Social networking sites are useful recruitment tools

The argument

Social media platforms have ushered in new ways of communicating on a global scale, which goes beyond maintaining and developing personal relationships. One of the clearest examples is hiring. Social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Instagram, are being used by recruiters not only to market and promote their respective companies but also to seek out potential employees — a shift from advertising a vacancy and waiting to approaching candidates directly, including people who were not looking. The extent of that shift is measurable. According to a 2018 study carried out by Jobvite, 77% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates, and the next highest-ranking social networking site was Facebook. What's more, Instagram is increasing in popularity, as 1 in 4 recruiters who intend to reach a younger audience and those who work in the technology sector actively use the platform. That different platforms serve different segments matters to the argument: it means the reach is not concentrated in one professional network but spread across the places various groups of people already are. Given that these social platforms aid workers in obtaining employment, they also can help to make the labour market more efficient. The gain is not only that more matches get made but that they get made with better information on both sides. These platforms allow job-seekers to easily find available roles and employers to find interested candidates, and they increase the available pool of information about one another from which both parties can benefit — which reduces the guesswork that makes hiring slow and mismatches costly. A market in which the two sides can find and assess each other more readily works better for everyone in it, and that is offered as a concrete social good delivered by these sites.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The evidence is about adoption, not benefit. That most recruiters use a platform establishes that the platform is convenient for recruiters — a self-selected group answering an industry survey run by a recruiting-software company — and says nothing about whether the resulting matches are better, faster or fairer than those the previous channels produced. Widespread use is compatible with a hiring market that has simply moved, with the same outcomes at lower cost to employers. The generalisation is also strained. LinkedIn is a professional networking service whose purpose is precisely this, and building a case for 'social networking sites' on it is close to arguing that vehicles are good for society because ambulances are. The question asks about the category the other positions are about — the general-purpose platforms whose effects on attention, mental health, privacy and public discourse are the substance of the debate. The efficiency claim also needs its distributional half. Matching through networks and algorithms tends to reproduce existing advantage: opportunities circulate among the already-connected, and applicants without professional networks or the right signals are less visible, not more. Recruiter screening of candidates' personal profiles — which the argument's own inclusion of Instagram and Facebook implies — introduces information about age, ethnicity, religion, pregnancy, health and political views that hiring law generally excludes from consideration, and does so invisibly. Finally, the conclusion is a net judgement drawn from a single benefit. 'Good for society' requires weighing this against the harms the opposing position asserts, and an argument that establishes one advantage has not weighed anything. A more defensible version would claim that these platforms have a real labour-market benefit which belongs in the balance.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The figure measures recruiter adoption reported in an industry survey by a recruiting-software company, which establishes convenience for employers rather than benefit — and it rests almost entirely on a professional networking service whose purpose is hiring, which does not generalise to the general-purpose platforms the question is about. [Rejecting P2] Efficiency claims require the distributional half: matching through networks and algorithms circulates opportunities among the already-connected, and screening candidates' personal profiles surfaces age, ethnicity, religion, health and political views that hiring law generally excludes from consideration, invisibly and without recourse. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is a net judgement about society drawn from a single claimed advantage, with none of the countervailing effects asserted by the rival position weighed against it.