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Transcript 
Page 1 of 88
Abstract
This thesis was inspired by the fact that the use of social media has exploded in the past years,
and that organizations have increasingly started to use social media in a business context as well.
The main body of research in this new area is focusing on how organizations can use social
media externally, i.e. for marketing purposes. Social media is however also useful for internal
purposes – to attract new employees. This thesis examines how organizations can use social
media, and more specifically, social networking sites, for attraction of new employees from
generation Y. Therefore this study positions itself within the field of management and leadership,
and the above has lead to the following problem statement:
Why can Danish organizations use the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn for
attracting new employees from generation Y, and how do these applicants perceive being
attracted in this way?
The theoretical framework in which the thesis investigates the problem statement consists of two
parts. In the first part, the social context is explained, and the current society and the individuals
that live in this society are described. Social media and social networking sites are furthermore
defined. In the second theoretical part, recruitment and attraction are defined and a theoretical
framework, to some extends based on the work of Ehrhart and Ziegert, is developed. The main
theories that are used to are Hackman and Oldham’s job design, Vroom’s expectancy theory and
Schein’s three levels of culture, in combination with an in-depth study of Generation Y’s
environmental characteristics, a qualitative study consisting of four interviews with members of
generation Y and a quantitative study about how Danish organizations use social media.
By studying the context in which generation Y lives and communicates, an understanding of
generation Y is given. The outline of the concept behind expectancy theory and Schein’s three
levels of culture provides the reader with knowledge about what values and expectations means
to the individual. When considering the knowledge about environment, generation Y’s
communication form, expectations and values, in perspective to the qualitative study, it
contributes with a valuable fundament for organizations about how to approach attraction of
Danish generation Y members through social networking sites.
Page 2 of 88
The findings were that Danish organizations can use social networking sites for attraction of new
employees from generation Y, because this is where the generation is present, and furthermore
this is where the generation expects to be approached. The individuals generally perceive the use
of social networking sites for attraction positively, but there are some restrictions. It was found
that Facebook can be used for attraction as well, but this site is perceived as a predominantly
private platform, and so the use of this site should be followed by some precautions. The use of
LinkedIn was perceived very positively, and organizations can and should use LinkedIn for
attraction of employees. It is furthermore argued that the use of social networking sites for
attraction will increase in the future, and so this is an area that should receive more attention
from researchers in the future.
Page 3 of 88
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Introduction ............................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Problem statement and research questions .......................................................................... 8 1.2 Elaboration of research questions ......................................................................................... 8 1.4 Delimitation ............................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 2 - Method..................................................................................................................... 11 2.1 Data collection ....................................................................................................................... 11 2.2 Requirements for sources..................................................................................................... 11 2.3 Criticism of sources and choice of interviewees ................................................................. 12 2.4 The focused interview ........................................................................................................... 13 2.4.1 Stimuli ........................................................................................................................................... 14 2.4.1.1 Why stimuli............................................................................................................................. 14 2.4.1.2 Stimuli 1 - KMD ..................................................................................................................... 15 2.4.1.3 Stimuli 2 - Ernst & Young ...................................................................................................... 15 2.5 Evaluation criteria for the study ......................................................................................... 16 2.5.1 Generalization .............................................................................................................................. 16 2.5.2 Validity.......................................................................................................................................... 16 Chapter 3 – Social media and social networking sites............................................................. 18 3.1 Moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0........................................................................................ 18 3.2 Social media........................................................................................................................... 19 3.3 Social networking sites ......................................................................................................... 21 3.3.2 The history of social networking sites ........................................................................................ 23 3.4 Facebook ................................................................................................................................ 24 3.4.2 Facebook in Denmark.................................................................................................................. 25 3.4.3 How Facebook can be used in a business context ..................................................................... 26 3.5 LinkedIn ................................................................................................................................ 26 3.5.2 What LinkedIn can be used for .................................................................................................. 26 3.5.3 LinkedIn in Denmark .................................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 4 – Theoretical part I................................................................................................... 28 4.1 The Hypermodern society and the hypermodern individual............................................ 28 4.2 Generation Y ......................................................................................................................... 29 4.2.1 Generation Y and the labour market......................................................................................... 31 4.2.2 Active and passive job seekers .................................................................................................... 32 4.2.3 Technology and generation Y ..................................................................................................... 33 Page 4 of 88
4.2.4 Personal Branding ....................................................................................................................... 33 4.2.5 How Generation Y communicates online .................................................................................. 35 4.2.6 Motivation and job design........................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 5 – Theoretical part II ................................................................................................. 37 5.1 Recruitment ........................................................................................................................... 37 5.2 Attraction............................................................................................................................... 38 5.3 Why are individuals attracted to organizations?............................................................... 39 5.3.1 The Environment processing metatheory.................................................................................. 40 5.3.1.1 The exposure-attitude hypothesis ........................................................................................... 41 5.3.1.2 Expectancy theory................................................................................................................... 41 5.4 The effect of culture .............................................................................................................. 42 5.4.1 Schein ............................................................................................................................................ 42 5.4.1.1 Artifacts................................................................................................................................... 43 5.4.1.2 Espoused Values ..................................................................................................................... 44 5.4.1.3 Basic assumptions ................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 6 – Empirical data........................................................................................................ 46 6.1 The qualitative study ............................................................................................................ 46 6.1.1 The interviewees........................................................................................................................... 46 6.1.2 Why and what Facebook and LinkedIn are used for ............................................................... 47 6.1.3 Perceptions about using Facebook for attracting employees................................................... 48 6.1.4 Perceptions about using LinkedIn for attracting employees ................................................... 50 6.2 Social media factbook – a qualitative study about the use of social media in Danish
businesses..................................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 7 – Discussion ............................................................................................................... 53 7.1 Four interviews, one generation .................................................................................................... 53 7.2 Generation Y is online .................................................................................................................... 53 7.3 Brand Y-ourself............................................................................................................................... 55 7.4 Generation Y communicates online .............................................................................................. 56 7.5 What motivates generation Y ........................................................................................................ 58 7.6 What is important for Generation Y when choosing a job ......................................................... 59 7.7 Generation ‘always job seeking’.................................................................................................... 60 7.8 Summing up I .................................................................................................................................. 62 7.9 Will exposure lead to improved attitudes? ................................................................................... 63 7.10 Expectations of Generation Y ...................................................................................................... 64 7.11 Danish organizations’ expectations to their presence on social networking sites................... 66 7.12 The influence of values ................................................................................................................. 67 7.13 Summing up II............................................................................................................................... 70 7.14 A humble look into the crystal ball ............................................................................................. 71 Chapter 8 - Conclusion............................................................................................................... 74 Page 5 of 88
Chapter 9 - References and Appendices ................................................................................... 77 9.1 References.............................................................................................................................. 77 9.2 Appendix I – Quick Facebook Manual ............................................................................... 85 9.3 Appendix II – Screenshots of KMD and Ernst & Young.................................................. 86 9.4 Appendix III – Interview guide ........................................................................................... 87 Characters excl. blanks = 143.995
Standard pages (2200 characters excl. blanks) = 65,5
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Chapter 1 – Introduction
One of today’s most contemporary subjects is the massive use of social media amongst
generation Y, the generation born between 1975 and 1990, all over the world. Social media used
to be a private platform, where individuals met to socialize, but an increased number of
organizations have realized the many possibilities this media contains. For many, it has turned
out to be a huge challenge and there is not much help to get yet, because this new subject has not
been investigated in depth by many researchers. Our objective was to study a contemporary and
relevant subject where it could be possible to find new knowledge that could be used as a tool in
organizations, and social media satisfies this objective.
Due to the financial crisis, organizations have limited resources, which forces many to rethink
their recruitment strategies. Only few vacancies are created, and with a lot of unemployed
workers in the job market, it puts a lot of pressure on organizations to find effective ways to find
the most suited for a job in the mass of job seekers. Because of the crisis, organizations are no
longer in the situation that only few and mostly competent people are applying for a job, and so
they need to find new ways to attract the most competent people.
Today’s generation Y has been claimed to be a young, somewhat spoiled and demanding
generation who expect to have it all. They want the perfect career, personal development, various
challenges and acknowledgment from their boss and colleagues. But this generation is much
more than that - they are an indispensable generation that can contribute with a lot of knowledge
to the workplace. This generation is associated with a digital lifestyle, since an integrated part of
their life is taking place on online social networking sites, which is part of the new Web 2.0. This
digital environment makes it possible to connect with others through online communication,
which includes sharing, collaborating and creating a user generated content.
This indispensable generation in combination with Web 2.0, make up two perfect ingredients for
recruiters communication channels, but there are also a number of pitfalls that the organizations
must be aware of if they should avoid to harm the organizations reputation. Before any
organization engages within attraction through social networking sites, it is important for them to
understand how to act in this media, by understanding the concept behind it. It is furthermore
Page 7 of 88
important to know how and why generation Y acts and communicates as they do, and understand
what affects them, in order to know how to approach them in the most efficient way.
These thoughts have resulted in the following problem statement:
1.1 Problem statement and research questions
Why can Danish organizations use the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn for
attracting new employees from generation Y, and how do these applicants perceive being
attracted in this way?
To answer our problem statement we will work with the following research questions:
•
What kind of society are we living in today and how has this society influenced the
popularity of social networking sites?
•
Who is generation Y and what is important to know about this generation when wanting
to attract them?
•
In which way do values and expectations influence attraction through social networking
sites?
•
How do potential employees from generation Y perceive organizations’ use of social
networking sites for attraction?
1.2 Elaboration of research questions
The aim of this section is to elaborate on the above research questions and thus give the reader an
understanding of our approach to working with the problem statement:
“What kind of society are we living in today and how has this society influenced the popularity
of social networking sites?” The first question is a theoretical question, aiming at developing the
reader’s understanding of the world that generation Y is currently living in. This is done in order
to understand the rising popularity of social networking sites and why they are relevant for
attraction of new employees.
Page 8 of 88
“Who is generation Y and what is important to know about this generation when wanting to
attract them?” is both a theoretical and an empirical question, since it will be answered by
combining the theoretical framework about Generation Y with data from the qualitative study.
“In which way do values and expectations influence attraction through social networking sites?”
is both a theoretical and empirical question that will focus on how values and expectations can
influence attraction through social networking sites. To answer this question, Vroom’s
expectancy theory and Schein’s three levels of culture will be used.
“How do potential employees from generation Y perceive organizations’ use of social
networking sites for attraction?” This is an empirical question, based on a qualitative study. In
this question the presented theories will actively be used to discuss our primary data which is a
research based on four interviews with generation Y.
1.4 Delimitation
Social media in the workplace is a new area of study that has emerged in the last decade, and so
there are a lot of uncovered areas that could be interesting to examine. Especially in the areas of
marketing and communication, social media has received a lot of attention and entire books have
been written on the subject of attracting and interacting with customers through social media
(e.g. Safko & Brake, 2009). In our opinion, it is just as interesting to investigate how social
media can be used within an organization for attraction of employees, and so this is where the
focus of this thesis will be.
We are living and studying in Denmark, and since this is most likely the place where we will get
our first job, we have decided to delimitate the geographical region to Denmark. Compared to
the development in the US and UK, Denmark is traditionally a couple of years ‘behind’ in some
areas and so the situation in Denmark could be different from the US. Since most of the literature
written on social media and recruitment as well as attraction is written in either the US or the
UK, this is important to keep in mind when evaluating the Danish conditions.
Social media is a broad term that covers many different things, which could be relevant to study.
We have decided to focus on social networking sites, and more specifically on Facebook and
LinkedIn, since these are the most widely used sites with respectively 2.6 million and 0.5 million
Page 9 of 88
users in Denmark. Furthermore, both of these sites can be used for attraction of employees. In
articles about social media and attraction from the United States, the social networking site
Twitter is furthermore often focused on. Twitter is very popular in the US, where it is estimated
that 50% of the population have an account. However, Twitter is less popular in Denmark, and
recent numbers show that only 28.000 Danes have an account, which corresponds to a mere
0,5% of the population. Furthermore, only 416 of the profiles account for 50% of the tweets,
which is a very skewed distribution (Juul, 2011). One of the reasons for the lack of popularity of
Twitter according to a Danish IT-expert is that we simply do not need Twitter in Denmark, and
furthermore that it can be very difficult to limit what you want to say to 140 characters. Based on
this knowledge, we have decided to exclude Twitter from our thesis, since we do not believe that
Twitter will have enough power in Denmark to make a difference anytime soon.
Finally, it has been decided to focus mainly on Generation Y in relation to this study. The reason
for this is that this generation is the main target group for organizations when using social
networking sites for attraction, since they use social networking sites the most, and furthermore
are generally more open to new trends than older generations.
Page 10 of 88
Chapter 2 - Method
The aim of this chapter is to give the reader insight into the considerations that are the foundation
of the approach used concerning the collection and analysis of empirical data. First, different
problems concerning the data collection will be discussed. Then the type of data the study is
based on will be described, and relevant problems will be discussed in relation to the use of the
sources. Finally, the research design of the study will be described and a discussion of the
study’s generalization and validity will be provided.
2.1 Data collection
An inductive approach will be used for the study’s basis. This will be based on collection of
empirical data, and then discussed based on different theories. The purpose of this approach is
that reality will be met with as open a mind as possible, where all relevant data is collected and
then systematized. It is on the basis of this approach that theories are found (D. I. Jacobsen,
2005, p.29). Thus, the aim of this approach is to avoid limitations to the information gathered.
By not having any preconceived ideas or expectations, it increases the possibility of obtaining
data that correctly reflects reality in a given context (ibid, p. 25). However, it is never possible to
completely ignore ones preconceived ideas or expectations, and consequently the researcher will
always to some degree influence collected data. According to Dag Ingvar Jacobsen (2005, p.30)
it is impossible to completely remove the relation between researchers and researched object
(ibid). Because data in this thesis is mainly gathered from interviews, the relationship between
researcher and the interviewee is obvious. The researcher will always affect the interviewee to
some degree, so the researcher will influence the interviewee’s answers; and depending on who
the researcher is, this will influence the possibility to replicate the study.
2.2 Requirements for sources
The data collected from the interviewees should meet certain requirements. Clearly, the
interviewees should belong to the investigated field. By this is meant that all interviewees should
be Danish citizens, part of Generation Y and active users of the social networking sites
Facebook and LinkedIn. These restrictions were made in order to increase validity of the data
collected. With reference to the study’s few criteria, there is an open approach to the problem
Page 11 of 88
field and it is interviews made in an objective way that decides the type of information achieved.
Therefore is it expected that a qualitative approach will have a high degree of conceptual validity
(D. I. Jacobsen, 2005, p.129). It is the concrete subject investigated, which to a great extend
defines the true understanding of the phenomenon, namely attraction of new employees through
social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn. The selection of the data is done through
qualitative methods. The strength of this approach is the way it helps to understand the
underlying structures in the construction of social phenomena and the different variations in this
field (D. I. Jacobsen, 2005, p.31).
2.3 Criticism of sources and choice of interviewees
Part of the thesis is based on four interviews with people from generation Y that have almost
finished their education and therefore will soon start looking for their first job. These interviews
can be categorized as primary data, since we as researchers have collected information for the
thesis directly from the subject of the study - in this case, the interviewees. By choosing this
method there are some limitations that should be noted. Due to the time and resource limitations
of a bachelor study, it was only possible to carry out four interviews, which could be argued to
be a small sample for Generation Y in Denmark. However, since the studied subject – social
networking sites – is something that most people have knowledge and an opinion about, we think
that four interviews are sufficient to provide us with the data needed for this thesis. Another
limitation is that all interviewees are students who have not been on the job market yet, and their
perspective as to how they will be attracted to organizations through social networking sites
might differ from people who have are already employed. It could also be an issue that only
people with an academic background have been interviewed, which might influence the way
people answer and it might therefore be questionable if the findings also apply to people who do
not have an academic background.
Questions to the interviewees are directed to the problem that the researchers wants to investigate
(D. I. Jacobsen, 2005, p. 137). The interviewees are therefore focused on the problem field and
this provides a good foundation for the information collected (Ibid, p.164). In many cases it is
difficult to collect useful data directly from the source (Ibid, p. 163), but this is not the case in
Page 12 of 88
this study, since it is easy to get in contact with individuals from generation Y and most of these
individuals have a profound knowledge about the studied subject.
Finally, we would like to comment on the sources that have been used for this thesis. Books and
scholarly articles have been used for the foundation of the thesis, but we have also decided to use
a number of online sources, since this is a subject in rapid development, and so the newest and
most up-to-date knowledge is found online. The validity of the information in the online sources
could be an issue, since it is often difficult to validate the authors, but we have only used online
sources that in our opinion are trustworthy.
2.4 The focused interview
How a study is designed will influence the reliability, since it can influence the results of the
thesis, and the reliability can affect the consistency of the analysis (D. I. Jacobsen, 2005, p.87).
In order to highlight the consistency of the analysis, it was decided to use a semi-structured
design for the study, which is also called a focused interview. By using the semi-structured data
collection, we on beforehand had good ideas of what to talk to the interviewees about, since we
had prepared a number of guiding questions on beforehand. However, we also chose to be
flexible, so we could improvise during the interview if we felt it would contribute to our analysis
(Flick, 2006). First, the interviewees were asked some general questions to get to know them,
and then the question turned to the main subject – attraction to organizations through social
networking sites. After some general questions we presented the interviewees with stimuli in the
form of two Facebook pages of Danish companies, which was used to give the interviewees a
more clear idea about attraction through Facebook, in order to ask some more specific questions.
The next section will provide more detailed information about these stimuli. In the end, the
interviewees were asked some general questions about values and trust.
Before conducting the interview, we realized that there are some issues that need to be taken into
account. First of all, it is not possible to conduct the interviews in the same way, since different
settings can influence the situation in which the interview are held, which might affect the
outcome. Furthermore, there are no rules about how the interviewer should behave during a
semi-structured interview, so the outcome will depend on the interviewer’s situational
competences (Flick, 2006, p.154). In order to make the interview situations as similar as
Page 13 of 88
possible, we decided that the same person should carry out all four interviews. In order to
prevent misunderstandings and because most people are more comfortable in their native
language, we furthermore chose to perform the interviews in Danish, even though our thesis is
written in English. This implies that the quotes we have used have been translated from Danish
to English, which could provide the analysis with some uncertainty.
For the purpose of analyzing the interviews, they have been transcribed. The transcription of the
interviews is not included, but it can be provided on request.
2.4.1 Stimuli
One of the characteristics of a focused interview is that the interviewees are often provided with
stimuli (Flick, 2006, p. 150). In our interview this was done by showing the interviewees stimuli
in the form of two Facebook-pages of Danish companies that actively use Facebook for
attracting and recruiting new employees. The following sections will explain why we chose to
use this form of stimuli, and some basic information about the two companies and why they were
chosen. Screen-print of how the pages look can be found in the appendix.
2.4.1.1 Why stimuli
We decided to use stimuli in our interviews because the idea of using Facebook for attraction of
new employees is still relatively new and unknown, and we wanted to give the interviewees a
clearer idea of how Facebook can and is used in this context. Before showing the interviewees
the stimuli, they were asked if they could imagine finding their first fulltime job through
Facebook. This was done to get an idea of the interviewees’ general opinions on the matter
before influencing them with the stimuli, because one of the problems by using stimuli is that it
provides the interviewees with some bias, since it influences their perception about the given
field (Flick, 2006, p.154). If they answered positively to the question, they were furthermore
asked how they thought they could find a job on Facebook, in order to see if they already had
some knowledge on the subject. After viewing the stimuli, the interviewees were asked about
their first impression of the Facebook pages and the companies, and if the stimuli had changed
something with regards to finding a fulltime job on Facebook.
Page 14 of 88
2.4.1.2 Stimuli 1 - KMD
The first page that was shown to our interviewees was that of Danish company KMD. KMD
(Kommunedata) is a Danish IT-company specialized in developing IT solutions for both
municipalities, the state and businesses. KMD launched their Facebook page in December 2010
and call it their ‘preferred networking- and recruitment-channel for students and newly educated
people’. We spoke to representatives of the company at a career fair, “Karrieredagene”, in
Aarhus on March 9, and they told us that their main reason for being present on Facebook was to
be visible and let people know that they exist and to give people an opportunity to ask questions.
The main people behind the page are a young, female intern and her boss, who see Facebook as a
great way to reach out to a lot of especially younger people and also to remove some of the
prejudices that people might have towards the company.
We chose this page as our main stimuli because we think it is very well executed and a prime
example of how a company can use Facebook for attraction of new employees. The page consists
of a lot more than just a wall. As can be seen on the screenshots in the appendix, KMD also
shows some pictures of their offices, and on the right side of the page they have several subpages, with a list of events and available jobs, but also with advice on how to make a good CV
and information about a student network.
2.4.1.3 Stimuli 2 - Ernst & Young
The second page that was shown to the interviewees was that of the Danish department of Ernst
& Young, one of the leading global auditor companies. Ernst & Young’s Facebook page was
launched on March 16, 2011. The company writes on the page that they decided to be present on
Facebook in order to meet their audience on their ‘home ground’. This page was chosen as a
second form of stimuli, to give the interviewees an even clearer picture of the usage of Facebook
for attracting and recruiting employees, and to show that very diverse companies use Facebook
for this matter. Furthermore, since Ernst & Young’s Facebook page is relatively new, it is also
rather basic, and thus it would be interesting to see if the interviewees had different opinions on
the two pages, and if the fact that Ernst &Young’s page was basic would be perceived
negatively.
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2.5 Evaluation criteria for the study
Unlike the evaluation criteria of a quantitative study, the qualitative study does not have a
number of guidelines to ensure the quality of the study. Therefore we have chosen to adopt
Kvales’ way of evaluating qualitative studies, since he believes that the terms replication and
validity in a conceptualized form can be relevant for the evaluation of interviews. Therefore the
understanding of the verification of this study takes its “starting point in the life-world and daily
language, where questions about reliable observations, about valid arguments and the reliability
from the individual case to the second step in the daily social interaction” (Kvale, 1997, p. 227).
2.5.1 Generalization
When trying to understand the ability to replicate the study, Kvale argues that there can be taken
an analytical generalization (Kvale, 1997, p. 228). This type of generalization uses a logic, which
emphasizes that one statement saying that things are in one way, does not exclude the
opportunity that things could also be in another way.
By taking a look at the conditions for this thesis, generally it can be argued that the findings in
the study can be seen as legitimate, except for two problems. The first is that the investigation
has only taken place amongst people who are still studying. This means that this group could
have another approach to the way they are going to find a job than people who are already on the
job market, because they do not have a large network to rely on yet. It is possible that other
people representing generation Y would approach job seeking in another way, than people going
to find their first job, but common for both the students and the working individuals in
generation Y is that they are active users of social networking sites and therefore it can be argued
that the relation to social media should be the same amongst all these individuals, and since this
is the primary study field, this issue should not be a problem. The other problem that should be
highlighted is that we only performed four semi-structured focus interviews. Related to this we
would like to emphasize that we tried to raise the level of the investigation by interviewing
students from three different study areas – two business administration bachelor students, one
language master student and one business administration master student.
2.5.2 Validity
Related to social research, many researchers have abandoned the idea about describing society in
an objective way (D. I. Jacobsen, 2005, p. 214). In this context it is referred to as interPage 16 of 88
subjectivity, which means that it is the closest that we will ever get to the truth, dependent on
several individuals agreeing that something is a true description.
Considering the validity, we have used the interviewees’ own interpretation resources, which
means that we through the interview sometimes rephrased some of the interviewees’ statements
during the interview, in order to ensure that our interpretation of what was said, is conform to
that of the interviewees.
Another aspect when trying to increase the validity of a study deals with the problem that
interviewees might not always answer honestly and in depth to the asked questions. This is
something we as interviewers have been especially concerned about. Therefore, our interviews
took place in quiet environments to ensure the privacy of our interviewees and to make sure they
would not feel uncomfortable about expressing their subjective meaning. The interviews were
held in different settings that we let the interviewees choose in order to make them feel as
relaxed as possible. All our interviewees seemed relaxed and at easy throughout the interview, so
we believe that we succeeded in making our interviewees comfortable and thus ensure that they
were honest and answered our questions in depth.
Page 17 of 88
Chapter 3 – Social media and social networking sites
The aim of this chapter is to give the reader an overview of the evolution that has happened
online in the last decade, which is important to get a more holistic overview of social media, and
more specifically the rise in popularity of social networking sites. Furthermore, the terms social
media and social networking sites will be defined and explained thoroughly, and finally the
history of social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn, including how these sites are used and
their popularity in Denmark, will be brought to light.
3.1 Moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
As Newman and Thomas (2009, p. 6) argue, “the line between what Web 2.0 is and what it isn’t
is very unclear and open to interpretation. It encompasses a set of attitudes, ideas, and thoughts
rather than definitive technologies”. Therefore, deciding on an accurate definition of Web 2.0 is
difficult, and consequently the following will explain the idea of what Web 2.0 is, rather than
defining it.
O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 for the first time during a conference in late 2003 in the realm
of the burst of the dot-com bubble (O'Peilly, 2005). While the name might give the impression
that Web 2.0 is an entirely new version of the Internet, this is not the case. Brennan argues that
the term Web 2.0 describes the evolution of the Internet from a static environment that focused
on one-way provision or receipt of information (what is popularly called Web 1.0) to an
interactive community where it is possible for users to communicate, share, post, blog, and create
content in real time (Brennan, 2010, p.8-12). Basically, Web 1.0 was about massive amounts of
data, while the new Web 2.0 is about massive amounts of content (Newman & Thomas, 2009,
p.13). Tapscott and Williams use metaphors to illustrate the difference:
“Think of the first iteration of the Web as a digital newspaper. You could open its
pages and observe its information, but you couldn’t modify or interact with it. … The
new Web is fundamentally different in both its architecture and applications. Instead
of a digital newspaper, think of a shared canvas where every splash of paint
contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to modify or build
on. … the new Web is principally about participating rather than about passively
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receiving information.” (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p.37)
There are three trends that are the main cause of this transition from a static to a collaborative
web (A. McAfee, 2009). The first is the emergence of free and easy platforms for
communication and interaction, such as software tools for starting a blog, which made it possible
for people without technical expertise to start creating content online. The second trend is the
move away from imposed structure to lack thereof, which made it possible for the masses and
not just a few individuals to decide what is ‘best’. Finally, the third trend is the mechanisms
created to let structure emerge again. These last two are best illustrated by an example, namely
the shift from using Yahoo, which let taxonomists1 create and update the structure of the search
engine, to Google, where, among others, the number of times a web site is linked to by other web
sites decides its popularity.
As can be seen from the above, explaining exactly what Web 2.0 is and how and when it
emerged is not easy, since it is not something tangible that can be described precisely – and it has
not been an obvious shift. To make it more concrete, prominent examples of sites that represent
Web 2.0 include Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube and Google (O'Reilly, 2005). Especially
Wikipedia, sometimes called “one of the leaders in the Web 2.0 space”, is often highlighted as a
prime example of Web 2.0 (Newman & Thomas, 2009, p.7). However, Wikipedia only covers
certain aspects of Web 2.0. Experts on the subject of social media have used what they call ‘the
4Cs’ to describe the idea of what Web 2.0 is all about: Communication, connection, cooperation
and collaboration (Cook, 2008, p.13). Wikipedia covers the two latter, namely cooperation and
collaboration, where communication and connection is more about individuals and their desire to
interact with their surroundings. A main example of platforms where communication and
connection are in the centre, are social media and social networking sites, and these subjects will
be covered in the following.
3.2 Social media
The concept of social media is of increased interest to many organizations, as they try to identify
how to make profitable use of these media. This raises the question: What exactly is social
media?
1
Taxonomy is the classification of things.
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Safko & Brake define social media as “activities, practices, and behaviours among communities
of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational
media, which are Web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit
content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios” (Safko & Brake, 2009, p.6). This
definition should provide the reader with an initial idea of what exactly social media comprises
of, and is worth keeping in mind in the following, where social media will be discussed.
As mentioned in the above section, it was in the early stages of communicating through the web
only possible to express oneself statically in one-way written form, without the opportunity to
participate in online dialogue. This communication form recently shifted, and it is now possible
for users to participate in dynamic online conversations, so there has been a shift from one-way
communication to dialogue (Beer & Burrows, 2007).
These new technologies are becoming increasingly popular in organizations, which is
noteworthy, since it is already possible to communicate in many other ways, for instance by use
of phone, e-mail, mail and instant messaging. Social media have the ability to knit people
together through online platforms in a much boarder context and target numerous of people
globally when sharing information and providing feedback (A. P. McAfee, 2006, p.21-28). In
online social platforms it allows users to participate actively in discussions and debates, and at
the same time, sharing the posted information with others watching in the network and thereby is
gaining insight into the shared thoughts, views, information and personal details (Beer &
Burrows, 2007).
Communicating on the internet has changed dramatically during recent years; today it is easier
than ever for ordinary people to participate in discussions online through social media and it is
no longer only a possibility for experts and IT programmers. The use of social media is simple
and accessible to everybody (Tapscott & Williams, 2006). The fact that social media is available
to everybody and not only IT experts, makes it a media, which content is highly user-generated.
The online content is added by various types of people, and contributes to a diverse online
community that has never been seen before (Baumann, 2006). One of the most important points
to notice when talking about social media is the collaboration amongst various people.
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If the above findings are compared to the definition of social media provided in the beginning of
the section, the definition turns out to fit very well. It is mentioned that social media takes place
online, and that it is possible to share information, knowledge and opinions. What this definition
lacks is the fact that social network is able to target in broad contexts and that its content is
characterized by being user-generated.
To sum it up, social media consists of activities, practices, and behaviours among communities
of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational
media, which are Web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit
content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios. It furthermore has the ability to target
people in broader contexts and the content of the social network is characterized by being usergenerated.
According to Kaplan and Haenlein, social media can be classified into six categories. These
categories - with examples of the categories in brackets - are blogs, collaborative projects
(Wikipedia), social networking sites (Facebook), content communities (YouTube), virtual social
worlds (Second Life), and virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft) (A. M. Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2010, p. 59-68). Clearly, some of them are more relevant for organizations than others.
Thetype of social media that has gained most attention by organizations recently is without a
doubt social networking sites, and so the rest of this thesis will focus on this part of social media.
3.3 Social networking sites
As argued previously, the focus on this thesis will be on Facebook and LinkedIn, two of the most
well-known social networking sites. Therefore it is relevant to get a clearer understanding of
what exactly a social networking site is, and this will be elaborated on in the following.
Social networking sites are platforms that encourage its users to participate actively by creating
personal profiles containing information about them, which is done through the social
networking sites where it is possible for the individual to invite their network of friends and
colleagues to join and gain access to each other’s profiles. An important key in those networks is
the ability to send e-mails and start instant message conversations with the “friends” inside the
network (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
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Today there exist hundreds of social networking sites focusing on different interests, and these
sites have attracted millions of users, most of which are visiting the sites at least once a day. The
sites have individually purposes, some focus on maintaining pre-existing networks, while others
connect people who do not know each other, but share common characteristics like political
view, sexuality, religion, or nationality. The social networking sites also vary in the extend they
makes it possible for the user to post pictures or communicate or share video and photos online.
When joining a social network site, the user is asked to fill out questions about him- or herself,
often about age, location, interests, and a more broad section where it is possible to describe
yourself. A profile is then created based on the provided information. It furthermore varies how
the possibilities are in relation to make the profiles public or not. A site like Facebook has
features where you can hide some parts of your profile to strangers and thereby only share
information with the approved network. Social networking sites have become a global
phenomena (D. M. Boyd & Ellison, 2007), where one of the main privileges is the focus on the
friendships developed, but also the importance of strengthening existing relationships is a
premise for using social networking sites (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007).
Boyd argues that the currency of social networking sites is based on the online relationship with
friends, this include old classmates, offline friends, colleagues, corporations or brands, family
and lovers. She believes that the main difference between offline and online friendships is the
degree of emotional involvement, because with offline friends there is a tendency to create more
emotional, supportive friendships containing trust (D. Boyd, 2006). The online relationships do
not take as much effort from the individual to maintain, since it only needs little performance in
the online forum (Tong, Heide, & Langwell, 2008).
To sum up the characteristics of social networking sites, it is found that these sites give a persons
network access to its online life where it is possible to interact actively. The different sites have
some individual purposes and many of them share common characteristics. In some networks it
is possible to maintain the information shared. Social networking sites do not have any
geographical limitations. There are a big difference in the relationship to online and offline
friends, since the offline friendships requires much more emotional involvement than the online
relationships.
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If these characteristics of social networking sites are compared to Kaplan and Haenlein’s
definition of social networking sites, it can be discovered that both the findings and the definition
emphasize that the way of sharing personal information is an important part. Next it is important
that there exists a relation to friends and colleagues, and it is furthermore required that it is
possible to interact. What the definition does not express is the degree of emotional involvement,
which should also be considered.
3.3.2 The history of social networking sites
Now that the reader has been provided with an idea of what a social networking site is, it is
relevant to briefly turn to the history of social networking sites, since a basic knowledge of
where and when social networking sites emerged, will give a further understanding of the
phenomenon.
The term social networking site may only have been widely known and used for a couple of
years, but the concept is nothing new. The first social networking sites with profile pages and
friends connections were introduces as early as 1995 in the US, the most noticeable and still
existing today, being Classmates.com (Shih, 2010). The next major evolution in the area was in
2002 when Friendster.com was launched. Where Classmates.com was intended to keep in touch
with former classmates, i.e. people one already knew, Friendster.com wanted to help people
create an entirely new network online (Newman & Thomas, 2009, p.42). Since 2002, things have
speeded up, as the overview of launch dates of major social networking sites on the next page
clearly shows, and today hundreds of different social networking sites exist.
Which site is the most popular differs across the globe, and many countries have their own social
networking sites. Denmark is no exception, with the most popular site probably being Arto, an
online meeting place, predominantly used by children and teenagers.
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Figure 1: Boyd and Ellison (2007)
Since many organizations in today’s business environment are multinational or global, it makes
most sense to look at social networking sites that are popular around the world – and here two
sites have clearly emerged - Facebook and LinkedIn. Therefore, the focus in the rest of the thesis
will be on these two sites.
3.4 Facebook
Facebook is the world’s largest global social networking site, both in terms of number of users
and time spent on the site (Shih, 2010). The site defines itself as “a social utility that helps
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people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers” (Facebook,
2011a).
Facebook was launched by Harvard-student Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004 (Facebook,
2011a) and was originally intended to be a study network only for Harvard students. Later on it
was expanded to include first other Ivy League universities, then all universities and colleges in
the US, and finally the public. This procedure is often highlighted as one of the main reasons for
Facebook’s popularity, since it created a feeling of exclusiveness and trustworthiness around the
brand (Shih, 2010).
Today, Facebook has more than 500 million active users, defined as users who have returned to
the site within the last 30 days (Facebook, 2011a). This number is likely to continue to increase
in the next years, as it is commonly known that success begets more success, especially in this
case, since a site’s value for users increases exponentially with the number of users involved
(Shih, 2010).
3.4.2 Facebook in Denmark
Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site in Denmark. The newest figures as of
March 2011 estimate that more than 2.6 million Danes are now on Facebook, which corresponds
to almost 50% of the total population (SocialBakers, 2011). Figure 2, the pie-chart of the agedistribution of Danish Facebook users shows that all age groups of the Danish population are
actively using Facebook, but the main age-groups are people aged 18-24, 25-34 and 35-44. The
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focus of this thesis is on Generation Y, which mainly represent the age groups 18-24 and 25-34,
with 21% and 23% of the total users, respectively.
3.4.3 How Facebook can be used in a business context
Facebook provides a platform for users, so they can quickly connect with their family, friends,
co-workers etc. in various network groups. In the business context, Facebook can be used for
networking, intercompany communication, and to organize and track events (Safko & Brake,
2009, p.452). Facebook is often seen as belonging to people’s private lives, but what makes it
valuable for organizations as well, is the number of people using it. Especially in countries like
Denmark, where half of the population is online, it provides an opportunity to reach out to a lot
of people.
3.5 LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social networking site, and the world’s largest professional network (LinkedIn,
2010). Reid Hoffman and four co-workers officially launched the site in California in 2003,
which means that the company is in fact older than its competitor, Facebook. In the last couple of
years, LinkedIn has seen an explosive growth in its member numbers. At the end of 2003,
LinkedIn had 81.000 members in the network that quickly evolved to 4 million members in
December 2005, which grew tenfold to 40 million members in May 2009 (LinkedIn, 2010;
LinkedIn, 2011b). Today (Spring 2011), LinkedIn has more than 90 million members in over
200 countries and on average, a new member joins every second of every day, or approximately
one million every 12 days (LinkedIn, 2011a).
3.5.2 What LinkedIn can be used for
During the 8 years that have passed since LinkedIn was launched, a lot has happened on the site.
In March 2005, LinkedIn Jobs was launched and made it possible for employers to post job
positions online (LinkedIn, 2011b). Today, LinkedIn has a whole site dedicated to the attraction
of new talent – talent.linkedin.com. But LinkedIn is about much more than just attracting new
talent. The primary purpose of the site is to provide an online professional contact database of its
members, and allow these members to link their profilers to other professionals that they know
and trust (Safko & Brake, 2009, p.54). This implies that the target network is business
professionals, and users tend to skew older than on other social networking sites, with an average
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age of 40. In contrast to Facebook, people do not spend a lot of time engaging on LinkedIn,
instead they “log in occasionally to accept or initiate a connect request, search for people or send
a message” (Shih, 2010).
As with most other social networking sites, LinkedIn has endless opportunities. The site’s main
feature is the possibility for members to find jobs and business opportunities in response to
recommendations from a contact. Employers can furthermore list job opportunities and search
for potential candidates, while job seekers can review the profiles of the person who is hiring to
see if they are connected. (Safko & Brake, 2009, p. 56)
3.5.3 LinkedIn in Denmark
According to Quantcast, Denmark has over 550.000 members on LinkedIn as of January 2011,
which is the 14th highest measured on number of members (Quantcast, 2011). However, when
taking into account that Denmark has a population of approximately 5,5 million members
(Center for borger.dk, 2011), this means that more than 10% of the Danish population has a
profile on LinkedIn today. In comparison, the number for the United States is 9% (27,7 million
people of a population of 307 million have a profile) (U.S Census Bureau, 2010) – so a higher
percentage of Danes than Americans, are now connected to LinkedIn.
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Chapter 4 – Theoretical part I
In order to understand why social networking sites have potential for attracting new employees,
it is important to be aware of the social context in which social media has been developed and
used, which will be the topic of this chapter. The chapter will define the hypermodern society
and the hypermodern individual, before explaining who Generation Y is, how they communicate,
what motivates them and what is important to them in relation to the workplace, which will be
used in the discussion in chapter 7.
4.1 The Hypermodern society and the hypermodern individual
According to the French author Gilles Lipovetsky, the post modern period is over, and instead
the current society is in the hypermodern period. Lipovetsky describes the hyper modern society
in the following way:
“Hypermodernity is a liberal society characterized by movement, fluidity and flexibility,
detached as never before from the great structuring principles of modernity, which have been
forced to adapt to the rhythm of hypermodernity so as not to disappear” (Lipovetsky, 2005,
p.11)
The sentence stating “detached as never before from the great structuring principles of
modernity” means that the new generation mainly consists of independent individuals that do not
rely on old norms and traditions. Their main focus is on themselves and they do not care very
much about other people compared to previous generations. As is stated directly, the society has
become liberalistic, and values flexibility and changes. The main focus of the hypermodern
society is on what is happening now as opposed to what will happen tomorrow. The individual in
the hypermodern society does not like to focus on the future, because he sees it as unpredictable
and, as Lipovetsky states, because: “the present is increasingly lived out in a sense of insecurity”
(Lipovetsky, 2005, p.39). However, recent events have made the individuals in the hypermodern
society concerned about the future – examples include the financial crisis and globalization,
which forces the individuals to be ready for changes.
The implications of this are that the hypermodern individual has to be ready for changes, and
thereby they focus on the presence. Lipovetsky describes the modern individual with reference to
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the Greek Narcissus, because of the individuals’ anxiety and fear. In Greek mythology,
Narcissus was incredibly handsome, but also very selfish, and he rejected those who approached
him. In the end, his self-centeredness punished him, and he was doomed to stare at himself in a
mirror for all eternity. Lipovetsky uses this story to demonstrate how the hyper modern
individuals are egocentric and focused on themselves. On a more positive note, this however also
results in them being a flexible and efficient generation (Lipovetsky, 2005, p.11).
Despite these big shifts in society, some things have not changed, because the individual’s need
as a heard animal still exists. People still feel the need to collaborate with others and to be part of
a community. Because of the huge changes in society and the development of computers and the
Internet, the hypermodern individuals have found new ways to fulfil this need – online. The way
the hypermodern individual communicates online is illustrated in the following citation:
“We are living in a time where people are chasing the 15 MB of fame. “I will be seen, therefore I
am” in many ways seems to be the modern rule for living. Whether it is in tv-shows such as X
Factor, De unge mødre (The young mothers), By på skrump (‘Shrinking’ town), Sandhedens time
(Moment of truth) etc. or on the internet through diary-blogs, Broadcast Yourself on YouTube or
through the numerous confession-sites out there. (…) The diary has moved away from the paper
and onto Facebook and the many diary-blogs; the confession chair has moved away from the
church, the partner and the best friend and onto the digital media. (…) We are chasing the
feeling of solidarity out there. We are chasing attention. (…) We are more than ever in love with
ourselves and have got all the opportunities to worship it and go crazy on all kinds of
platforms.” (Kromann & Jonsson, 2010, p.73).
What is especially important to notice from this is that it underlines that the individuals in the
hypermodern society are tempted to use social media to create an identity and to cover their
social needs. It is also used to network and to promote themselves.
4.2 Generation Y
The people in the contemporary society have just been argued to be hypermodern individuals –
but how does the description of generation Y fit with the hypermodern individual? This is the
question that the next section aims to clarify.
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Three generations are working side by side in the Danish labour market at the moment. The first
is the post-war generation, comprising of people born between 1945 and 1960. The generation
after that is generation X, who was born between 1961 and 1976, and finally there is generation
Y, born between 1977 and 1992 (Larsen, 2001). The youngest generation, Y, often also called
the millennium generation or the generation of the baby boomers (Tapscott, 2009, p.15-17), is an
important source in the future economic perspective, and therefore they are particularly worth
focusing on (Toops, 2010).
The Y-generation is a relatively small generation. Most members of the generation are still
studying, but will soon be finished with their education and will have their debut on the labour
market. What is especially worth noting about this generation is that they have grown up in a
wealthy society without any economically concerns, and this has had an impact on the way they
view the world. (Themsen, 2008)
Larsen characterizes the Y-generation in the following way:
“The young people have demands for life. They do not make any compromises, and they expect to
have it all. The young people are stretched out between high ideals. They are both disillusioned
and full of expectations.” (Larsen, 2001)
This quote supports some of the points mentioned in the previous section about the hypermodern
individual, since it reflects a generation that sees themselves as placed in a world with unlimited
opportunities (Themsen, 2008). It also supports the description of generation Y as the best
educated generation ever. They expect that their environment changes rapidly and they are
optimistic and see the whole world as one big play-ground. They are a spoiled generation, raised
as “project-kids” filtered in their parents’ infinite love. Key words such as self-awareness,
idealistic, international, development orientated, and innovation are some of the terms which best
describe what this young generation embodies (Themsen, 2008).
Therefore, the characteristics of generation Y can be summarized to be a small generation that
will be an important source in the future economic perspective. Generation Y shares a number of
similarities with the hypermodern individual, particularly the way they see themselves as placed
in a world with unlimited opportunities, which lie at their feet. Generation Y has the best
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education, they do not see limitations and they live in a changing world where they try to realize
themselves.
Next will be discussed what this means for members of the generation when entering the
workforce.
4.2.1 Generation Y and the labour market
The discussed generation Y has some advantages and disadvantages in relation to the labour
market, and this section will focus on the most important.
The generation fulfils many of the abilities that organizations demand today, such as approaching
problems in an alternative way and finding creative and efficient solutions. However, there are
also some negative sides that organizations should be aware of. Generation Y tends to be very
demanding, ambitious and individualistic. They know what they want, and they are likely to ask
for it. They furthermore expect a flexible working environment, high salary and selfactualization (Themsen, 2008).
These observations correlate very well with a study made by Berlingske Tidende in Denmark,
showing what factors are important to the individuals in generation Y, if he or she should choose
to start in a new job. The content of the work task turned out to be the most important matter for
nothing less than 69% of the respondents. Next, with respectively 15% and 7 %, were the
prosperity of the work environment and the possibility of developing career opportunities
(Larsen, 2001).
The above can teach the organizations that wish to attract employees from generation Y that the
content of the work has a big influence on whether or not the organization will be chosen or
rejected as a possible workplace, because the young generation chooses their workplace with
their heart and are ready to meet new challenges if necessary. The old ideology behind a job,
which provides stability, affiliation and one lifelong challenge, is no longer enough for these
people. They do not see a lifetime relationship with one workplace as a possibility, they do not
have a marked need for security, they seek challenges and therefore the job has to contribute to
the individuals’ personal development (Andersen, Larsen, & Schmidt, 2002).
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These observations generally fit very well with the theory about the hypermodern individual,
because it reflects a generation without any loyalty to the workplace, they are self-centered when
trying to use every opportunity that presents itself, and are constantly looking for new
opportunities to develop the most important project - themselves.
To sum it up, generation Y is able to fulfil many of the things that organizations demand today,
but organizations still must be aware that generation Y is a difficult generation to manage
because of their tendency to be self-centered. When they choose a job, the values they are
weighting are the organization’s environment, the prosperity of the work place and the
possibilities of developing their own career. This generation chooses the workplace with their
heart, they want challenges and the work has to contribute to their most important project,
themselves.
Now that it has been outlined what the next generation of workers focus on when choosing a job,
it is relevant to look at the two types of job seekers on the market, which will be done in the next
section.
4.2.2 Active and passive job seekers
In the labour market there are two types of job seekers, namely active and passive. Active job
seekers are the group of individuals who actively look for a new job, either because they are
currently unemployed, just finished their education or because they wish to find a new job.
People, who do not have intentions to leave their current position, but still keep an eye on the job
market, are in the category called passive job seekers. The Y-generation is a bit different from
what employers have been used to, because the way they live makes them more or less
constantly look for new and better job opportunities (Andersen et al., 2002). An investigation
performed by Lederne in Denmark shows that 62 % of the members of generation Y think that
five to eight years in one workplace is a realistic time perspective. This is a much shorter time
than their older colleagues, who point at nine years or more as a reasonable time limitation for
one job (Lederne, 2010). This study supports the theory of generation Y as a progressive and
constantly developing generation. Tulgan states that generation Y will be ”the most highperforming workforce in history for those who know how to manage them properly.” (Tulgan,
2009).
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This statement shows that generation Y is an important source for the organizations, but they
need to know how to manage them.
In short, this section has showed that there generally exists two types of job seekers, passive and
active. Generation Y, however, is in a new and different category, because the way of seeking
jobs has to fit with their personality. Therefore, these individuals are constantly looking for new
and better opportunities.
Since it has turned out that generation Y is constantly looking for new job opportunities, it is
interesting to find out where to find these people. This is what the next section will present.
4.2.3 Technology and generation Y
To get in touch with generation Y it is necessary to search for them where they are. An important
tool in the generation’s everyday life is the use of modern technology. They use it almost
intuitively and have a different relationship with the use of these remedies than the older
generation does. Therefore a special advantage of this generation is their ability to contribute
with knowledge of more types of technology. One of the more popular technologies amongst
generation Y is the use of social networking sites (A. McAfee, 2009). Many of the online users
of these sites experience its way of creating a social environment where everybody is welcome
and which can be used to find and share information between its users (A. P. McAfee, 2006,
p.21-28). These constant interactions with the technology that the generation has, does not only
make it an obvious choice for the organization to use as an attraction tool - the young generation
actually expects that there is a possibility of finding their next job online (Bartram, 2002, p.261273). Therefore, social networking sites are a perfect place to approach new candidates when
organizations are looking for the best and brightest new employees.
In the next section the focus will be on how generation Y uses social networking sites for
personal branding, which is important when trying to understand why and how generation Y uses
these sites.
4.2.4 Personal Branding
In the above section it was shown that generation Y are active users of online technology. To
gain a deeper understanding of why these sites are so important to the individual of this
generation, the concept of personal branding will be outlined.
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According to the neoclassical paradigm it is claimed that individuals pursue their own interests,
and this is independent from time and place. The individual will, if possible, make a rational
choice in order to obtain his or her goal in the most efficient way. (B. Jacobsen, Juul, Laursen, &
Rasborg, 2010, p.18) The reason for the need to brand oneself can be found in the creation of
identity. A person’s self-identity is reflected based on their social identity, meaning the way the
individuals actually are, which is combined with who a person wishes to be, the self-identity.
With the purpose of framing the environment, individuals have the need to show the
environment who they are in the social world (Jacobsen et al. 2010, p. 161-162), because by
telling the world who they are, they will know from response who they are and this is an
important part of the individuals existence. In short this means that the individuals know who
they are, based on what they are told (Jacobsen et al. 2010, p. 161-162).
A personal brand can be defined as“the synthesis of all the expectations, images, and perceptions
it creates in the minds of others when they see or hear your name.”(Rampersad, 2008, p.34-37)
Thus, it can be seen that it is a tactical way for the individual to know his or hers own strengths
and thereby communicate it to others in the most efficient way, so that others will relate certain
properties to them. The rise of social networking sites has made it possible to promote oneself
online, and to make others inside the network aware of ones strengths. This is a new opportunity
that the young generation uses with great interest. There is an increased focus on the need for
branding oneself in the generation, and social networking sites are making it easy to the
individual to promote themselves through their channels. One example of a social networking
site that incorporates the need for personal branding is LinkedIn. The site created the group
“BrandYou” in October 2010, a European project with the purpose of making it easy for the user
to gain knowledge about how to make the profile stand out from the crowd and brand themself in
a positive way. This happens with professional advice from LinkedIn and a group of marketing
specialists (RealWire, 2010). This is interesting because it shows that online recruitment is not
something that might happen in the next years - it is already there, and generation Y expect to be
approached through this media.
As can be seen, generation Y also uses social networking sites to create awareness about
themselves. How they communicate with their network will be outlined in the next section.
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4.2.5 How Generation Y communicates online
As was seen in the above section, social networking sites offer an online communication forum
that generation Y can relate to, and at the same time it has been shown that it is a place where it
is possible for organizations to meet the generation when they want to attract them. In order to
gain deeper knowledge of the importance of social networking sites when attracting new
employees, it is relevant to know how the young generation communicates with their network.
There is no doubt that members of generation Y are good at creating bonds online. In Denmark,
2.6 million people on average spend 8-9 hours every month on Facebook. Worldwide, Facebook
has 600 million active users (SocialSematic, 2011), so the site is very popular.
This generation has a whole culture of collaboration and it is therefore a very essential part of
their life. They need access to their network everywhere, both the private and the professional,
and therefore it is incorporated as part of most electronic devices that this generation uses (PIKA,
2010).
One of the features of many of social networking sites is the possibility of posting a status, the so
called “status update”. A status update is a way of sharing whatever you think or do in that exact
moment. It is a way of maintaining relations with people you would not be in contact with
otherwise, and these posted comments contribute to that. They furthermore help the individual in
attracting attention, so they will not be overlooked. There are almost no limitations as to what the
individual can tell the other users in the network - it can vary from telling others how happy you
are, different types of confessions and aggressive expressions. Common for the status updates
are that people can give supporting comments, and this can have a therapeutic effect for the
individual to read these comments. (Jonsson & Kromann, 2010, p.77)
In summation it has been found that the individual’s communication habits rely on several
factors. Their ideological world-picture make the generation feel that they need to stay connected
as much as possible and they especially prefer to use the status updates. This is because it helps
to give the other users a memorable picture about how perfect they are, but it also functions as
self-therapy.
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4.2.6 Motivation and job design
As argued previously, there is an increased need amongst generation Y to brand themselves. This
also influences the way organizations need to approach generation Y, so that they can see how
their dreams and idealization of the perfect life are realized through a specific job. Some of the
factors that motivate the individual will be discussed in the following.
Inspired by the motivational theories by Herzberg and McClelland, Hackman and Oldham have
developed one of the most significant motivation theories - work design theory. They argue that
a well-designed job is able to support employee motivation. The model suggests five points that
organizations must be aware of, if they want to have motivated employees. First, the idea is that
employees need to have various tasks; this means that the organisations need to avoid
monotonous job designs. Secondly, they also propose that task identity matters. Task identity can
be explained as the process where the individual has the opportunity to participate from
beginning to the end of a job, instead of only participating in a piece of the process. Thirdly, they
recommend task significance, which refers to the degree the task has meaningful impact on
others, also understood as the importance of the job. Fourthly, autonomy is the degree to which
the individual can chose to solve a specific task, both within scheduling, decision making and
determine how the task is carried out. The last point is feedback, which refers to the importance
of giving the individual insight to the performance and outcome of the job. (I. Brooks, 2009)
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Chapter 5 – Theoretical part II
Now that the theoretical framework of generation Y have been described, this next section aims
at explaining what the concepts of recruitment and attraction consist of, which will be followed
by a description of the main theories, including the exposure-attitude hypothesis theory,
expectancy theory and Schein’s three levels of culture. These will later be used to analyse and
discuss the material from the qualitative study.
5.1 Recruitment
There is broad agreement between scholars that effective human resource management (HRM)
has become increasingly significant, and an important part of HRM is recruitment (Barber, 1998,
p.1-2). This will become even more important in the future, when labour markets will face labour
shortages due to the aging of the population, the decreasing birth rate etc. However, while the
situation may be different today due to the economic crisis, the ability to recruit competent
applicants is still of uttermost importance, as there is general agreement that people are an
organization’s most important asset, and that sometimes people can make the difference between
the succeeding and the failing of an organization (Ehrhart and Ziegert, 2005). Cisco, an
American information technology company for example has said that “the only thing worth more
than a bright new idea is a bright new hire” (Barber, 1998, pp. 1-2). Consequently, recruitment
in organizations has received increased attention from scholars in the last decades, as they have
examined how organizations can recruit in the most effective way. This has, however, also
created uncertainty about what the term “recruitment” means, because researchers have struggled
to determine what the term should exactly cover. According to Barber (1998, p.5), it is important
to distinguish between recruitment processes and recruitment outcomes, which researchers
tended to confuse in the past. This has lead to a new type of definition with focus on this
distinction. Other researchers (e.g (Ployhart, 2006)) have adopted this view on recruitment and
attraction since Barber’s definition, thereby validating its assumptions, and thus this thesis will
adopt Barber’s view on recruitment:
Recruitment includes those practices and activities carried on by the
organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential
employees. (Barber, 1998, p.5)
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This definition implies that the outcome of recruitment is the identification and attraction of
potential employees, which means that the purpose of recruitment is to identify and attract
potential employees (Barber, 1998, p.5). Furthermore argues that the primary objective of
recruitment is the attraction of future employees, and that recruitment activities are intended to
help organizations locate potential applicants, and persuade them to pursue, and ultimately
accept, employment with the organization. To make the above definition of recruitment more
tangible, she uses examples of organizational activities that are encompassed in recruitment, such
as advertising and producing recruitment brochures, but also more radical things such as
modifying the work environment are included.
This distinction between recruitment and attraction as its outcome is seen as relevant in the
context of this thesis, since there is a general agreement that the main purpose of social media,
and more specifically social networking sites, in HRM is to attract people to the organization. As
a consequence, the rest of this thesis will focus specifically on the attraction of potential
employees.
5.2 Attraction
Having established what recruitment is, and more importantly the relationship between
recruitment and attraction, it is relevant to look more closely at what exactly attraction entails.
The term has been broadly defined in the literature and a widely-used definition is the following,
coined for the first time by S. L. Rynes in 1991:
Attraction is getting potential candidates to view the organization as a positive
place to work. (Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005, p.901-919)
This definition is believed to be useful for the purpose of this thesis, since it takes a broad
approach and implies what the main purpose of attraction is – namely to get potential candidates
to view the organization as a positive place to work. However, a minor problem with the
definition is that it can be argued to be lacking specificity, as was also the case with the above
definition of recruitment. It does not explain directly what attraction is by giving any tangible
description of what the concept entails. However, it gives an idea of what being attracted to an
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organization means for the individual, and thus it is believed that the above definition gives a
satisfactory picture of what attraction in the context of organizations entails.
According to Barber, it is important to be aware of the fact that attraction must occur throughout
the entire recruitment process, and thus attraction must be assessed at multiple stages (Barber,
1998, p.11). However, for the purpose of this thesis it is mostly relevant to look at one part of
this attraction, namely to get individuals interested in and attracted to the organization in the first
place. It can be recognized that attraction is also important later in the recruitment process, but it
is believed that the primary strength of social media is to get individuals interested in
organizations in the first place, and thus this is where the focus of this thesis will be.
5.3 Why are individuals attracted to organizations?
The theories that will be used to analyze and discuss the collected qualitative data have been
chosen based on investigations made by Ehrhart and Ziegert, who have developed an extensive
theoretical framework that consists of three underlying meta-theories (Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005,
pp.901-919). These meta-theories describe both how and why individuals are attracted to
organizations, and the connection between these theories is illustrated in Figure 3.
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The figure incorporates all three meta-theories to show how they are related. As the focus of this
thesis is mainly to understand individuals’ attraction from the view of the organization, so that
organizations can use this knowledge when considering how to best attract individuals, it has
been decided mainly to focus on one of the metatheories, the environment processing
metatheory. If the reader wishes to further study the framework, it can be found in Ehrhart and
Ziegert (2005). Furthermore, the thesis will centre on the link between the perceived
environment and attraction (see figure), because this link describes how the relationship between
personal characteristics and environmental characteristics influences the individuals’ perception
and thereby the way he or she is attracted. This part of the meta-theory consists of three theories,
the Exposure-attitude hypothesis, Expectancy theory and the Generalizable decision processing
model. The thesis will use two of the theories, namely Expectancy theory and the Exposureattitude hypothesis, as these are believed to be the most relevant in the context of this thesis.
Furthermore, Ehrhart and Ziegert’s framework has been expanded and includes Schein’s Three
levels of Culture. This is because Schein’s theory deals with three levels in the development of
the individuals’ values, and these values are what the individual uses to develop criteria related
to their ideal work environment. The three theories will now be presented, first by introducing
the Environment processing metatheory, and then by discussing the three above mentioned
theories.
5.3.1 The Environment processing metatheory
The first metatheory is named ‘the environment processing metatheory’, and essentially states
that the actual environment characteristics influence the perceived environment characteristics,
which in turn determine applicant attraction:
Actual environment characteristics  Perceived environment characteristics  Applicant
attraction
Generally it can be said that what decides how individuals perceive an environment is naturally
based on the actual environment, but the perceived environment differs between individuals
based on which environment characteristics they focus on and how they generally process
information about the environment. This is important to keep in mind, but from the
organization’s it is more interesting to look at the second relationship, namely the one that leads
to applicant attraction.
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5.3.1.1 The exposure-attitude hypothesis
The exposure-attitude hypothesis states that mere repeated exposure of an individual to an object
enhances his or her attitude toward it (Zajonc, 1968). This implies that repeated exposure to an
object yields increasingly positive evaluations of it. The hypothesis has been studied in the
context of organizations as well, and these studies have shown that familiarity with an
organization is positively related to ratings of its attractiveness, and more specifically in the
context of recruitment, that applicants’ perceptions of an organizational environment in terms of
its familiarity were ultimately related to responding positively to a recruitment advertisement
(Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005, p.901-919).
5.3.1.2 Expectancy theory
Expectancy theory was developed by Vroom, an American psychologist, in 1964 and argued that
“the motivation to behave in a particular way is determined by an individual’s expectation that
behaviour will lead to a particular outcome, multiplied by the preference or valence that person
has for that outcome” (I. Brooks, 2006; I. Brooks, 2009, p.71-73). Vroom furthermore argued
that human behaviour is directed by subjective probability, the individual’s expectation that his
or her behaviour will lead to a particular outcome. In other words this means that people choose
an organization in which to work that they believe will be the most instrumental in obtaining
their valued outcomes (Schneider, 1987, p.437), which leads to the following equation:
Motivation (M) = Expectation (E) x Valence (V)
The importance of expectancy theory in the context of applicant attraction is that it includes the
notion that individuals look for different organizations depending on what their desires are and
their perception of the organization’s ability to satisfy their desires (Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005,
p.901-919).
Since expectancy theory is one of the most widely studied and accepted models of decision
making, it has been used extensively in studies about job application decisions, which in most
cases is the result of applicant attraction – and has also received some criticism, since many of
these studies have failed to provide support for the model and thus it is questionable if
expectancy theory is useful in this context (Barber, 1998, p.47-48). Furthermore, a potential issue
with expectancy theory is that it is compensatory, i.e. a “high” score on one of the two
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dimensions can offset possible “low” scores on another. This issue has been addressed in several
studies, which have lead to somewhat diverging conclusions. Most studies have shown, however,
that job application decisions are non-compensatory, which makes good sense since clearly
people will not be motivated if for example the offered pay falls below a certain level, regardless
of the other factor (Barber, 1998, p.47-48).
5.4 The effect of culture
In this section the theory behind culture will be highlighted. This will contribute to the basic
theory in which the quantitative investigation will be analyzed through later in this report. But
first a definition of culture:
“Culture is everything that people have, think, and do as members of their society” (Holt, 1998,
p.360-391).
Thereby are norms, values, attitudes, beliefs what bind a culture together in a social structure.
This knowledge can be used to understand the underlying values that the individual develops in
relation to the ideal work place, and how those values influence how the individual chooses his
or her dream job based on the perception of the working environment, the characteristics which
are weighted are based on the values which are important to the individual. To study this,
Schein’s model “Levels of culture” will be discussed.
5.4.1 Schein
Schein states that culture can be analyzed at different levels. A level is the degree that the culture
is visible to the observer. By this is meant how easy it is to observe values, norms, and rules of
behaviour are. The next three sections will outline each level.
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5.4.1.1 Artifacts
Artifacts refer to the surface level, also called the top of the iceberg and are the visible part of
culture (what you see, hear and feel) that you meet when interacting with a culture different than
ones own. The artifacts are everything visible to the observer, such as architecture of physical
environment, language, technology, products, artistic creations, clothing, manners of address,
emotional displays, myths and stories (Schein, 1992, p.16-27).
An important point about this level is that the artifacts, besides being easy to observe, are
difficult to decipher. Schein states that “it is especially dangerous to try to infer the deeper
assumptions from artifacts alone because one’s interpretation will inevitably be projections of
one’s own feelings and reactions” (Ibid.).
This means that individuals, who observe something in an unfamiliar culture, will not be able to
know what the underlying meaning of certain things are; they can only guess and make their own
assumptions based on their own feelings and reactions. There are two ways to understand the
artifacts - one is to participate and live in the culture for years, the other is to try to analyze the
culture’s values, norms and rules. Such an investigation is possible in the next level (Ibid).
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5.4.1.2 Espoused Values
According to Schein, this is the level where it is possible to predict some of the behaviour that
can be observed at the artifact level. Values are individual beliefs that have not yet been accepted
as a valuable solution of problems. This is because they have a higher consciousness level than
the basic assumptions, because they are discussable and not accepted as the true reality. This
means that new assumptions and thoughts are created based on the value level, which means that
it is possible through group experience to discover how things work this could for the individual
lead to assumptions about how things are, instead of questioning them. Thereby there is a risk of
interpreting possible behaviour wrong (Ibid).
Furthermore, Schein argues that espoused values are important, because they aim to predict what
a person is going to do or say in a given situation. Espoused values are - unlike the actual values
- not based on earlier experiences in the organization. Therefore it is important to be careful
when investigating the value level and if one tries to it is important to discriminate between those
that are consistent with underlying assumptions and those that exist (Ibid).
In order to understand this deeper level and be able to predict future behaviour correctly, the
level of basic assumptions will have to be understood.
5.4.1.3 Basic assumptions
To really understand a culture, it is important to go to the deepest level of assumptions and
beliefs. Schein observes that a group’s underlying assumptions can be such an integrated part of
a group that they will no longer be common values. Instead they become an integrated part of
behavioural interpretation, because they are taken for granted and drop out of awareness. In the
end it is believed that things work in a certain way and will influence the individual to act
emotionally, and to think and perceive specific events. (Schein, 1992, p.16-27).
Schein states: ”Basic assumptions, in the sense in which I want to define the concept, have
become so taken for granted that one finds little variation within a cultural unit” (Ibid). Thereby
do the basic assumptions make up an invisible base in the culture that creates a cultural
paradigm, and this supports the way the groups’ members interpret and create a true reality. The
paradigm is the way the group interpret and end up creating a common reality. The paradigm
becomes the culture’s reality. If it is seen in relation to the artifacts and the espoused values, the
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basic assumptions creates consensus between the artifacts and the values. This means that it
supports the creation of the way people in the culture think about what is reality and how it
functions, and it also supports the way people in the group will approach problems and
influences how the group members behave (Ibid).
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Chapter 6 – Empirical data
The following section will provide the reader with an overview of the findings from the
qualitative study performed and present a quantitative study about the use of social media in
Danish businesses. The two studies will lay the foundation for the discussion that will follow in
chapter 7.
6.1 The qualitative study
In this section the main findings from the four focused interviews will be presented. First, the
four interviewees will be briefly characterized to give an idea of who they are, and then the main
topics discussed in the interviews will be described. The following will only go through the main
points related to the use of social networking sites privately and for attraction.
6.1.1 The interviewees
A total of four interviews were conducted with individuals that represent generation Y. They
have some characteristics in common – they are all students at Aarhus School of Business, and
all of them are active on both Facebook and LinkedIn.
The first interviewee was Signe Marie, a 24-year-old girl studying corporate communication on a
master level, who furthermore works as a student worker at Vestas and is in the executive
committee of ‘Unge Kommunikatører’ (Young Communicators). She has been active on
Facebook for almost four years, but did not have a profile on LinkedIn until recently.
Interviewee number two was 23-year-old Trine, who studies Business administration and
economics and is currently on the 6th semester of her bachelor. Besides studying, Trine is
working as a sales and service employee at OK a.m.b.a. and has been active on both Facebook
and LinkedIn for a while.
The third interviewee was 24-year-old Kasper, who studies cand.merc. International Business
and works fulltime at a digital marketing company called Carat. Kasper has had a Facebook
profile for many years, but did not create a LinkedIn profile until recently, when he started
working fulltime.
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The fourth and final person that was interviewed was Sebastian, a 21-year-old guy studying
Business administration and economics on the 6th semester. Sebastian has just started his own
company with a couple of friends. He has been active on Facebook and LinkedIn for a long time
and uses both sites regularly.
6.1.2 Why and what Facebook and LinkedIn are used for
In the context of using social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn for attraction, it is
relevant to understand why young people are present on these sites, and what exactly they use
them for, since this knowledge will be helpful for organizations when deciding how to use
Facebook and LinkedIn for attraction.
All our interviewees have profiles on both Facebook and LinkedIn, but the amount of time they
spend on the sites differs a lot. When asked about Facebook, the two girls said that they log onto
the site automatically several times a day without thinking about it. Signe Marie said that it has
become a natural part of her day, and compared it to going to the toilet – it is just something you
do. The two guys were more reserved. Kasper said that he does not use Facebook very often,
because it does not really have his interest. He thinks that people expose themselves too much,
and he only uses the site because he thinks that there is a consensus that this is the place that
events will be announced, and he does not want to exclude himself from social life. Sebastian
was more positive towards Facebook, but he thinks there is too much noise on the site these
days, and that it is a massive distraction. He shared with us that he has actually blocked access to
the site from his laptop, because he wasted too much time on the site, so now he can only access
it from his computer at home. He said that it has helped him use Facebook more focused, so that
when he logs onto the site, it is because he actually wants to do something, like sending a
message etc.
When asked about LinkedIn, the interviewees all agreed that they spend less time on LinkedIn.
Trine said: “I don’t need to log onto LinkedIn every week, usually I do it when I have a friend
request, and when I am in there anyway, I spend some time to find out if there are any other
connections that I know.”
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Signe Marie and Kasper both just set up their profiles, so they do not use it a lot at the moment,
but they both believe it will be important for their future careers. Sebastian was the only one that
uses LinkedIn a lot, and already has established a large network.
The interviewees were furthermore asked why they had set up a profile in the first place. Both
girls explained that they had been travelling 4-5 years ago, and that they had set up the profiles
on Facebook to keep in touch with both people at home, and the people they met on their
journey. As Trine said, “it is a great way to keep in touch with people from foreign countries”.
The guys explained that they had set up profiles because everybody else had done it; it was not
something they had thought a lot about. All four interviewees have set up profiles on LinkedIn to
maintain their networks and to promote themselves. Furthermore, they use LinkedIn to connect
to people that they do not necessarily want to connect with on Facebook, like their parents or
their bosses – people that are useful to stay in touch with, but that they do not want to have
access to their pictures, status updates etc. on Facebook.
6.1.3 Perceptions about using Facebook for attracting employees
Before showing the interviewees stimuli in the form of examples of the use of Facebook for
attraction, they were asked if they could imagine finding their first job through Facebook, and if
yes, in what way. The interviewees’ reactions were mixed, with the guys being more positive
than the girls. Trine was the only one that was directly dismissive towards the idea. She said that
she could imagine finding a leisure-time job through Facebook or that companies like Vero
Moda could find a service assistant, but she could not imagine finding a ‘real’ job on the social
networking site. The other interviewees were more positive. Signe Marie was a bit confused in
the beginning, but then said: “I wouldn’t exclude it, if the chance was there and it was a cool job,
then definitely yes”, but also argued that she sees Facebook as a more private place. When asked
how she might find a job through Facebook, she said that it would probably be through her
network, or through the commercials being displayed on the right side, but also said that she
would not see that as being “directly Facebook”, but that in those cases Facebook would just be
the channel to communicate something to a friend.
The guys were a lot more positive towards the idea. Kasper could definitely imagine finding a
job through Facebook, and so could Sebastian, even though he believes that there is a lot of noise
on Facebook these days that blocks out the important things.
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Generally the idea of using Facebook for attraction is received positively by the interviewees,
even though they are a bit unsure as to how exactly Facebook can be used in this context.
After asking for the general perception, the interviewees were shown stimuli in the form of the
two Facebook pages made by KMD and Ernst & Young, and then asked again. Since the
interviewees were mostly already positive towards the idea, the stimuli did not change much in
terms of being more positive, but it did provide the interviewees with a clearer picture of how
companies could recruit through Facebook. As Signe Marie explained, it was good to get a
clearer picture on the matter.
When comparing the two pages, the interviewees were a lot more positive towards the KMD
page than the Ernst & Young page for several reasons. Sebastian said that he found Ernst &
Young’s page to be impersonal and bland, and furthermore he argued that Ernst & Young’s
focus was on themselves as opposed to the receivers, which he did not like. About the KMD
page he said:
“They try to focus more on the receiver, the members of the fanpage, instead of focusing on
selling themselves. They tell something about how YOU can become a member of a student
network, which has something to do with YOU, YOU can learn to write a good CV, which also
has something to do with YOU”.
He furthermore said that he liked the fact that the company has chosen to have pictures of their
offices on the page, because it gives him a sense of security - it shows that KMD is more than
just a logo. Overall he found the KMD page to be a lot more real and personal than Ernst &
Young’s page, which resulted in him saying that he could definitely imagine becoming a fan of
KMD’s page, but not of Ernst and Young’s.
Kasper was also very positive towards the sites and said that he liked the idea and the fact that
these companies have tried to seize social media. However, he works at a company that is
specialized in digital marketing, and he said that the general problem with these sites is that they
are often missing an incentive for the user to ‘like’ the pages - it is not enough to just make a site
and then expect users to just ‘like’ it, and that most organizations do not know how to do it:
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“It is all about giving the user some value that they cannot get elsewhere, but it is difficult to say
how exactly to give this value – and if I knew how, I would probably make more money than I do
right now.”
He also highlighted the issue that these sites are only relevant for a limited amount of time, and
that it can be difficult for organizations to reach the user in this specific time period, where they
are searching for a job. However, overall he was still positive towards the sites and said that if he
found a page to be relevant for him, he could definitely imagine ‘liking’ it, as could Signe Marie.
The only person that did not like the idea after having seen the stimuli was Trine. She said that
she thought that the companies lost some credibility in her eyes, especially with a wellestablished company like Ernst & Young. However, she also said that she could not see herself
working for these two companies, but that if a company she liked would be present on Facebook,
she would probably ‘like’ it anyway, for her own good and to promote herself, even though she
dislikes the idea.
All interviewees were also asked what they thought of the fact that ‘liking’ a company would
result in the company being present in the newsfeed between friends’ status updates etc. None of
the interviewees had a problem with this, they actually approved of it, since they all argued that
they would probably forget about the sites otherwise.
The conclusion is clear – there is a lot of potential present, and Generation Y generally likes the
idea of organizations’ use of social networking sites for attracting new talent, but there are a lot
of issues that need to be considered. The organizations need to think about the possibility of
alienating some people, and they also need to focus on how to make it attractive for people to
actively ‘like’ their sites.
6.1.4 Perceptions about using LinkedIn for attracting employees
Generally the interviewees were very positive towards the idea of finding their first job on
LinkedIn, and they believe that they might possibly find their first job through the site. All of
them would find it perfectly normal if a potential employer contacted them through LinkedIn,
since that is the essence of having a profile. Sebastian told that he had already been contacted by
Google after having appeared in an article in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. He said that
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it is very interesting to have some options just by being visible on a social networking site, and
for that reason he is extremely devoted to updating his profile regularly.
However, even though they would not mind being contacted by a potential employer through
LinkedIn, none of them mentioned this when talking about how to get their first job. Instead they
all talked about networking. Trine said:
“First of all I would write on my profile that I was looking for a job, and then I would see if any
of the connections of the people in my network would have any available job-descriptions, and
then I would probably just contact them and ask if they have something”.
The interviewees thus do not mind being approached by potential employers on LinkedIn, but
they do not think that they will find their first job in that manner – in their opinion it is more
likely that they will get a job through their network or the connections of the network.
6.2 Social media factbook – a qualitative study about the use of social media in Danish
businesses
In February 2011, the organization Social Semantics published a study about the use of social
media in Danish organizations. The results of this study are included in this thesis, because it
gives a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of how and why Danish organizations are using
social media. The following will go through the main results, and these will be used and
discussed in the next chapter. If the reader wishes to know more about the study and the results,
it can be found online at socialsemantic.eu.
The survey shows that 2 in 3 organizations are using social media in one or more departments to
create value for the business today. The most-used forms of social media are private social
networks like Facebook (80%), professional social networks like LinkedIn (61%) and videos and
blogging (54% and 43%, respectively). However, most of the organizations have recently started
using social media – 45% of the respondents have used it for 1 year or less, 33% have used it less
than 2 years, while only 22% of the organizations have used social media for more than 2 years.
Furthermore, most of the organizations are still using social media without a proper strategy –
only 1 in 3 organizations say that their activity is based on a clear and targeted organizing and
clear allocation of responsibilities, while the rest say that they are either using social media
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without a clear strategy, or that a few employees are testing it without a deadline or control of the
results. This is supported by the fact that in 2 out of 3 organizations the use of social media has
started through employee initiative – it is not something that has been strategically decided by
the organization’s management. On the more positive side, almost all of the organizations
believe that social media can increase the value of their businesses and 87% think that social
media can help them to create a positive image for their organization. Furthermore, the
organizations are aware that social media is something that they need to deal with – only 6% of
all respondents think that they do not need to deal with social media in one way or another.
When looking at social media from an HR-perspective, the picture is less positive. The HR
departments are the most sceptical towards the use of social media, and more than 50% in these
departments do not believe that social media gives them better tools for recruiting or that they
can save money through recruitment on social media.
Finally, the study examined exactly how many resources the organizations are investing in social
media. This shows that only a few employees in each organization have responsibility for the use
of social media – in 55% of all organizations, between 1 and 4 employees have the responsibility
for the organization’s presence in social media. Furthermore, these employees do not spend
much time on working with social media, as half the organizations say that the employees spend
less than 5 hours a week. Finally, almost 50% say that they spend less than 5000 DKK a year on
social media.
These results and their implications for Danish organizations will be discussed as part of the
following chapter.
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Chapter 7 – Discussion
In the following, the findings of both the qualitative research and the quantitative study will be
discussed and analyzed in relation to the theories presented in chapter 4 and 5.
7.1 Four interviews, one generation
In the section about the hypermodern society and individual, some characteristics of the
individual and its society are defined. In this thesis the focus is on generation Y, and four people
from this generation have been interviewed. As was argued in the theory, it is clear from several
points that these people fit the definition of the hypermodern individual.
First of all, all of the respondents are using social networking sites to stay in contact with friends
and professional relations. Some of the interviewees also said that they like to watch what their
friends are writing and to stay in touch with people that they normally do not have contact with.
However, the theory states that this generation likes to show the world how successful they are
through these networks. While it is true that the interviewees like to see what others are writing
about themselves, maybe to compare with them, all of the interviewees state that they are not
writing status updates regularly, because they believe that it does not concern others what they
do or think. This new way of acting online does have an explanation and it will be discussed in
one of the following sections about how generation Y communicates online. Furthermore, it is
clear that the respondents know what they want, and they are all very focused on their career.
Trine mentions a future dream position as a logistics manager, Sebastian owns his own company,
Signe Marie works in the big organization Vestas and Kasper has already found his dream job in
an advertisement company. It is clear that they are focused on reaching their goals, which is in
line with the theory about Generation Y being a determined and focused generation.
7.2 Generation Y is online
According to theory, the best place to search for generation Y is online, since this is where the
generation constantly interacts with the environment (Bartram, 2002, pp.261-273). Another
reason is that this generation to some extend prefers to have their social needs satisfied in online
social networks, because this is a place where everyone can feel welcome (A. P. McAfee, 2006;
A. McAfee, 2009, pp.21-28). There is no doubt that both Bartram and McAfee make an
important point when highlighting the internet as the best place to get in contact with generation
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Y. Through the four interviews, the interviewees show that the Internet and online social
networking sites are an important part of their everyday life. A clear example of how integrated
Facebook and LinkedIn are in the interviewees’ everyday life is expressed by Signe Marie when
she is asked to tell how much time she spends on Facebook and LinkedIn per week:
“It is incorporated into your everyday life, that you - for example with a Smartphone - can just
log on and take a look for five seconds and then you log off again It’s more like… I don’t
know…. Like going to the toilet…I don’t know what else to compare it to. It is a natural thing
you do during the day. It is really schematically incorporated into your everyday.”
This example shows clearly that using social networking sites is an integrated part of the life of
generation Y; through their smartphones they can be online whenever they prefer, and sometimes
only a few minutes are enough to cover their needs.
There is no doubt that online networks cover a social need for people. All of the interviewees
explain how they use the networks to keep in touch with their friends and maintain their
professional relations. Trine says that Facebook is a place where she can keep in touch with
family and friends, especially when she is travelling. She sees it as a convenient way to stay in
contact with everyone at home. In contrast, she says that LinkedIn fulfils another need, because
this is the place where she can keep track of her professional network, as it is a much more
formal place, where she has the opportunity to interact with her boss and colleagues. The
distinction that Trine makes between LinkedIn and Facebook is also reflected in the answers of
the other interviewees, as they all agree that generally Facebook is a more private place than
LinkedIn, so there is also a distinction between the formal and informal communication tone on
the respective sites.
The implications for organizations is that they need to be aware that the motivational factor for
being online is more than just being there. It has a deeper purpose for the individual, as it
supports their needs for being social and it also helps them to further their career, which is what
is very important to individuals in generation Y. However, these are not the only factors that
influence the reasons for generation Y’s need to be online, and another important aspect will be
covered in the following.
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7.3 Brand Y-ourself
As was seen above, generation Y can be found online, but one can wonder why this generation is
spending so much time on social networking sites.
It is seen that there is a tendency amongst generation Y to have a need to brand themselves, and
social networking sites makes it easy to do this. It is interesting to look at why the individuals in
generation Y have this need, and what the consequences could be for the individual and the
organizations when it comes to attraction, because it gives an idea of how much awareness the
individuals in generation Y have, both in relation to how they know that others perceive different
expressions, but also how they are excellent in giving others a specific picture of their own
personality and life.
It is not something unique for generation Y to pursue their own interests and create their identity
based on what they are told that they are. But the fact that they have easy access to both
promoting themselves online and getting feedback from others, makes it an obvious choice for
getting the feedback they want. Naturally, the picture that the individual makes of him- or
herself, has to be in line with the way the environment perceives the person; otherwise it will be
difficult to get the feedback wanted. An interesting aspect of this is that one can imagine that it
can be difficult for the individual to maintain specific roles online from the “real world”, where
they are used to behave differently depending on who they are interacting with – depending on if
it is family, friends or colleagues, the individual will normally have different roles in different
situations. These roles can create a dilemma for the individual online, since it can be difficult to
play each role across different social communities consisting of colleagues, friends and family. It
can have consequences for the individual’s self-perception, if they no longer manage to fit in to
the most important social contexts. If this is related to attraction, the picture that the individual
tries to give can be a mixture of various personality traits, and this fact can make it difficult for
the organizations to know whom exactly they are approaching. An advantage could be that they
are giving a broad picture of who they are and therefore the attractors are able to “see the whole
package”.
The qualitative research shows that the interviewees generally are aware of what they post on
Facebook and LinkedIn. Trine tries to avoid being friends on Facebook with colleagues who are
higher in the hierarchy than she is, because she does not think that it strengthens her image if
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they see a lot of pictures where she is drinking alcohol. This example shows that by providing
online friends with either no, limited or full access to a profile, it is possible to control peoples’
perception of you. Thereby, a somewhat limited picture is created, and the individual can through people’s reactions to this picture - maintain the illusion of who they are and who they
want to be. Thus they can fulfil their needs as a hypermodern individuals.
Another important thing that is highlighted by Signe Marie is that individuals often have a clear
distinction between professional relations and private relations, which can be seen, since she
refers to her relationships as primary and secondary relations. The consequence of this is that
people sometimes create a Facebook account to maintain private relations, and a LinkedIn
account to maintain the professional relations. This clear distinction between the two groups
shows that there is a high awareness about only showing specific traits of oneself to some
people, and other traits to others. Trine, for example, indicates that she expects the companies to
do the same, and she finds it unprofessional that the companies have sites on Facebook, since
this is a private forum where people have the opportunity to express their private sides. In her
eyes, LinkedIn is different, since the main purpose of the site is to show your professional
competencies and to create a more serious work-related network. However, Trine was the most
sceptical towards the organizations way of approaching potential employees on Facebook,
whereas other of the interviewees had a more relaxed view on being approached in this way.
Therefore, it is important that organizations are aware that they might interfere with some
people’s private space when using Facebook instead of LinkedIn for attraction purposes, and this
can be perceived negatively by some.
Now that it is clear that generation Y has a need to be online, and how they use their online
presence for branding themselves, it is interesting to investigate how they manage to
communicate in the online environment.
7.4 Generation Y communicates online
It has been shown that the Y generation generally is aware of what they communicate to specific
persons, and that they are manually maintaining, which people have access to specific
information about them. This section will take a closer look at how online communication trends
changes over time and what it means for organizations when attracting through social media, As
was argued in the theory, Generation Y’s ideological world-picture makes them feel that they
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need to stay connected as much as possible, which is especially done through status updates on
social networking sites.
However, this picture may soon change. As Christoffer Boserup Skov (Skov, 2011) argues in a
recently published article, the way people communicate on especially Facebook is changing. A
good example of the reason for this change is the following cartoon:
This clearly show how people are behaving differently on Facebook than they would in the ‘real’
world - and that people are starting to realize this and find it strange and somewhat inappropriate.
This fact was also supported by one of our interviewees, Kasper, who said: “I think that people
exhibit themselves too much on Facebook”.
According to Skov, there is a tendency that the smart and hip people update their status less and
less, because they no longer have the same need to market themselves through the updates.
Instead, people have started to post videos, links and pictures, because, as an old saying goes, ‘a
picture can say more than a thousand words’ and as CBS argues, using a picture to show who
you are is more indirect and often has a bigger effect on your audience than words have. The
tendency is clear – “see, how interesting and deep I am” instead of “read, how interesting and
deep I am” (Skov, 2011). Facebook has realized the tendency as well – in the past the company
focused on how many people updated their status, but today they focus on how many billion
pieces of content are shared each month, how many pages, groups and events that the average
user is connected to etc (Facebook, 2011b).
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Skov’s article has sparked a huge discussion on the board where it was published, since this is a
very sensitive matter, and something that people feel strongly about. Some people agree with
Skov, while others think he is completely wrong. Only time will tell what will happen to the way
people communicate online, but it is definitely something that organizations need to follow and
keep track of, since this will also influence the way they should communicate with their
audience, since Generation Y expects to be approached in the same way they themselves
communicate.
It has been shown that communication changes and that it is important to follow these
tendencies.
In the next section it will be discussed what it is that motivates the individual in generation Y.
This helps to give a deeper knowledge of what is important to consider in an organization’s
communication strategy.
7.5 What motivates generation Y
Hackman and Oldham’s theory presents five points, which should be fulfilled to achieve the
perfect job design, namely variation of job tasks, participation in the whole process, significance
of tasks, importance of the job, individual needs to freedom and feedback.
The motivational influence of these points has been found in the way some of our interviewees
talk about current and future jobs. Sebastian has his own web- and software-development
company with two of his friends. They started the company because they thought other webshops were not good enough, and therefore they wanted to offer something better. This
motivation to want to change something and to make a difference is exactly what the third point
is about. Sebastian and his friends were motivated by the fact that they had found an area they
thought was important to improve on, but being an entrepreneur fulfils more than one need. It
gives the opportunity to participate in the whole process and thereby it gives different work tasks
- since it is his own company, he has the opportunity to do the tasks in his own way. Clearly this
is a personal success for Sebastian, and he speaks enthusiastically about his job. Sebastian’s
example shows that personal motivation is an important factor, and it is clear that is contributes
to giving him a feeling of success and a feeling of doing something that matters to him.
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Some of the other interviewees also indicate that some of these points matter to them when
choosing a job. Signe Marie wants to work in an organization which is not too big, because see
wants to work in an organization without too much hierarchical structure, and she wants to work
where people know each other. This indicates that the motivational factor in a job is a job where
you are recognized for your work and you have the opportunity to participate in various tasks.
The qualitative research thus supports Hackmann and Oldham’s theory. It is therefore important
for companies, who choose to take advantage of social networking sites when attracting new
employees, to keep in mind that these points are elements, which they should incorporate when
they express, why potential new employees should choose to work with them.
In relation to this section, the next will continue by analyzing more closely what is important to
individuals of Generation Y when choosing a job.
7.6 What is important for Generation Y when choosing a job
In the theory about job design it has been described how generation Y could be a valuable source
for organizations, if they manage to attract them and lead them in the right way. Through the
conducted interviews it was clear that the interviewees are part of this ambitious, individualistic
and demanding generation, because they express that they value organizations with only little or
no hierarchical structure, a good working environment where the employees know and help each
other, and with the possibility for personal development. It is furthermore important that they
feel recognized by having responsibility. Their future job should be interesting by giving them
various tasks, and for example, Trine says that she prefers a rapidly changing environment, with
friendly colleagues, who help each other out, and a lot of challenges. Some of the same things
are mentioned by the others when discussing their wishes for their future employment This
shows that the interviewees fit the theory that argued that organizations need to focus on
fulfilling the needs of future employees, and therefore this is something the organizations shall
be especially aware of when approaching the generation. However, the interviewees showed an
interesting tendency, which has not been mentioned in the theory, since all four interviewees
state that recognition through job profiles and the signals they might send to people not working
in the company does not matter. Kasper said:
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“I chose my job based on what I think is fun and interesting and relevant and then I do not really
care about what others think. Of course, recognition is always good, but as long as I think that a
job is exciting, I do not really care about what everyone else is thinking.”
Signe Marie, Trine and Sebastian said similar things – the most important to them is that they
themselves like their job; and what other people think about it does not play an important role
when determining where to work.
Consequently it can be concluded that it is the match between self-actualization and a good work
environment that matters to generation Y, whereas titles and recognition from their social
environment outside the organization does not play a large role when individuals in generation Y
choose their first job.
The reader should now be aware of the main factors concerning Generation Y that are important
if organizations want to attract through social networking sites.
In the theory about active and passive job seekers, it was stated that it should be possible always
to attract this young generation. The next section will investigate further to which extend this is
true.
7.7 Generation ‘always job seeking’
There is evidence that supports the fact that generation Y can be seen as a generation that is
always on the look for a new job. This has, however, been difficult to prove through the
qualitative research conducted. The interviewees did not directly answer questions about their
job seeking habits, since they are all still students. However, indirectly, their answers to other
questions still touched on the subject. When asked how she felt about clicking ‘like’ to the two
Facebook sites that were shown, Signe Marie said: “I think I might do it… But only for a while,
until I have found a job, and then I do not think that I would ‘like’ it anymore.” This shows that
Signe Marie does not consider herself as always job seeking - she could imagine being an active
user of the groups while looking for a job, but then she would not like it anymore. She did not
share the exact reasons for this in the interview, but possible reasons could be the fact that
Facebook is generally seen as a more private medium, and people do not want to be showered
with information about jobs, when they are not actively seeking one. Another reason could be the
fact that all other friends can see the groups that a person ‘likes’, and as the interviewees shared,
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they generally do not see a problem with being friends with their colleagues on Facebook – but
they still might not like if their colleagues can see that they ‘like’ a page like ‘KMD Career’. It
could give the impression that they are actively looking for a new job, even if they are not. In
connection to this it should also be noted that such an issue is not limited to Facebook; it can be
found on LinkedIn as well. Most LinkedIn profiles have a section where people write what they
are interested in, and some write that they are interested in “career opportunities” and “job
inquiries” (see figure 6 for an example), even though that may not always be the case.
The argument here is two-fold. First of all, organizations should note that people - both members
of generation Y, but also others - do not always think deeply about what they write on their
profiles and that being member of a certain group on Facebook, or writing on a LinkedIn profile
that they are interested in “career opportunities”, does not mean that they are necessarily
considering switching to a different job or actively looking for one. Secondly, individuals should
consider what they signal to the outside world through their profile.
Therefore it cannot just be assumed that generation Y is always actively job seeking. However,
these new media do make it easier for organizations to reach out to candidates, even though they
may not be actively job seeking. As argued, especially Facebook is mainly a medium that can be
used to capture active job seekers. LinkedIn, however, is useful for reaching both active and
passive job seekers. As the interviewees argue, the main purpose of LinkedIn is to maintain a
network and keep in touch with previous colleagues, classmates etc., but at the same time
LinkedIn is full of new job opportunities that could tempt a person to consider switching to
another job. So even though a person might not be actively looking for a new job, they - through
their LinkedIn profile - still have an eye on the job market, and thus could be considered
somewhat active job seekers. This is supported by Sebastian, who said that it means a lot to him
that his profile is ‘extremely updated’ and that this has already resulted in him being contacted
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by a representative of Google, even though he still a student. The same is true for Kasper, even
though he has a fulltime job that he is happy with at the moment. As a result, it can be argued
that members of generation Y, compared to previous generations, are more active job seekers.
The above knowledge is useful for organizations when considering whether to be present on
social networking sites or not. It gives them an opportunity to reach passive applicants, which
might not otherwise apply or be contacted. This was also recognized as the number one reason
for why organizations actually use social networking sites to recruit or contact applicants in a
2008 survey for SHRM (SHRM, 2008). Especially in a country like Denmark, where the
unemployment rate and thus the ratio of active job seekers is quite low (as of February 2011 the
unemployment rate in Denmark was around 6% (Danmarks Statistik, 2011)), even though we
have just been through a financial crisis), it is important to find ways to get in touch with the
large pool of passive job seekers that exist.
7.8 Summing up I
All together, the discussion of the results from the qualitative research in relation to the
theoretical framework shows that the interviewees are part of an ambitious, individualistic and
demanding generation, which matches the description of the individual in the hypermodern
society. As theory proposes, generation Y likes to have a flat organizational structure and they
prefer to be in a rapid changing environment, but from the interviews it also became clear that
generation Y demands a match between self-actualization and a good work environment,
whereas titles and recognition from their environment outside the company does not play a role.
There are indications that individuals of generation Y are individuals who are always searching
for new challenges, but the interviewees somewhat contradicted this.
Generation Y is easy to find online, because being online is an integrated part of their everyday
life, and it is a way of maintaining their relations, both private and professional. It turns out that
generation Y is very aware of their appearance in the social networks. They are good at
managing the way they influence their online friends, and they have opinions about what they
expect of social networking sites, especially in relation to the stimuli. Generation Y also
communicates in a certain way on these sites, and it was argued that this should be monitored by
organizations in order for them to communicate the right way with the generation, since this is
something that is expected. At last it is important to emphasize that personal motivation is an
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important factor for the Y generation. It is clear that their job has to contribute to give them a
feeling of success and a feeling of doing something that matters.
The next part of the analysis will continue by discussing the qualitative research in relation to the
exposure hypothesis theory, expectancy theory and Schein’s three levels of culture, in order to
understand in which way values and expectations influence attraction through social networking
sites.
7.9 Will exposure lead to improved attitudes?
As argued in the exposure attitude hypothesis, repeated exposure to an object should yield
increasingly positive evaluations of it. This knowledge is useful for organizations in the context
of attraction of new employees through social networking sites, since this implies that
organizations can enhance their popularity simply by being present on these sites. It is
furthermore important that organizations actively use their sites and communicate with their
audience to draw attention to themselves. If using Facebook for example, a company will show
up in a person’s newsfeed every time they post something – be it a new video, a link to a
homepage, information about a new job or something else. All of this will draw attention to the
organization and according to the exposure-attitude hypothesis, should increase the popularity of
an organization.
Even though the theory was not tested through the qualitative study, several of the interviewees
indicated something that is interesting in this context – they explained that they would prefer to
‘like’ a fan page instead of being members of a group. The main reason for this is that when a
person ’likes’ a page, they will be exposed to updates from this page in their newsfeed
automatically – they do not actively have to search for the page and read through the
information, which is the case when you are member of a group. All of the interviewees agreed
that they would prefer to be fans of a page instead of members of a group, since they would
forget about it. Several of them said that even though they were members of some groups today,
they never visited these groups because it takes too much effort. Signe Marie for example said:
“I do not actively visit and use most of the pages… I use a few of them because they appear in
the news feed, and I think that is nice. For example, I ‘like’ EuroWoman, because I think it is fun,
because they provide some gossip, and then I am using Young Communicators of course,
because I think it is cool…”
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This shows that Signe Marie ‘likes’ several pages, and she prefers that they appear in her news
feed, because it provides her with knowledge and updates from things that she likes. Therefore it
can be argued that the interviewees agree that frequent exposure will keep them aware of the
existence of the page, and they do not mind being ‘reminded’. But as mentioned, it does not say
anything about if this improves the attitude to the page, and as Signe Marie stated, if she does not
need to have the information from a page she can just “unlike” it again. Therefore is it clear that
when liking a page, it needs to have some kind of content that the user is interested in and wants
to read, otherwise it is easy to get rid of it again by ‘unliking’ it – which might have a negative
influence of the perception of the brand or organization.
7.10 Expectations of Generation Y
Before choosing to start engaging with potential employees through social networking sites,
organizations need to be aware of the expectations that Generation Y has to them in this context.
This will be gone through in the following.
According to expectancy theory, people choose organizations based on where they believe they
will have the highest chance of obtaining their valued outcomes, so individuals will base their
choice of organizations on their desires and their perception of the organization’s ability to
satisfy these desires.
When people find out that an organization is present on social media, they will form some sort of
expectation to this presence, based among others on what they know about the organization and
the image of the organization. Depending on the brand that an organization has, this has different
implications. If an organization is well known and has a popular brand, people will likely form
high expectations to the organization’s presence on social networking sites.
Sometimes organizations need to consider if their presence on a social networking sites matches
with the brand that they present to the outside world in other contexts. An example of this is
Ernst & Young. As one of the interviewees, Trine, noted, “their credibility fades a little with
them being present, especially Ernst & Young which is a well-established company… for me it
does not seem right that they do it in this way, because it is set up like that, next to all the
sponsored links”. Clearly this interviewee had a picture of Ernst & Young as a serious and
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conservative company, so to her, their presence on Facebook did not make any sense and it
actually influenced her perception of the company negatively.
Organisations also need to ask themselves if they are ready to fulfil the expectations of
Generation Y to their presence on a social networking site. As argued, it is important that the
message an organization tries to communicate is consistent across all channels. Furthermore,
organizations should be willing to spend time on regularly updating their sites in order not to
send out wrong signals. It is a fact that Generation Y is very active on social networking sites,
and they expect the same from others. One of the interviewees, Signe Marie, explained this in the
following way:
“We - or at least I am - are very active in there, and write a lot of status updates and upload lots
of photos all the time, so I would expect the same news flow from a company”.
This arises the question: What is regularly updating, how much must an organization write in
order not to be considered out of date? Clearly the answer depends on who is asked, but Signe
Marie said that to her, even information that is a month, or just 14 days old, is out of date.
To sum it up, Generation Y generally have very high expectations to organizations’ presence on
social networking sites and since they themselves spend a lot of time on updating their profile
and posting pictures etc., they expect the same of others.
What is interesting about expectancy theory and Generation Y is also the fact that the theory was
proposed almost 50 years ago. The world has changed dramatically in this half century, and the
question arises if the theory can still be used in the same way. When the theory was first
proposed, the world was nowhere near as transparent as it is today. It was a lot more
cumbersome to get information – today, everybody with a computer and an Internet connection
can search for all the information they want in less than five minutes. This new transparency and
increasing amount of available information means that people are influenced everywhere, which
in turn influences our view of the world and thus our expectations.
The above has gone through expectations from the individuals’ viewpoint, which is also where
the main focus of this thesis is. However, since the overall aim is to provide organizations with a
clearer picture of the most important considerations in connection to being present on social
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networking sites, it is also relevant to look at organizations and their expectations, more precisely
their expectations to their presence on social networking sites, which will be done in the
following.
7.11 Danish organizations’ expectations to their presence on social networking sites
In the previous chapter, some of the main results of a survey about Danish organizations’ use of
social media were briefly presented. As was seen, Danish organizations have become
increasingly aware of the potential advantages they can gain from using social media, and that
many organizations believe that being present on social media will give their businesses
advantages in the form of increased exposure, branding, increased traffic to websites etc.
However, the survey also showed that Danish organizations expect to get these advantages
without investing further in social media – in short, they expect to get competitive advantages
through the use of social media, but they are unwilling to spend time, money or people on it.
As mentioned, most of these organizations have recently started using social media. We got the
opportunity to go to a talk, where the founder of Social semantic, Jan Futtrup Kjaer (JK),
presented the main results of the study and discussed them. He said that when looking only at the
answers from organizations that have used social media for more than two years, the situation is
very different, since the organizations that have been present on social media for a while are
spending a lot more resources, both time and money, on social media. This implies that these
organizations have not only realized the value they can get from being present on social media,
but they have also realized that it will not be free – they need to spend both time and money on
it. According to JK, this is the biggest obstacle that organizations are facing at the moment – they
need to adjust their high expectations and be more realistic. Social media is not a tool for gaining
a competitive advantage without paying for it.
So while the results of the study are positive at the first glance – Danish organizations have
embraced social media and know that they need to deal with it, but when analyzing the results
further it becomes clear that there is still a long way to go. Peter Svarre (PS), in an article
published on Kommunikationsforum (P. Svarre, 2011), calls it ‘the perfect bubble’. He argues
that social media has become the new thing that everybody just wants to be part of, even if they
do not understand the concept and how to use it. This is supported by the findings in the social
semantic study that showed that most of the organizations are using social media without a
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proper strategy. PS recommends that organizations should “stop up for a moment and think
about what it is they really want to do with social media… there is no doubt that the
organizations of the future need to master the use of social media, but they also need to know
when it is not the right time.”
7.12 The influence of values
In the theoretical section about Schein’s ‘Three levels of culture’, it was stated that culture is
everything that the individual beliefs, as well as their attitude and norms. Culture is often also
compared to an iceberg, and it is the part of the iceberg that cannot be seen. It is important to
understand the factors that are not visible in order to understand why the individuals in
generation Y react in certain ways to different attraction initiatives online.
To gain deeper knowledge of these factors, Schein’s three levels of culture will be used as a
fundament to understand what it is that triggers the individuals in generation Y and it will be
explained at which levels attraction through social networking sites operates. First of all, it is
noticeable that this theory goes hand in hand with expectancy theory, because it is the
individuals’ values, which determine the way they perceive the signals that the organizations
send.
The first level presented is the artifact level. This level refers to everything visible to the
observer. It is the top of the iceberg. The second level, the espoused values, is the level where the
individual makes assumptions based on their own values and group experiences, and from this
they create the expectations discussed earlier. However, these interpretations are not always a
reflection of the truth. Schein argues that this level is important, because it helps to predict what
a person is going to do or say in a specific situation. In the last level the basic assumptions are to
be found. These basic assumptions are underlying assumptions, which have become an
integrated part of the behaviour in a culture. This makes the individuals act in certain ways,
because they are convinced that everybody perceive it in the same way. It is their reality.
It is interesting to discuss on which level attraction through social media occurs. In the artifact
level, everything that is visual to the individual influences the individual’s perception about the
object. It is important to notice that the individual does not interpret the meaning of colours,
messages and the look of the object that they are observing. Thereby, the individuals are not
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being influenced by anything other than what they are seeing (layout, colour, pictures, etc). In
the artifact level, the organizations need to create trustworthiness through the way they present
themselves online. Because this presentation will contribute to the way the individuals perceive
the organization and they will build their expectations based on this.
If the individual observed a site in the espoused values level, different messages in the attraction
attempt can be difficult to avoid interpreting in some way. Examples include a description of the
company or some other text on the online page. This is clearly illustrated through the reactions of
the interviewees. When showing the two different Facebook pages, it triggered different
reactions from the interviewees. It was interesting to discover how big an influence the
immediate impression of the pages had on the interviewees. The KMD page was in general
perceived as the most professional, based on factors such as the colours, the pictures and the
design of the page. Sebastian commented that the pictures on Ernst & Young looks like
something that “could have been bought for a Dollar or something somewhere online”. This
does not appeal to him and he feels that Ernst & Young are placing themselves on a pedestal,
instead of contributing with something useful for the users of the site. Thereby, he evaluates
Ernst & Young mainly on the artifact level when he comments on the look and the pictures. In
contrast, he thinks that using social media for attraction is something that KMD is really good at,
which can be seen in the following statement:
“Something that I think that you easily notice is that KMD do not try to sell themselves too
much… There are articles about how to write a good CV, and that is, I guess, based not only on
KMD, it can be seen as a general tip for everybody.”
By giving the user some general tip for job seeking, KMD gives something beneficial to the user,
which provides the users with a clear motivation to use the page. It is clear that Sebastian is not
only evaluating KMD based on the artifact level, because when he comments on the content on
the page, like for instance the possibility of learning about how to make a good CV, it is the
espoused level he is analysing. The fact that Sebastian interprets some of the content of KMD’s
attraction page is valuable knowledge, because it shows that there are some shared values
between the user and the organization as attractor which have to be more or less the same, if the
organization shall succeed in their attraction through social networking sites.
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It is clear when analyzing the espoused values that most attraction attempts will contain some
kind of message to the receiver, and this message will be interpreted and related to the receiver’s
own values. Through these messages, people create perceptions about how it is to work in a
specific company. It are also possible that individuals have an idea about the workplace before
they see any sort of attraction, and this picture of the organization could for example be based on
information from others. These expectations can then be confirmed or disproved through the
online presence of the organization.
If the last level, the basic assumptions, is taken into account, it is difficult to see that there should
be any relationship between the basic assumptions and the influence these should have on
attraction. This is because these values are such an integrated part of the individual that it is not
something that will affect the individuals’ attitude to the organizations’ attraction attempts. This
is because attraction through social networking sites mainly has two tools to use. Firstly, the look
of the attraction media matters and this is mainly the artifacts level that is affected. The second is
the content of the page, and this content will often be something that the individual will
automatically reflect on, because they - unlike other attraction tools - physically do something
active to see the site that tries to attract them, for example by clicking on a link. Thereby does the
individual have a sharpened focus on what it is that they are presented to, and they are therefore
forced to reflect on what they sees. This way of considering the media is clearly connected with
the espoused values and not the basic values, which is something that is not relied very much on.
As mentioned in the beginning, expectancy theory and Schein’s three levels of values are closely
related. It turns out that expectations to an organization created from online interaction will
influence the expectations the individual has when meeting the organization face to face. If the
individual’s expectations, which have been created based on his or her own experiences and
values, are not confirmed, there will be some distrust between the parties, which is not a good
foundation for a future relationship. The effect of such unfulfilled expectations were very clear
when Trine was presented the Ernst & Young stimuli. Trine explained that her perception of
Ernst & Young was that it was a serious organization that delivers high-class performance, and
when seeing the page the company has created on Facebook, this perception is challenged. She
found the page unprofessional and not very serious, which resulted in her expectations being
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disappointed, and thus the company’s attraction attempt failed in this case, because the company
did not manage to present itself in the right way compared to Trine’s expctations.
In the above reflections about what the interviewee’s immediate perception of the company is, it
turns out that it does matter how the page appears visually, and in order to obtain the best
outcome, the organizations need to figure out what works for them. The responses from the
interviewees showed that the most important factors on the artifact level is that a site should look
professional and trustworthy. Furthermore it is clear that the attraction sites need to have some
content that is beneficial for the individuals, since the individuals need a reason for actively
‘liking’ a site. An example of content that is directly beneficial for an individidual is for example
KMD’s way of showing how to make a CV.
In general it can be concluded that there are few specific guidelines about how to use social
networking sites based on what individuals value, but this can also be seen as the beauty of this
media, since it gives room for individual and creative solutions. At last it was found that it is
only the artifact level and the espoused values level that influences the individual when it comes
to online attraction, and that basic values are not having any influence.
7.13 Summing up II
In the above sections, the framework that was developed in the theory was used to evaluate some
of the factors that influence why individuals are attracted to organizations, with the main
emphasis being on individuals’ values and expectations.
Expectancy theory was used in two ways – first to explain what generation Y expects of
organizations when using social networking sites to attract, and then to discuss the expectations
of Danish organizations’ presence on these sites. The main findings were that generation Y has
high expectations to organizations’ presence on social networking sites, because they expect
organizations to be as active as they themselves are online, and that organizations expect a lot
from their presence on social networking sites, but at the moment they are not investing enough
time, people and money in the project.
It was through Schein’s theory about three levels of culture argued that two of the levels are the
most important in the context of attraction – namely the artifact level and the espoused values
level. In the artifact level it was found that the appearance of an organization’s page on a social
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networking site affects whether or not the organization is perceived positively. This includes
factors such as pictures, layout and colours. Furthermore, it was shown that the overall content of
the page to a great extend influences the expectations towards the company and if the individuals
recognize values that they can relate to.
7.14 A humble look into the crystal ball
To conclude this chapter, it will now be discussed what the future could bring in terms of using
social networking sites for attraction of individuals in Danish organizations. The use of social
media, and therefore social networking sites, by organizations is an area in rapid development,
which means that what is news today, could potentially be outdated and irrelevant tomorrow, and
thus it is important to be up to date on the newest information and research in the area. However,
this rapid development also means that looking into the future can be rather complex, as the
biggest trend of tomorrow may not have been created yet.
Generally it can be argued that most trends gain ground in the US a lot earlier than they do in
Denmark. Especially in the area of technology, as the majority of technology companies come
form the US - Google, Apple, Microsoft, and of course Facebook and LinkedIn, just to mention a
few. If this is assumed to be true about using social networking sites for attraction of new
employees as well, and we deem it is fair to argue that this is in fact true – it is relevant to look at
the current situation in the US, which was brought to light by a recent published survey about
social recruiting by Jobvite, an American recruitment specialist.
The survey showed that around 3 in 4 US organizations use social media or social networking
sites for recruiting, and around 10% plan to begin soon. The most popular sites are LinkedIn and
Facebook, which are used by 78% and 55%, respectively. Of those using social networks for
recruiting, more than half said that they have successfully hired through a social network. The
most successful site by far is LinkedIn, with 90% saying that they have hired through this
network. Interestingly, even though 55% said that they use Facebook for hiring, only 28% said
that they have actually hired someone through Facebook. The survey also showed that US
companies use social media for very different purposes. Twitter and YouTube are used for
promoting brands, LinkedIn and Twitter are used for publishing jobs for free, while job boards
are the most popular way to advertise jobs. When looking at referrals, LinkedIn and Facebook
are the most popular, while LinkedIn and search engines are the most-used for direct sourcing.
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It is clear that using social media is gaining ground in the US. 46% of the companies indicated
that they have increased their spending on social media in 2010 compared to 2009, while more
than 1 out of 3 said that they have decreased spendings on job boards and 3rd party recruiters.
Furthermore, the companies believe that the most promising candidates are found through
referrals, and interestingly, they believe that candidates found through social networks are better
than candidates found through job boards, 3rd party recruiters or the corporate career site.
The above scenario is a lot different than just six or seven years ago. The first articles about
using social networking sites for attracting and recruiting employees emerged in 2004. In one of
the first articles that emerged about the issue, Wolk (2004) amongst other things wrote that
“Sites such as LinkedIn and Ryze can yield good passive candidates, but it’s unclear whether
they are recruiting’s “secret weapon” and “As widespread as networking sites now are, though,
the experts are skeptical about how useful l they can be to recruiters in their current form.” These
quotes illustrate the caution that both organizations and researchers exercised towards the use of
social networking sites for attracting and recruiting employees seven years ago.
After having studied the situation in Denmark, the above sounds familiar – it is more or less
where Denmark is today. Organizations have recognized that social media and social networking
sites have enormous potential, but they are not yet sure what exactly to think of it. If the situation
in Denmark will evolve as it did in the US, however, the use of social media will increase
dramatically in the coming years, as Danish organizations will learn more about how to use these
tools and how to get the best out of them. The conclusion must be that social media as a tool for
recruitment and attraction has a lot of potential in Denmark, and if the situation will evolve as it
has done in the US, it will gain further ground in Danish organizations.
When looking at what the future might bring for organizations’ use of social media, it is also
relevant to discuss how society will be in the future. A new generation – the generation after
generation Y – is soon grown up and will start to enter the labour market. It is yet to be seen
what their label will be, but the world they have been born into is evolving faster and faster,
which means that they will have different values than other generations. They have never
experienced a world without mobile phones, easy access to the Internet and social networking
sites – these technologies have been a part of their life since they were born, which results in
them generally being a lot more comfortable living a big part of their life online compared to the
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older generations. Everyone with a Facebook account and some ‘friends’ who are younger and
they are, have probably noticed this phenomenon. The way they communicate is a lot different –
they comment a lot more on each other’s status updates, they write a lot of messages to each
other and they are members of a lot of different groups. An example of this was also given by
Signe Marie in one of the interviews, where she talked about a girl she used to babysit, who she
is now friends with on Facebook. Signe Marie said the following: “She is a member of some
really ridiculous, insane groups… Just one-liners that go something like ‘You smile when you
are sleeping’ or something like that. I think it is… It almost gives me the creeps.” This remark
clearly illustrates the difference between how the different generations communicate online, even
though there is less than ten years of age difference between the two.
This current development will mean that future generations will distinguish even less between
private life and working life, and be more open to sharing their thoughts and actions with their
surroundings. Therefore, they should also be more open to being attracted through social
networking sites, and thus this also points to the trend that attraction and recruiting through
social networking sites will increase in the future. Surely many things can happen that will
change this, and a look into the crystal ball will always be somewhat uncertain, but if the
situation continues to develop the way it has in the first decade of the 21st century, it is fair to
argue that social networking sites will be even more prevalent in the future and thus also in
organizations.
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Chapter 8 - Conclusion
The aim of this thesis has been to study the social networking sites in a human resources context,
and more specifically the problem statement asked:
•
Why can Danish organizations use the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn for
attracting new employees from generation Y, and how do these applicants perceive being
attracted in this way?
In order to answer the problem statement, four research questions related to the subject were
developed. To give the reader a deeper understanding of the spread of social networking sites
and why they have become so popular, the current society was described and characterized,
social media and social networking sites were defined and two social networking sites, Facebook
and LinkedIn, were introduced. This was done to answer the first research question, namely what
kind of society we are living in today and how this society has influenced the popularity of social
networking sites.
It was found that we are hypermodern individuals living in a hypermodern society, which
implies that we are focused on the presence and ourselves, but at the same time we are flexible
and efficient individuals. However, these people still feel the need to be part of a community,
which is now increasingly done online, amongst others by creating profiles on social networking
sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Next it was argued that in order to reach them, and therefore to attract new employees in the best
possible way, it is important to understand whom they are, what their values are and how they
communicate and behave online. This leads to the second and third research question: Who is
generation Y and what is important to know about this generation when wanting to attract them?
And In which way do values and expectations influence attraction through social networking
sites?
Here it was found that the typical characteristics of generation Y in many points are similar to
that of the hypermodern individual, and consequently it was argued that members of generation
Y are hypermodern individuals as well. Generation Y is the first generation that has integrated
the Internet and social media into their everyday life. They are online for many reasons – they
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satisfy their social needs online, but they also use the Internet to further their careers and to brand
themselves. It was furthermore argued that in order to communicate with generation Y online, it
is important to know that they have high expectations to organizations’ presence on social
networking sites, because they expect organizations to be as active as they are online, and they
furthermore expect that organizations communicate the same way they do. The characteristics of
this generation influences what motivates them in the workplace. It was found that it is important
for them to feel that they make a difference, that they are part of the process and get a lot of
responsibilities and variation in their tasks. Overall, what matters the most for this generation in
the workplace is to be challenged and to have their needs fulfilled. This also explains why
generation Y is generally not very loyal towards their workplace, and why they do not mind
changing jobs when their needs are not satisfied.
A framework was then developed to explain why individuals are attracted to organizations, and
here it was found that many factors influence individuals’ attraction, and that some of the main
factors are values and expectations.
Expectancy theory was used in two ways – first to explain what generation Y expects of
organizations when using social networking sites to attract, and then to discuss the expectations
of Danish organizations’ presence on these sites. The main findings were that generation Y has
high expectations to organizations’ presence on social networking sites, because they expect
organizations to be as active as they themselves are online, and that organizations expect a lot
from their presence on social networking sites, but at the moment they are not investing enough
time, people and money in the project.
It was through Schein’s theory about three levels of culture argued that two of the levels are the
most important in the context of attraction – namely the artifact level and the espoused values
level. In the artifact level it was found that the appearance of an organization’s page on a social
networking site affects whether or not the organization is perceived positively. This includes
factors such as pictures, layout and colours. Furthermore, it was shown that the overall content of
the page to a great extend influences the expectations towards the company and if the individuals
recognize values that they can relate to.
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To answer the fourth and final research question, and thus the second part of the problem
statement, asking how potential employees from generation Y perceive organizations’ use of
social networking sites for attraction, a qualitative study was developed, aiming at finding out
how and why members of generation Y use Facebook and LinkedIn, and how they would feel
about being attracted through these sites. This was done by conducting four focused interviews,
where part of the interview was to show the interviewees stimuli in the form of two Facebook
pages of companies trying to attract new employees by creating sites on Facebook, which people
can become fans of. Through the study it was found that members of generation Y are generally
positive towards the idea of being attracted through the two social networking sites. However,
the interviews also made clear that Facebook is generally perceived as being a private platform,
where people behave differently than they would in the workplace, and thus organizations should
approach the use of this medium with respect and care. Furthermore, through the interviews it
became clear that it is very important for generation Y that there is an incitement for them to join
a site – otherwise they will not do it.
The conclusion is that social networking sites can be - and to some extend already are - used for
attraction of new employees, mainly from younger generations, in Danish organizations. Their
potential stem from the fact that the majority of the Danish population today are active on these
sites, and especially the younger generation, Y, are positive towards the idea of being attracted
on there. However, Danish HR professionals are still to some degree critical towards the use of
these sites to attract new employees, but all signs point to the fact that the use of social
networking sites for attraction will be more widespread in the future.
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Chapter 9 - References and Appendices
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9.2 Appendix I – Quick Facebook Manual
Around half the population of Denmark has a profile on Facebook today, and so most people
know how the site works. For those that do not, the following will provide a quick overview of
Facebook and an explanation of some of the terms that we use in the thesis.
The first step on Facebook is of course to create a profile. Afterwards it is possible to log in, and
start searching for friends, family, colleagues etc. It is also possible to search for other things
than people – many companies have created what is called ‘a page’ on Facebook, where they can
post relevant information about the company, communicate with their customers and so on. It is
possible to search for these companies in the same way you search for a friend – and if you find a
page that you like and want to get updates from, you click a ‘like’ button (In Danish it is called
‘synes godt om’). A picture can often say more than a 1000 words, so the below screenshot,
which was taken from one of the authors’ Facebook pages, is an example of something that can
be ‘liked’:
When you click that you ‘like’ a page, all your Facebook friends can see that you like this page,
and you will get updates from this page in your newsfeed every time the administrator of the site
posts something. The newsfeed is what you see when you log onto Facebook. It is a collection of
your friends’ status updates, updates from the pages you like, pictures, links and so on.
It is furthermore possible to create groups on Facebook. Where a page is always open to
everybody, it is possible to create groups with limited access, and where the information is
restricted to the members of the group.
Page 85 of 88
9.3 Appendix II – Screenshots of KMD and Ernst & Young
Page 86 of 88
9.4 Appendix III – Interview guide
Før Stimuli
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
Hvor gammel er du?
Hvad læser du?
Har du et job, hvilket?
Hvad laver du i din fritid? Hvorfor betyder det meget for dig?
Har du en profil på Facebook og/eller LinkedIn?
Hvorfor har du en profil på de respektive sider
Hvad bruger du dine profiler til?
(Hvordan vedligeholder du kontakter)
(Bruger du din profil i professionelle sammenhænge) Ex job og studie
8) Hvor meget tid bruger du på facebook og LinkedIn om ugen?
9) Går du op i at holde din profil på facebook/Linkedin meget privat?
10) (Tænker du over hvordan din profil fremstår overfor potentielle arbejdsgivere?)
11) Hvem må kontakte dig gennem FB og LinkedIn
-­‐ Vil du være venner med dine kollegaer på FB/ LinkedIn
12) Benytter du dig af grupper og fanpages. -> hvilken slags.
13) Tænker du over hvilke grupper osv du bliver medlem af? Og hvad det siger om dig som
person?
14) Kunne du forestille dig at finde et job gennem Facebook? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke?
15) Kunne du forestille dig at finde et job gennem LinkedIn? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke?
16) Hvad synes du om ideen med at skabe kontakt til potentielle nye medarbejdere på denne
måde?
17) Kender du virksomheden KMD? (Det er en IT-virksomhed, der blandt andet står bar
digital signatur)
18) Kender du virksomheden Ernst and Young? (en revisions-virksomhed)
STIMULI
Efter Stimuli
1) Hvad er din umiddelbare reaktion på de respektive grupper?
(Hvad synes du de udstråler som virksomhed)
(Er det et sted du kunne have lyst til at arbejde)
2) Kunne du finde på at blive medlem af grupperne? Hvorfor/hvorfor ikke?
3) Er der noget virksomhederne kunne forbedre?
4) Ville du foretrække at blive medlem som fan eller gruppe?
5) Hvad synes du om ideen med at skabe kontakt til potentielle nye medarbejdere på denne
måde?
6) Nu hvor du har set eksempler på attraction via FB, kunne du så forestille dig at finde et
job gennem Facebook? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke?
Page 87 of 88
Generelle spørgsmål efter stimuli:
7) Hvad skal en arbejdsplads kunne tilbyde dig for at har lyst til at arbejde der?
8) Hvilke værdier skal en arbejdsplads have?
9) Tænker du over hvilke signaler du sender i forhold til dit valg af job Hvorfor/hvorfor
ikke? (Tøj, jagong, stillingsbetegnelse, miljø)
10) Hvor stor en rolle spiller tillid til din kommende arbejds plads?
11) Hvor stor en rolle spiller tillid i din hverdag?
Page 88 of 88
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