudes, affect, and cognitions an individual might have about the hiring process”. While this definition was intended to capture reactions to traditional selection procedures (e.g. personality tests, interviews, etc.) and may also be relevant to SM selection procedures, the nature of SM assessment can trigger different concerns and reactions than previously anticipated. For example, the lack of transparency regarding “what” SM
Relevant theory and research on applicant reaction
There is a dearth of research addressing applicant reactions to SM assessment directly (e.g. Aguado et al., 2016; Black, Stone, & Johnson, 2015; Stoughton et al., 2015), and a handful of other studies, including one review article, speaking to applicant reactions to SM assessment only partially (e.g. Jeske & Shultz, 2019; Madera, 2012; Roth et al., 2016). Another stream of research has raised issues about the legality, reliability, and job relevance of SM assessment and the ethical implications
Discussion
In this article, we draw from extant research on applicant reactions, and w/o psychology more broadly to develop and propose a comprehensive theoretical model to better understand applicant reactions to SM assessment. Our intention has been to elucidate the process by which various individual, organizational, and labor market antecedents cause different reactions in applicants and how these reactions predict various perceptual and behavioral outcomes. Following McCarthy et al. (2017), we
Conclusion
In this article, we highlight that several individual, organizational, and labor market variables influence applicant reactions to SM assessment with important perceptual and behavioral outcomes. We believe this work is timely given the exponential growth of SM in the assessment space. As noted, about 94% of firms use some form of SM platform in hiring and the trend is growing. We also agree with Roth et al. (2016) that organizational practice on the use of SM in hiring has outperformed
Laxmikant Manroop is an Associate Professor of Management at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI, USA. His research interests include strategic human resource management, job search, performance management, and business ethics. His work has appeared in several high-impact journals, such as Human Resource Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Organizational Psychology Review, International Journal of Management Reviews, Human Resource Management Review, and the
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Laxmikant Manroop is an Associate Professor of Management at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI, USA. His research interests include strategic human resource management, job search, performance management, and business ethics. His work has appeared in several high-impact journals, such as Human Resource Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Organizational Psychology Review, International Journal of Management Reviews, Human Resource Management Review, and the British Journal of Industrial Relations.
Amina Malik is an Assistant Professor of Business at Trent University in Oshawa, Canada. Her research interests include cultural minorities' socialization in the workplace, perceptions of organizational trust and justice, strategic human resource management, and other emerging issues in human resources management. Her research has been published in journals such as Human Resource Management Review, Human Resource Management, Career Development International, and European Business Review, among others. She is also the recipient of Administrative Sciences Association of Canada-Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences (ASAC-CJAS) PhD Research Grant Award 2015 and her doctoral research was awarded the Best PhD Dissertation Award from the Human Resource Research Institute (HRRI).
Richaurd Camp is a full professor of Management at Eastern Michigan University. He has authored several books including Strategic Interviewing: How to Hire Good People. This book has been translated into four different languages. He also authored Toward a More Organizationally Effective Training Strategy and Practice. For 20+ years, he taught a seminar on interviewing in the Executive Program at the University of Michigan Business School. This seminar was consistently one of the highest rated programs in the Executive Program. Rick has consulted with Lockheed Martin, Wal-Mart, Fisher Scientific, General Motors, Ford Motor, Dominos Pizza and the executive search firms Egon Zehnder International, and Spencer Stuart. He has also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Business and Psychology.
Eric Schulz is a full Professor of Management at Eastern Michigan University. His research interests include industrial relations and human resource management. His work has appeared in journals such as Human Resource Management, and Public Personnel Management, among others. He has co-authored Training the Technical Workforce.