Leading tech firms to recruit from social networking sites
Although it may seem to be incredible, leading global information technology firms like Wipro, Accenture, MphasiS, Cognizant and MindTree are now contemplating to recruit as much as 50 per cent of their new middle-level as well as senior employees from social networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Quoting industry experts and company executives, a news portal reports that the IT firms are gradually become conscious of the fact that it is best to look for middle-level and senior personnel from such places, as people on networking sites are not essentially frustrated job hunters.
Incidentally, the second largest technology advisory firm globally, Accenture intends to recruit approximately 40 per cent of the company’s new personnel from the social networking sites during the subsequent few years. In fact, Accenture is not the only IT firm that is depending to hire through this mode. Interestingly enough, leading software developer Oracle too got its chief financial officer (CFO) Jeff Epstein by way of LinkedIn in 2008. Senior officials at India’s leading technology solutions provider Cognizant also said they now plan to make most of their fresh recruitments through LinkedIn.
Leading Indian outsourcing firm MphasiS entirely depends on LinkedIn and Facebook for all its recruitment needs. In fact, the company has recently created a page on LinkedIn for this purpose. The page titled ‘The great MphasiS treasure hunt’ aims at employing professionals from India in the application development business as well as to enhance the firm’s impression. Precisely speaking, the page on LinkedIn has inspired as many as 7,000 people from across India to walk in for interviews at different centers of the firm and about 650 of them were hired!
According to a brand manager with a software development firm who was recruited via LinkedIn in early 2010, Anuskha Shivaram, till recently many of them who were busy updating their profiles on Facebook have now understood that that HR managers of IT firms are more interested in hiring through LinkedIn. Meanwhile, though the IT firms still acknowledge that recruitment firms are an important aspect of their entire employment process, presently they have been trying other modes, including recruitment through the social networking sites. The HR chief at MphasiS, Elango R says that hiring through the social networking sites is not only inexpensive, but it also results in a lesser rate of attrition because the candidates often walk in with references.