Expectations for young job applicants’ digital identity related to company’s social media brand development strategies

ABSTRACT

It is common for SMEs to include their employees’ social media image and followers in their brand development strategy. Thus, they consequently also make the social media image and followers of prospective employees’ part of their recruitment strategy. However, most students have not yet noticed this trend and are primarily focusing on goals set by their education programmes without focusing on the potential marketability of their own social media image. To address this gap, we conducted a literature review and interviewed representatives from recruiting companies. Our findings reveal that growth-oriented companies seek applicants with an excellent individual brand image because they perceive it as an indication for future gains in this regard. Moreover, we also found that companies should support new applicants’ skills in their orientation process, especially social media branding because it will help them align with the company’s brand vision.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand
• SME
• recruitment
• digitalization
• digital transformation
• expectation management
• individual brand
• social media
• skill development
• customer engagement

Acknowledgements

The AWARE and MINT project funding and the projects have made it possible to improve the understanding on this publicationdomain, to finalize and to publish this work and to be able to disseminate the collected and summarized knowledge. This can be an excellenttool for new SMEs focusing on sustainable products and services for fast visibility and to get in connect with new audience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors express their gratitude to South-East Finland – Russia CBC programme for supporting the AWARE project, funded by the European Union, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Finland. Also, the authors would like to thank the MINT project, European Regional Development Funds and Regional Council of South Karelia for the positive support for this work.