Social media profiles have become the most common and easily accessible platform to get an individual’s personal information. When it comes to professional matters, does social media profiles can be useful for any purpose? The answer is yes. Employers do visit an applicant’s social media profiles for a better understanding of his/her professional and personal sides, their interests, and more. What the employers find from the profiles can work favorably or unfavorably for the candidates. Conducting a social media background check is used to pre-verify candidates before sending a job offer.
Social Media Background Check
During the hiring process, most employers use a candidate’s social media profiles for screening purposes. It is also essential to check on current employees’ social media updates to stay up to date with their activities. The main reason behind conducting a social media background check is to make sure that the individual is a good fit for the organization, not only professionally but the moral side as well.
The information on the social media platforms of a candidate may help to reveal the data that supports their educational and professional qualifications. Also, it helps to get to know what other people say about the candidate.
No one can say it is unnecessary the urge for a social media background check of an applicant before hiring. Because the platform provides a glance into his/her real personality and access to essential information needed for the employer. Most of the employers open up that, they even don’t want to interview a candidate, if they can’t find evidence of his/her social media profiles.
Legal Risks in Social Media Background Check
The risk factor hidden behind social media is, the facts available online through various platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc may not be true or risk-free completely. So, the unrestricted use of social media background checks can put employers in trouble.
There are certain legal risk factors when depending solely on the internet for the screening of the applicant. The employer must take all the hiring decisions based upon non-discriminatory information that is logical and well-grounded for job performance. Hiring negligence can potentially expose employers to lawsuits, so make sure to use all the information available online that could have prevented hiring a person who is dishonest, unfit, dangerous, and unqualified. Employers should always ensure that they are evaluating the right social media profiles. Most people have online false identities. There may be another person sharing the same name and date of birth as the applicant. Online identity theft and cyber slamming are also very common nowadays.
Social Media Background Screening Trends
Society for Human Resource Management considers social media background screening as one of the top human capital management trends and is popular in utilizing screening data for hiring purposes. Social media screening is one of the emerging trends in background checks and most employers are still not comfortable in doing that. Most employers try to conduct social media screening internally, but background service providers do the work more efficiently.
Compliance is crucial when conducting social media screening. Generally, applicants used to put information online which may not be useful for hiring decisions. It is always advisable to work with legal counsel to frame a social media screening policy to establish a social media screening process in the background screening policy. Background screening service providers like CredCV can work on a social media background check of the candidate to ensure flawless hiring decisions.
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