Social networks recruit globally

Citation

Selmer, J. (2015), "Social networks recruit globally", Journal of Global Mobility, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-01-2015-0001

Social networks recruit globally

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Global Mobility, Volume 3, Issue 1

“Workers of the world, log in” was the headline recently of an article in The Economist magazine. The social network, LinkedIn, and others, are changing the way professionals are hired. Their membership has literally exploded the last few years and most of their members are professionals. In the world of work, they act as an online contact book, curriculum vitae and publishing platform. These social networks make it easier for recruiters to identify people who are not looking for a new job but might be tempted to move for the right offer. Such “passive” jobseekers may even make up the majority of the membership. Bypassing recruitment agencies, social networks, like LinkedIn, make it easier for organizations themselves to identify such people. This is just one of the advantages for members of the extremely successful JGM LinkedIn Group.

The membership of this group recently surpassed 1,000 and it has had a week over week growth rate of 100 percent from its start on May 30, 2012. Members come from both industry and academic institutions, ranging from small organizations to large MNCs, from individuals just starting out with this specific interest, to CEOs. They come from world-wide locations, covering all continents of the globe. We keep in touch with this large and diverse group interested in global mobility issues and research through featuring journal updates, global mobility news, and hot topics. The JGM LinkedIn Group also provides a forum for members to share current research projects with peers and to seek new collaborations. Thanks to our Communications Editor, Yvonne McNulty, the JGM LinkedIn Group has become a vibrant, multi-purpose tool for the members.

Starting with this issue, JGM will be published quarterly, offering more publication opportunities. The journal has already better services than many more established academic journals. With a prompt and professional revise and resubmit process, using the best reviewers within the field of global mobility, JGM is well equipped to feature new and interesting topics. As JGM is the only academic journal to consistently and exclusively focus on global mobility issues, it means that all authors’ articles will be read by like-minded scholars and practitioners. The main focus is on white-collar or skilled workers or professionals and their immediate context at work and outside work. Our upcoming Special Issues, Global Employees […] Global Families, guest-edited by Margaret Shaffer and Mina Westman, and, Is it Just About Money? New Perspectives on Expatriate Compensation, has Yvonne McNulty and Michael Harvey as Guest Editors. Both special issues contribute to fill significant research gaps in extant literature.

JGM welcomes a wide variety of rigorous research methods, but prefers empirical contributions, with quantitative or qualitative methodology or a mixed-methods approach. Conceptual pieces like thorough theoretical developments and focussed literature reviews are also welcome. Of interest are also various levels of analysis – individual, team, and organizational, including multi-level studies. We are also interested in research from a variety of domains, such as psychology, sociology, strategic management, political science (among others), as well as interdisciplinary studies.

In this issue

The first paper, written by Anthony Fee and Gabriela Glassock, delves into an important issue through a novel approach. Using consumer behavior theory to better understand the decision-making processes of self-initiated expatriates, the authors provide new perspectives by merging two distinct and disparate fields of research. The second contribution, authored by Marian van Bakel, Jan Pieter van Oudenhoven and Marinel Gerritsen, deals with how to improve the quality of contact between expatriates and their local hosts in the non-work environment. This is crucial since it is a way of helping expatriates to deal with the challenges of an international assignment. The third paper, with Naoki Ando as the author, examines isomorphic behavior of multinational corporations, referred to as internal mimetic behavior, with respect to foreign subsidiary staffing. The paper investigates both formal and informal institutional distance between the home and host country to advance our understanding of foreign subsidiary staffing. The fourth paper, written by Maike Andresen, empirically examines job embeddedness as an antecedent of job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) of expatriates. Based on a multinational sample of expatriates in numerous countries, the study is one of the first to investigate effects of organizational and community embeddedness on job performance and OCBs among expatriates. In the last paper of this issue, authored by Simon Stephens, a group of Irish graduates, who emigrated following the global financial crash of 2008, was interviewed. Narrative structuring enabled participants to provide highly contextualized accounts regarding the factors which lead to migration; the experience of migrants; and the factors that may lead to repatriation.

Since JGM is a specialist academic journal, the members of the JGM LinkedIn Group are all interested in global mobility issues making them a highly focussed target group for global recruiters. This may be one of the major advantages for our members as both the jobseekers and the recruiting organizations may feel confident that they can find the desired match at the JGM LinkedIn Group. So, besides the academic benefits, our JGM LinkedIn Group members may also be recruited globally through our social network.

Jan Selmer