More organizations are using social media screening for a more holistic view of candidates. These searches typically involve a deep dive into public profiles to look for content that can either support or detract from the candidate’s candidacy.
However, navigating this area requires a delicate balance to avoid discrimination while adhering to federal and state laws. This is especially important when hiring for roles that require high trust.
Define Your Criteria
Social media screening for pre-employment can be a powerful tool, but it’s important to know what you’re looking for and the risks. Social media checks can uncover pictures of candidates in compromising situations, posts about drug use, or even the candidate isn’t a good cultural fit.
HR teams must be able to evaluate these findings while mitigating concerns about EEO and privacy laws. This is where a third-party screening vendor comes in handy, as they can objectively apply an employer’s pre-defined criteria and eliminate the risk of unconscious bias on the part of the hiring team.
A compliant social media background check uses technology to scan a candidate’s public online content, news items, and websites for potential risk factors.
Define Your Scoring Method
Social media screening policy provides additional context to your hiring process, mitigating a bad hire’s financial, safety, and reputational risks while minimizing legal risk from unconscious bias. But screening social media has its pitfalls.
First, employers must understand their duty to treat applicants fairly and only access relevant information to a job position. Further, privacy laws protect candidates from accessing their private information, so it’s essential to be aware of these limits when undertaking social media screening.
Lastly, looking at someone’s personal photos or public musings can make the candidate feel burdened, judged, untrusted, or censored. These feelings can hurt trust and loyalty and impact performance.
By preparing well, you can enjoy the advantages of social media screening while avoiding its drawbacks. You can minimize the risks of making poor hiring decisions by defining your criteria, working with a reputable provider, and adhering to clear rules and procedures. Then, you can focus on selecting the best talent to meet your organization’s goals.
Define Your Scoring Criteria
If your HR team relies on social media screening to identify potential hiring risks, you need to know the parameters for what is fair and appropriate. If you look at one thing for some candidates and not others, you could be accused of discrimination and a failure to follow legal best practices.
To avoid these pitfalls, ensure you have a clear, consistent, and documented process for collecting social media information, and only look at relevant data to the position. Otherwise, you risk violating an applicant’s privacy and potentially facing a negligent hiring lawsuit.
Using a social media background check that scans public content, news items, and websites can help you quickly surface potential risks and glean valuable character insights. It can also save you hours of manually searching online and give you a better picture of the candidate’s digital footprint when paired with a thorough criminal background check.
Define Your Data Collection Method
Social media has become an inescapable part of modern life – and the content people post online may significantly impact their employment. With a high degree of trustworthiness essential for many positions, it’s no wonder that employers are increasingly turning to social media screening when recruiting and checking on staff.
However, while the benefits of a social media background check are clear, there are potential risks to the process that must be considered. When performed incorrectly, social media screening can invade an applicant’s privacy and cause them to feel judged or untrusted. Before implementing a policy or using social media tools, it is essential to consider the legal and ethical issues involved. Following best practices to ensure the process is carried out fairly is also essential.
Employers can reduce these risks by using specialist software that searches for specific keywords and uses a human touch to confirm accurate results and focus on job-related factors. They can also document the process to ensure it is conducted fairly and consistently.
Define Your Data Collection Method
As more HR teams adopt social media screening as part of their hiring process, they must ensure it’s done correctly and compliantly. While manual searches can be carried out in-house, this can cost both time and money and is likely to be prone to missed insights as content can be updated or erased quickly.
Outsourcing these checks to a specialist company allows for a more comprehensive and streamlined process designed to be legally compliant, delivering powerful insight into candidates beyond the information on their resume or in an interview. It can identify potential red flags and match a candidate’s online footprint with the values and culture of the hiring organization.
An excellent social media screening company will have a strong track record of following best practices and legal guidelines. This includes ensuring that all searches are job-related, non-discriminatory, and conducted following the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It will also ensure that all applicants are fully informed about what’s being checked and their search results. This can help prevent misunderstandings and the perception of discrimination.