When sifting through applications and deciding who to invite for an interview, many employers check out applicants’ social media profiles beforehand. Most candidates are pre-checked before they receive a job offer. Complete criminal background investigations, employment and education verifications, and credit reports are widespread when hiring a new candidate. Still, many companies look into social media profiles to check out their potential future employees.
Social media background screening can be a valuable tool for employers. It can help find information about a candidate that is tougher to find through traditional screening or during the interview process. When done correctly, social media background checking is a great way to gain helpful information about an applicant’s history and character. Unfortunately, this tactic isn’t always used correctly and can backfire in the wrong hands.
What is a social media background check?
A social media background check (SMBC) is the process of researching a candidate’s social media pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram to determine if applicants are qualified for open positions within a company. The search can start with a simple Google search and go into more detail from there.
A social media background check can help employers get a feeling for a candidate’s cultural fit for the company, the applicant’s values and priorities, make sure the candidate does not post violent or sexist content, doesn’t use explicit images or hate speech, or is bullying others online.
What are the advantages of a social media background check before hiring?
There is a lot of readily available information on many different social media platforms, and it is generally inexpensive to conduct the research.
You can screen candidates to see if their personalities will fit into the company culture and share some of the same values. You can generally see their previous work history and tenure. You will be able to see if this person speaks about their previous employers on their accounts. You can verify that the individual does not have a record of degrading the company or co-workers.
What do I have to be careful about?
Social media screenings should be used after the other usual background screenings come back and not as the first line of defense when hiring.
If a hiring manager researches the candidate’s social media accounts, they could discover that the candidate is a protected class member and discriminate based on that information. This protected information includes age, sex, race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disabilities, veteran status, citizenship, or marital status. A hiring manager should never reject a qualified candidate because they belong to one of these groups. You might be vulnerable to legal claims under state or federal discrimination laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You need to be very careful when looking into social media because there are many ways that you can get yourself into trouble.
Aside from legal problems, when a hiring manager does the research, he might develop an uncalled-for bias against a candidate.
It is always advisable to hire a professional third-party company for social media background checks.
Who should do your background check?
You should hire a third-party background screening company and make sure they follow all FCRA rules. These companies conducting background checks have to receive written consent from the applicant stating that they have permission to conduct the screening. Also, when you hire a third-party company, they will remove all the protected information from the report before sending it over to the hiring company, keeping the bias out of it.
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact us.