The effect of social media's role on employees in the employment process

Social media used in every moment of our lives thanks to the development of technology, has become a substantial part of our daily lives. Used more and more frequently for various purposes and activities in professional life as well as daily life, social media has also transformed the way we do business. Human resources is one of the fields which effectively uses social media and its beneficial features. From small businesses to large corporations, Human Resources departments in every corporate firm have introduced a new method into their business procedures with social media and in recent years, have started evaluating candidates by reviewing their social media accounts. Members of human resources departments who have started reviewing the social network accounts of those forwarding their resumes via social networks, career websites or directly to the firm during the employment process, are considered to have the objective of learning more about their candidates by taking a step further than merely looking in their resumes or contacting their references, and gaining insight about them from different perspectives. For this reason, studies conducted in relation to the world of digital human resources in recent years have started focusing more on the relationship between employees and social media and self-regulation. There are studies on a national and international scale which illustrate how candidates are aware that social network accounts are reviewed by employers and human resources departments, are steering towards self-regulation by making adjustments and applying necessary limitations to their social network accounts. This study, which consists of literature review and field study sections, aims to present the effect of social media's role on workers in the employment process. The theoretic section of the study consists of a literature review on human resources management, social media, social media's role in the employment process, its effect on workers and self-regulation. In the research section is a survey consisting of 27 questions with the aim of determining the effect of the role of social media on workers with the participation of 520 social media users living in Istanbul and actively looking for employment. The data revealed has been analyzed with the help of the SPSS 24.0 statistics package program. In conclusion, it has been observed that during the employment process, due to the effect of the role of social media, workers have been forced to resort to make adjustments in their social media accounts, bring limitations to the posting of photographs and videos in which they have been tagged by others, avoid sharing information about the political party, pages, people they are interested in, or their ideas, on the basis that they might be conflicting with the company policies, and that those working in the public sector and private sector are making a same of adjustments in their social network accounts.