Recruiting Gen Yers Through Social Media: Insights from the Italian Labor Market.

Purpose - The aim of this chapter is to explore employee behaviours and expectations of the role of social media when searching for jobs, to offer recruiters and companies valuable insights to design and manage appropriate web-based employer branding and recruitment strategies. Methodology - The research strategy is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews involving 34 central informants: talented Gen Yers and social media recruitment experts and mangers. The project focuses on the Italian context, an exemplary country with the highest social media penetration rate. Findings - The results demonstrate the ‘bounded’ popularity of social media as a recruitment tool among Gen Yers who implement up to five active and passive behaviours, albeit not all widespread, according to varying patterns and using different social media for different purposes: receiving, seeking, sharing, leading and experiencing. Gen Yers, with aims that vary in line with various staffing phases, collect and share rumours and voices from both internal and controlled organizational sources but also, and above all, from external and organizational sources that companies do not control directly. Practical implications - Social media seem to offer appealing and valuable opportunities to attract and engage talented young individuals, sustaining the quality, quantity and fairness of employment relationships. Conversely, they also involve some organizational risks and costs. The chapter offers some managerial cautions and advocates a radical change in the prevalent HRM mindset for the improved management of transparency that social media solutions entail.