Future Trends of Human Resource Essay

1. Introduction What does the human resource information system look like in the future? It is hard to find an accurate answer for me. Every year, thousands of HRIS specialists trying to predict the future trends of HRIS and, of course, their prediction differ. However, despite of what prediction they had made, I think social media will play an important role in next few years. In this paper, I will try to discuss what social media means to human resource and discuss three major players in the field—Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. 2. Social Network Site vs. HR According to the 2011 Kelly Services Global employees Index research, published by the famous human resource service organization Kelly Services, social network site is becoming the â€Å"edge tool† in the future workplace. According to the research, social network site (SNS) is changing the way of life and work. It expanded its function from only entertaining to boosting working efficiency and enhancing the success rate of job applying. The research shows that over 80% of workforce is using SNS every day, while over 60% of workforce considers it as a work booster. According to the research, a lot of employees think they can develop an instant synchronized â€Å"expert tank†, from which they can acquire relative knowledge, skill and experience, so that they will be support by experts wherever, whenever. They also regard SNS as a pipe cleaner of the networking. By using SNS, they can manage their networking just within few clicks. It is a cost efficiency and personalized way. In addition, they also use SNS to relieve work pressure. According to the research, SNS is now penetrating to the area of traditional recruiting. The advantage of it includes no limits of time and space, cost efficiency and high reliability. The research indicated that over 90% active job seekers are now using SNS at least once per week. It also indicated that job seekers who age below 25 are more willing to use SNS as a tool to find job, while who age over 35 are more possible to find a job by using it. The research suggests that company should pay attention to what SNS may change the future workplace. According to the research, the most common worries toward SNS are affecting productivity, occupying internet and threating the information security. It also report that there are a lot of companies are now start using SNS to recruit, manage market, promote public relation and guide career development by setting new policies and using latest antivirus technics. 3. Facebook Facebook is a SNS launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. By the time of October 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device. According to the research, 23% of Facebook users check their account 5 times or more per day. By the time of May 2012, Facebook received more than 1.6 billion visits per week. There are over 1,000,000 links shared on Facebook every 20 minutes. If you regard Facebook merely as an entertaining SNS, you will be absolutely wrong. In the era of internet, Facebook is now developing different social platforms. It transforms its function from just connecting and entertaining people to job bank and social synergy. By Facebook recently launched job applying app â€Å"Jobvite†, people can find, refer, and match jobs to friends with Jobvite’s proprietary matching technology, providing better access to opportunities for job seekers and more quality hires for employers. Users can connect and apply to jobs completely within Facebook; and they can see their status in the hiring process at any time, creating a positive, transparent relationship for companies and candidates. By using another job applying app â€Å"jobandtalent†, users can discover and leverage their existing Facebook network to find job opportunities and stand out to top companies. Jobandtalent claimed that they are working with world top companies like Goldman Sachs, Deloitte and Google. The fact is that the data stored on Facebook not only including job relate area, but also including other areas, such as daily life. Employer can acquire 360-degree background information of candidates via Facebook. â€Å"It is easy to track record of candidates on Facebook. These records may imply personal interests, personality and other attributes† Said an HR specialist, â€Å"Traditional resumes are monotonous, like masks, but these records are alive and we can totally tell a difference.† It is not surprisingly true. Tell me if I wrong, if the records of a candidate show that he use the â€Å"f† word all the time, dare you or dare you not hire him? Job applicants like him will lose his opportunity from the beginning. Facebook is now challenging LinkedIn by this advantage. According to the survey conducted by Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost half of companies are now using Facebook in their recruitment process, such as Boeing and Dell. They use Facebook not only for job posting, but also for background investigation. However, research shows that there are different between social media behavior and real life behavior. It is to be studied whether it is reliable to investigate candidates via SNS. 4. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a SNS for professional people. Launched on May 5th, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. By the time of June 2012, LinkedIn reports more than 175,000,000 users in more than 200 countries. Monster is one of three largest job posting web site, however, its financial report showed a significant decline in business revenue. According to the market analyst, because of the blooming of LinkedIn, companies like Monster are losing market share in a large scale. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn founded upon the theory of Six Degrees of Separation. Also it was not designed for recruiting; LinkedIn became the major way to recruit in the U.S. by the time of 2006 and achieve profitability. LinkedIn is known as its high accurate matching rate. It can even â€Å"push† eligible candidates to employers by preset standard. According to the co-founder Reid Hoffman, it is more and more important for people to utilize their networking in the future. If you want to change you r job every two or three years, you have to maintain your networking to find new opportunities. SNS is the easiest way to do it. You don’t have to make call after call and desperate to find topic to cottoning up, you don’t have to visit people with gifts door after door. The only thing you have to do is just within few clicks, and you can make connection with people you want to. In his opinion, the value of LinkedIn is â€Å"concentrate in the value moment†. Also Facebook has more user base and more stickiness; it is not safe to say that LinkedIn is losing the game. The orientation of these two web-sites is different. The business scope of Facebook is wide and the â€Å"killer app† of it is social game and â€Å"Share†, while LinkedIn concentrate in professional occupations. In a way, the overlap of these two web-sites is small. People regard Facebook as â€Å"individual† and LinkedIn as â€Å"professional†. Compare to strong interaction of Facebook, LinkedIn is not that strong. However, this weak interaction as â€Å"professional community† is where it value lies. For the user of LinkedIn, log in every day and post threats is meaningless and way far from the identity of professional, it will only imply that you are not in the working status. In other word, user stickiness makes little sense for LinkedIn. In addition, compared to Facebook, LinkedIn is a real-name, high quality user concentrated SNS. In other word, the user group is rich and high-educated middle-aged professions. This user group is known as high business value. According to the statistics from Quantcast, in the United States, the proportion of user over 35 is over 70%, the proportion of user with bachelor or above education is over 75% and the proportion of user with over $100,000 incomes is over 39%, compared to Facebook with only 32%, 53% and 32% (Chart 1). Chart1 Demographic Analysis of Facebook and LinkedIn What’s more, in business related area, LinkedIn is highly recognized than Facebook. According to a research conducted by Jobvite, in job applicants who are now using or will use SNS to find jobs, more than 95% indicate that they will choose LinkedIn. Only 59% chose Facebook and 42% chose Twitter. In people who already find a job by using SNS, 89% of them used LinkedIn, 28% used Facebook. To sum up, although Facebook is now challenging LinkedIn in professional SNS area, LinkedIn is still No.1 in the field. 5. Twitter Twitter is an online social networking service and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as â€Å"tweets†. Launched in July, 2006, the service rapidly gained worldwide popularity. By the time of 2012, over 500,000,000 active users generating over 340,000,000 tweets per day and handling over 1,600,000,000 search queries per day. Twitter has been described as â€Å"the SMS of the Internet† Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter has its own characteristics. Firstly, there is a limit of characters for each tweet. You can only send up to 140 characters in one tweet. This limit made information fragmented. This kind of fragmented information eliminated the time of reading, and by this elimination user can spread their thought more accurately and more efficiency. Secondly, you don’t have to get â€Å"approval† to follow somebody. This character makes Twitter more like a broadcasting station. Users could follow the Twitter of their favorite celebrity, brand and company to acquire latest trend. Likewise, the later will use Twitter to improve public relation to the target user group. Thirdly, most of user write and read tweets by using mobile devices. That means you will get first hand news via Twitter. An interesting statistic shows that within Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter has second largest influence of commercial both in B2B and B2C. Facebook has the largest influence of B2C commercial while LinkedIn has the largest influence of B2B commercial (Chart 2). Chart 2 Influences in Commercial For human resource, Twitter has two major functions. The first function is to use Twitter to improve company image. More and more companies now hiring Twitter specialist to manage company Twitter. The other is to recruit. Compare to Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter is more cost saving, speedy and simple. According to William Fisher, the founder of job searching web site TwitJobSearch, there are more than 340,000 jobs posting in Twitter per month. TwitJobSearch release two apps—Job-Deck and TweetDeck. Users can sort and find job posting related tweets by using these two apps. 6. Cites http://recruiting.jobvite.com/company/press-releases/2011/jobvite-launches-social-job-app-on-facebook-to-power-referral-hiring/ http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/news/2011/10/03/5822750.htm