Alexandra Krska

Author: Alexandra Krska | Major: Supply Chain Management

My name is Alexandra Krska and I am a Junior from The Sam M. Walton College of Business. I am majoring in Supply Chain Management and minoring in Marketing.

Throughout the Fall 2021 term, I worked with Dr. Meline Schaffer to curate a meaningful survey to document the cumulative effect of social media on the recruitment and selection process of organizations in America. After applying to countless internships, co-ops, and jobs over the past 3 years I have learned that Social Media is beginning to appear on more and more applications. This made me think: What are they looking for? Is it my professionalism in and out of the workplace, my personality, my passions?

Dr. Schaffer teaches subjects such as Managing People and Organizations, and Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. After taking her Managing People and Organizations class, I realized her great knowledge with themes near to my projects as well as her passion. Coupled with the fact that she has amazing industry experience relevant to the thesis question, she has proven to be well-versed in this topic.

While researching the available literary works available on this subject, I realized there was little available, and what was available was incomplete or inconclusive. However, one big topic that I found to be rather important to this was the idea of ethics. Is it ethical to use social media as a way to learn about applicants? This is my main study for my research. Seeing if Human resource and other primary hiring professionals are using social media ethically and whether it is an accurate predictor of job performance.

Dr. Schaffer and I created an overarching survey that looked to investigate experiences and feelings from both sides of the situation, industry recruiters and job applicants. Included were questions about feelings whether social media was a good predictor, whether recruiters consistently used the same criteria, and what social media was most prevalently utilized. With Dr. Schaffer being very understanding of the way that surveys are distributed in corporate America, I was able to put together a well-worded and rounded survey that allowed for easy distribution to both industry professionals and aspiring professionals. This online survey went live in early December and is to be live until late February, leaving time to analyze the data received in the spring semester.

So far, the drawback of this type of research is the low response rate, which was to be expected. The timing of the survey going live coincided with the busy time for students and professionals as they raced against the clock at the end of the year. The survey is expected to pick up in late January as people get back into the swing of things in the new year. The funds from the Honors research grant are currently aiding in incentivising the survey, making it more appealing to students.

Next semester, it is hoped that the analysis of the survey will outline the criteria and ethicality of utilizing social media as a tool in the recruitment and selection processes of organizations. No one wants to be left out of a job because of the content they post on social media, so determining the real use of social media for organizations will help to ensure that social media is taken into account in an ethical and predictive way.