Background Checks and Social Media

Background Checks and Social Media

If your pre employment screening efforts consist of Google and Facebook, you are not getting the information you need to make a good hiring decision.  In fact, the information you get from the internet may be worse than no information at all.

In the world of corporate HR, two words you will hear fairly consistently are… fairly and consistently.

Using a social site like MySpace or Facebook as a pre employment tool poses several potential problems.  Are you checking every applicant online, or just a few?  What if the applicant’s personal page shows that he or she is of a particular religion or race?  Suppose they belong to a group whose views you don’t happen to agree with?  How about if there is a picture of the applicant in a bar?  And remember, most of the content that is on an applicant’s social media site is information that he or she is putting out there for everyone to see.  It may not actually be representative of the individual or his behavior.

If you then don’t hire the candidate, could there be a problem?  Possibly.

Using the Google Search Engine may also present problems, as results being returned to you might not be the person you are interested in.  Even unusual names can be duplicated in the vastness of the internet, so that your results may be totally inaccurate.  Then it is up to you to determine if the person is the correct one.  And accuracy is what you want in pre employment background checks, and you want to apply all your employment screening standards fairly and consistently.

Neither of these will provide information that is actually useful on its own in pre employment screening.  At best, it should be used only in addition to employee background checks conducted by a trusted background check company.

Use your background check company as a valued business partner helping you define an effective employment screening program that is applied fairly and consistently to all applicants.

To discuss your pre employment screening policies, contact us by calling 770-426-0547 or click here to email.