TPO’s Perspective towards Role of Social Media Marketing Platforms in Campus Placement Strategy

INTRODUCTION

This paper specifically focused on to understand TPOs Perspective towards using social media platforms in their campus placement strategy. Campus placement departments have its own way of functioning regarding sourcing new companies and conducting placement process which is more or less has not changed from last many years. Additionally to conventional placements methods, several new methods are also being explored to identify prospective recruiters and also increase the visibility of the Institute in these days. Either it‘s an autonomous institute, a private university or a Government university or college every institute in order to succeed in this competitive life, for their institutes sake it is important that authorities to come up with creating innovative ideas in every functional area of the institute including campus placements. Therefore, this research study shall pave way to understand the TPO‘s perspective towards social media usage for campus placements which also contributes to the institute‘s benefits, this new vertical of SMM platforms probably, possibly, could yield favorable outcomes for Institutes campus placement strategy.

There are various research paper and articles written on social media and recruitment but have not found much literature or earlier studies which is directly similar to the topic I have chosen. Though there are various studies on how recruitment is changed by effective use of social media or Digital Media Marketing which is also known as E-recruitment or Online Recruitment. Shenoy, Varun and Aithal, P. S (2016) Explains that providing campus placement to successful students is considered as institutional obligation and institutions are ranked based on number of successful job placement provided in the campus for a given year along with the average salary offered.

Sneha Singh (2017) aimed out of this paper is to widen online recruitment practices research focusing on e-recruitment practices and developments in India for the overall growth of the organization. This paper identifies methods for Internet recruitment from relevant literature and describes

candidates from the recruitment process, which is called ERecruitment, to an organization. The trend of posting a position opening and applying for a position over a website has gradually increased. E-Recruitment is present, as is a bright future for the recruitment industry, which will continue to grow year after year. With lots of positive features, it has some drawbacks such as problem in rural India, problem with less educated population, strong trust and confidence in face to-face interview to name a few, but if we look at the bright side of the story, these challenges are very little and will surely be gone by power of education. Vaishali Lal,Shruti Aggarwal (2013) studied, on the one hand, to test the popularity and efficacy of social networking sites, and, on the other, to find out the reliability and trustworthiness of such sites. The problem interests studying the "effectiveness of social media sites in the recruitment process." The role of social media sites as they make or break the next job opportunity. Empirical findings can be used to test the social media's effectiveness. The research methodology applied involves primary data, secondary data and statistical methods such as testing and analysis of hypotheses. Study says that Networks evolve spontaneously in current digital world and their effect on multiple aspects of life is rising day after day. As the economic slowdown continues, millions of job seekers are rushing to join online social networks in a scramble to build their social capital, seized by job jitters. The study also shows that because of its large user database and unique features such as career highlighter & advanced email notifications, Linkedin is the most popular networking platform to search jobs. Srinivas V (2015) unpretentious attempt was made to study the recruiter's utilization of social networking by recruiting prospective candidates using the various networking sites. This paper concludes that Social media provides an entirely new element to pooling in talent and also gives the organization a platform to show its brand image so that its own visibility is enhanced. Also it suggest that who had not started , specifically beginners, using social media can start with few major networks like facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter takes recruiting back to its grass roots of networking but for a digital age. research examines the effect of these sites from both the point of view of the recruiter, as well as the point of view of the job seeker. It brings the various opportunities that have opened up due to the rise of social networking sites to the fore and also paves the way for the future prospects of the same. The survey results indicate that the trend has shifted significantly from traditional recruiting approaches to new modern technology such as social networking sites. However, there is still space for development, improvement and leveraging of various benefits through these social networking sites. This study concludes that Social media recruiting is here to live, and it will revolutionize recruiting metrics and practices with the joint efforts of both recruiters and job seekers. The result of this study also shows that social networking sites are indeed a breakthrough in new age recruitment. Its merits are gradually coming to the forefront, coupled with certain drawbacks. Yet the benefits and advantages of this new modern recruitment strategy or technique outweigh its demerits by and large.

• To understand the perspective and perception of TPO‘s towards using Social media marketing platforms in their campus placement strategy. • To evaluate the adoptability of Social Media Marketing as a mechanism in the placement process by various institutes

Primary data was collected Based direct interviews with TPO‘s various institutes and a descriptive & qualitative research is conducted.

The proposed study mainly delves on the primary data collected by In-depth qualitative interviews and informal interaction with Placement coordinators of various institutes which provides placement assistance to their students. Covered Institutes are in Gujarat State majority of them are located in the Ahmedabad, Baroda & Surat districts.

• Sampling Unit: The respondents are the TPO‘s (Training & placement Officers or • Sampling Size: In total 44 TPO‘s representing 39 educational institute (in the vicinity of Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat District of Gujarat State) were interviewed on various campus placement practice related questions.

As part of the study, respondents were asked about their opinion on various statement. Below section covers detail analysis of responses on those statements.

In My interaction with Training and Placement officers of various colleges, I found vary extreme trend. 20 TPOs stated as they regularly explore social media platforms like Linkedin and Facebook to get new vacancy opportunities and also use these platforms to identify new leads or potential contact details of the HR representative. As similarly the trend can be observed in the statement as well. Approx. 47% respondents of the total 44 respondents stated that they either Agree or Strongly Agree on the statement whether Social media as a tool has power to support TPO of College in quality search of companies or HR. As indicated above, many of the TPO have heard or visualize the power of Social media in identifying leads of placement opportunities or contact details of HR but they have not used it or adopted as a strong practice in their day to day activity. While asking the above statement, 14 (32%) respondents have given neutral response. 8 respondents (20%) either Disagree or strongly disagree on the statement.

In My interaction with Training and Placement officers, my observation is the officers who regularly use Social Media in their day to day for the ease of placement process use all the functions or features of the tool which can be used in placement process. Also it was observed as the officers who do not use Social Media regularly, but they regularly use the tool to understand the expectation of potential recruiter. 25 respondents (57%) respondent as they agree on the statement Social media as a tool can help you in knowing the currently expectations of potential employees. 12 respondents (27%) are neutral and 6 respondents (14%) are disagree or strongly disagree on the statement.

Among the TPO whom I had interacted as part of the survey, many of the officers do not use Social Media actively as part of their placement process but they do appreciate the potential and wish to use the mechanism in future. 25 respondents (59%) out of 44 total respondents agree or strongly agree with the statement, Social media as a tool must be used by academic institute in making HR of companies to aware about the talent available with them. 10 respondents (23%) are neutral and 8 respondents (18%) are disagree or strongly disagree on the statement.

As part of the survey, I asked to TPO about their opinion, if institute regularly update about its students placement related information regularly, do you think HR managers will be eager to follow it regularly. 17 respondents (39%) out of 44 total respondents as agree or strongly agree on the statement. 13 respondents (29%) were neutral. 14 respondents were disagreeing or strongly disagree on the statement.

• From the research it can be concluded as, promotion among recruiter which supports in placement is the most important function which placement coordinator believe social media as a tool has benefits. The 2nd important function is marketing among student followed by Identifying/Searching prospective companies. • Many of the TPO do regularly explore social media platforms like Linked in and Facebook representative. • Many of the TPO do not use the Social Media as a tool in practice but they regularly use the tool to understand the expectation of potential recruiter. • The trend on Social media as a tool to be used by academic institute in making HR of companies to aware about the talent available with them is increasing.

Shenoy, Varun and Aithal, P. S (2016) Changing approaches in campus placements: a new futuristic model Sneha Singh, (2017). ―E-recruitment: a new dimension of human resource management in india‖ Volume 5, issue 3, march 2017 international journal of advance research in computer science and management studies Banerjee, P. (2012). Social networking sites: A fad or a breakthrough in new age recruitment. Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 12(3), pp. 71-75. Srinivas, V. (2015). Recruitment through social media, ELK. Asia Pacific Journals – Special ISS. ISBN: 978-81-930411-0-9. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-digital-marketing https://www.marketo.com/digital-marketing/

Research Scholar, ICFAI University, Jaipur nomsharma@gmail.com