When screening potential new employees, recruiters (and employers) are looking to not only ensure a good fit with the organization but also to weed out potentially problematic applicants. This is why conducting a background screening is such a common practice during the recruiting and hiring process.
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Social media networks are one avenue that some recruiters opt to use as part of the background screening process. However, doing so is not without risks. Let’s take a look at some of the risks for recruiters or employers who would like to use social media for background screening:
- Social media often contains far more information than an employer needs to know. For example, social media accounts can easily divulge things like an applicant’s religion, sexual orientation, inclusion in a protected class, personal and/or family health status, and more. These are the types of things that may be discriminatory to use as part of the hiring decision—and it becomes more difficult to defend against a discrimination claim when there is evidence that the hiring team knew of such characteristics during the decision-making process.
- Using social media background checks as a required part of background screening can inadvertently leave out some applicants who do not have social media accounts. If the organization refuses to hire someone who cannot be screened via social media, it may have a disparate impact on individuals who do not have the resources to maintain a social media account. This could be an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) concern.
- There is little an employer or recruiter can do to confirm that information found on a social media page is true. It’s also possible to occasionally interpret discoveries in vastly different ways, which may lead an employer to dismiss a candidate erroneously.
- There’s always the risk of looking at the wrong person’s account. Unless the applicant’s name is incredibly unique, there’s a high likelihood that social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have multiple accounts with the same name attached. Especially in cases where the profile does not contain a recent photo of the person in question or specific personal information, it may be difficult to be completely ensure that you’re looking at the right person’s profile.
- There’s also the risk of fake profiles, which can be made by applicants who create a “public” persona (complete with “clean” social media profiles) and hide their private/real profile from view. Fake profiles can also exist when the person in question has had their account spoofed—which happens more often than we realize—and the applicant may not even know.
- Like any part of the hiring process, there’s a risk involved if the hiring team does not treat all applicants consistently. There can be an elevated risk of discrimination claims if the hiring team only checks the social media accounts for some individuals but not all. Or, if the organization only utilizes the information in some cases. For example, if the same types of discoveries are made but are only held against some applicants but not others.
Now that we’ve outlined a few risks of using social media in the background screening process, in tomorrow’s Advisor, we’ll take a look at how to reduce some of these risks.
