People’s social media profiles can tell recruiters much about their interests, values, and behaviors. But this information can also raise red flags. A background check can uncover pictures of candidates in compromising situations, posts promoting violence, or even evidence of a criminal record. These issues can be hard to spot during an interview.
Hiring Process
Using social media to screen candidates is a common practice. It gives recruiting teams a snapshot of their candidate’s personality and behavior, which may not be reflected in their resume or during the interview process. This can help determine whether candidates fit their organization, culture, and values.
During a pre-employment screening, an employer will research a potential employee’s public profiles on sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and WhatsApp to look for red flags or any information that can influence the hiring decision.
This type of screening is an essential part of a company’s hiring process. In-house social media screening can be expensive and time-consuming. It can also be an open door for bias, as it is difficult to avoid judging a candidate based on their social media activity, interests, photos, friends, or public musings.
This can leave employees feeling burdened, considered, untrusted, irritated, or censored, harming work performance and the overall employee experience. The best option for an employer looking into a potential employee’s social media is to work with a third-party background check service that will provide clear, concise, and legally compliant reports of their digital footprint about social media screening.
This method removes the risk of discrimination and allows a company to save on resources while ensuring a fair and equitable process for all candidates.
Recruiting Process
Social media is a popular communication tool used by billions of people across the globe. It’s a platform for sharing information and ideas professionally and personally. It’s also a great way to find employment and network with potential employers. A candidate’s social media can offer valuable insights into their personality, work ethic, and interests.
As a result, many hiring managers are using social media screening as part of their recruiting process. Some candidates may feel that a recruiter’s social media assessment of their personal life is an invasion of privacy. They may think that their social media profiles do not represent their true professional self and that making a hiring decision based on this information is unfair.
Additionally, candidates’ privacy settings on some social media platforms may not be private, allowing a recruiter to see more than they should. A smart background check uses automated technology to scan public social media profiles, news items and other online sources during the pre-employment screening.
This gives recruiters a fuller picture of their candidates and helps them determine whether they fit their organization. However, social media background checks should not replace traditional background screening forms, such as a criminal record search and credit report.
Retention Process
Having an effective, trustworthy workforce is essential for any business. A toxic workplace is expensive and detrimental to a company’s brand. It can also lead to high turnover rates, low employee morale, and negative perceptions of the company.
Social media screening allows you to weed out applicants who may be a risk to your team. It can uncover various issues, such as illegal activities, offensive comments, violent or aggressive behavior, and sexually explicit content. It can also help you identify and avoid hiring individuals who are toxic in the workplace – people who complain about their current employer, co-workers, or management on social media, use foul language, name-call, bully others, blame, or spread unnecessary negativity.
It’s important to note that if your company uses social media screening for job candidates, it should be done in a way that is legal and compliant with federal, state, and local employment laws and regulations. It is best to limit the search to publicly available pages and not ask for passwords or access to private accounts.
Ensure that your background check agency has clear guidelines from you on what is and isn’t acceptable. Regarding current employees, it’s just as important for companies to screen them. A recent survey found that 88 percent of employers and hiring managers would fire an existing worker for certain social media activity.
Promotion Process
Social media is a powerful communication tool for sharing ideas, thoughts, and messages. Billions of people use it daily to communicate with others around the globe and share aspects of their lives, including the good and bad. As a result, it is not uncommon for recruiters to check candidates’ social media profiles before making a hiring decision.
However, checking social media before hiring is fraught with potential pitfalls. First and foremost, it violates a candidate’s privacy. Social media is often used for personal use, so hiring managers who check these sites are snooping through private content without permission. In addition, this process can also uncover information about a protected characteristic, such as age, race, national origin, gender, or disability, which could cause the employer to discriminate against the applicant.
Additionally, checking social media can take up valuable time that HR teams should spend evaluating candidate qualifications and finding the best fit for their organization. Instead, leveraging an automated digital footprint screening solution that includes social media checks can save HR teams the time and effort of manually searching for candidates’ public social media accounts to uncover any potentially risky web content.