Can You Base Hiring Decisions on Information from Social Media Sites?

One of the most controversial questions in HR today is whether to rely on social media sites for information on which to base hiring decisions. Jackson-Lewis attorneys Richter and Sandoval (Richter from the Omaha office and Sandoval from the Newport Beach, California office) offered their tips at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exhibition held recently in Las Vegas.

Are Employers Screening on Facebook?

Consider these facts, says Richter:

• 24 million American Facebook users leave their profiles mostly public
• 73% of social media profiles can be found through a public search engine
• 77% of social network users do not restrict access to their photos
• Of the employers who use social networks to screen job candidates, 35% have at least once decided not to offer a job to an applicant based on the content posted.
• Over 50% of those employers attributed their decision not to hire to:
• Provocative photos
• References to drinking and drug use or
• Bad-mouthing of previous employers and colleagues

Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation

Sandoval offers three cautions concerning social media background checking:

• Beware of inadvertently obtaining information regarding a protected status. Sites may contain information regarding age, race, national origin, disabilities, sexual orientation, religion, and other protected characteristics. An employer’s viewing of an applicant’s personal information on social net working/blogging site triggers protections of antidiscrimination laws.
• The problem? It may be difficult for the employer to prove it did not rely upon the personal information that was discovered on the site. Once you know the personal information, you can’t “unring the bell.”
• Avoid circumventing a potential employee’s privacy settings by pretending to be someone else in order to gain access to a restricted network.
• Understand that information you find on the Internet may be inaccurate, misleading, or flat-out wrong.

Step … away … from the keyboard! Your job descriptions are already written. Click here to see why thousands of managers have a permanent place in their offices for BLR’s classic Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.

Key Challenges for Employers

Richter outlines the following as the primary challenges that employers face in dealing with social media:

• Discrimination
• Harassment
• Retaliation
• Negligent hiring/supervision. Do you have a duty to look? There’s a split on this issue even within the law firm, Richter says.  If you do look, he says, have a separate person do the search (not the hiring manager), and keep a detailed list of questions or searches made.
• Divulgence of trade secrets or proprietary information. It’s unfortunately quite easy for employees to do this, Richter notes.
• Reputational harm to employees
• Reputational harm to employers
• Privacy pitfalls. For example, does the employee have a right of privacy when checking social networking sites on the employer’s computer? (Take steps to eradicate that expectation, says Richter.)

When you are doing your recruiting, and whether or not you are checking social media sites, the safest practice is to focus your search and your evaluation of candidates on job requirements—and the way to do that is to start with the job description.

Like many things in HR, the first step is aligning the job description with realities of the job and the policies of the company.  How about your job descriptions? Are they well-written, up-to-date, and ADA-compliant? Detailed enough to help? Essential skills delineated?

If not—or if you’ve never even written job descriptions—you’re not alone. Thousands of companies fall short in this area.

It’s easy to understand why. Job descriptions are not simple to do—what with updating and management and legal review, especially given the ADA requirement of a split-off of essential functions from other functions in the description. Wouldn’t it be great if your job descriptions were available and already written?

Actually, they are. We have more than 700, ready to go, covering every common position in any organization, from receptionist right up to president. They are in an extremely popular BLR program called the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.

First created in the 1980s, the “JDE” has been continually refined and updated over time, with descriptions revised or added each time the law, technology—or the way we do business—changes.

Prewritten job descriptions in the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia now come with pay grades already attached. Click here to try the program at no cost.

Revised for the ADA, Pay Grades Updated

There was a major revision, for example, following the passage of the ADA. In fact, BLR editors reviewed every one of those 700 descriptions to ensure they were ADA-compliant.

Another enhancement was the updating of pay grades for each job. According to our customers, this is an enormous time-saver, enabling them to make compensation decisions even as they define the position. You can see a sample job description from the program by clicking here. (Yes, it is the one for HR Manager—Pay grade: 37.)

The BLR Job Descriptions Encyclopedia also includes an extensive tutorial on setting up a complete job descriptions program, and how to encourage participation from all parts of the organization. That includes top management, the employees, and any union or other collective bargaining entity.

Quarterly Updates, No Additional Cost

Very important these days, quarterly updates are included in the program as a standard feature—key at a time of constantly changing laws and emerging technologies. We’ll send you new or revised descriptions every 90 days. And the cost is extremely reasonable, averaging less than 43 cents per job description … already written, legally reviewed, and ready to adapt or use as is.

You can evaluate BLR’s Job Descriptions Encyclopedia at no cost in your office for up to 30 days. Get more information or order the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.

Download product sample
Download list of job descriptions included

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