Using social networking websites as a selection tool: The role of selection process fairness and job pursuit intentions

A growing trend in the hospitality industry is openly encouraging applicants to join their social networking sites as part of their recruitment process (Dolasinki et al., 2010 and Madera and Chang, 2011). However, there is a dearth of studies examining how applicants perceive and react to the use of social networking websites in the recruitment and selection process. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine how applicants react to the use of social networking websites as a selection tool. Using experimental methods, participants attending a career fair for hospitality jobs completed a questionnaire after reading about a hospitality company that does or does not use social networking sites in the selection process. The results showed that perceived fairness and job pursuit intentions of applicants were lower for an organization that used social networking websites as a selection tool than an organization that did not use social networking websites as a selection tool.