Social Media Recruitment 3.0: Toward a new paradigm of strategic recruitment communication

Purpose Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication. Findings The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization. Research limitations/implications The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies. Practical implications A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market. Originality/value This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.