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Introduction
This paper reflects on the use of online and social media for recruitment purposes in hospitality organisations. The hospitality industry is renowned for having high labour turnover rates and an element of hard-to-fill vacancies, and attracting suitable employees remains an ongoing challenge. Increasingly, organisations are looking for more innovative ways to make recruitment practices more effective, efficient, engaging and personal. This, in turn, may increase the quantity and quality of the applicant base and in the longer term potentially reduces staff turnover if the person-organisation fit is improved. Attracting the right employee can lead to better service and customer satisfaction, as well as cost efficiency where turnover is reduced (Bharwani and Butt, 2012).
The use of technology in the workplace has impacted on all areas of employment, with technology providing significant and advantageous ways in which to enhance organisational recruitment practices (Gregory et al. , 2013). The Internet has created opportunities for online recruitment practices to emerge for a number of years, and organisations have been utilising Web 1.0 technology by posting vacancies on websites and job boards. As a consequence, advertising external vacancies has become more cost-effective, more rapid and it enables organisations to reach a wider audience (Anderson, 2003; Brady et al. , 2003; Hull, 2011).
More recently, the platform becoming widely used for recruitment purposes is Web 2.0 and Social Networking Sites (SNSs). Social media, Blogs, Videos, Wikis, Fora and chat rooms have empowered individuals to generate and share information and experiences online (Tussayadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009). The use of SNSs in the hospitality sector is widely practiced to engage customers in the brand and in generating online "buzz" (Agaarwal, 2009). In the recruitment context on the one side, hospitality organisations can advertise vacancies for free either on their own platforms or on relevant groups. They also have the opportunity to observe prospective employee profiles in terms of both professional and personal attributes. On the other side, employees can build their profiles on SNSs, search for information on a company to see organisational structures and cultures and exchange information not only with employers but also potentially with existing employees. This is significant, as employees can find "informal" information through comments from existing employees rather than the "formal" information that companies provide.