Föredrar arbetsgivaren festprissen eller kontorsnissen? : En kvalitativ studie om rekryterares granskning av arbetssökandes sociala medier inom IT-branschen

The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of whether, and in such cases how, employers in IT-firms examine jobseekers' social media as a part of the company's recruitment process. The study has been limited to recruiters in the IT-industry as it was considered extra interesting to examine the recruitment process related to social media due to the technical skills that are required within the IT industry. The choice of industry was also based on the fact that it is estimated that 70.000 new employees will be needed until the year of 2022, to meet Sweden's demand of employees within the IT-industry. Ten respondents with various positions in different IT-firms, that are responsible for the recruitment process, have participated in the study through semi-structured interviews. The conclusions drawn from the respondents' answers in relation to the theoretical framework are that all respondents actually examine job seekers' social media. This is done regardless of whether the company has considered that this is something that should be avoided or not. It was shown that the recruiters examined the job seekers' social media by their own initiative rather than on the basis of established guidelines. It did not appear that any specific guidelines nor policies existed or was used by any company regarding the review, and neither that there exists any form of internal dialogue regarding any specific approach. The majority of the respondents performed the review of social media in the final stages of the recruitment process. It has, however, been shown that the review is not used as a decisive decision in the recruitment process, rather as a complement for the overall picture. Even so, it turned out that there is content on social media that could have been decisive, but this only applies to individual cases where the content was considered extreme. Examples of such content were strong political statements that for instance regarded racism or other statements concerning inequality.