Why Your Company Needs Social Media Background Check Services
Social media background checks reveal information that may not appear in a standard background check. Screening for these red flags can help ensure your organization’s values and mission are carried out by employees or recruits off-the-clock and on-the-clock.
It’s essential to partner with a 3rd party screening company that can perform social media searches legally compliantly. This helps protect you from discrimination claims.
Protects Your Company’s Reputation
Social media background checks are more than a “nice to have.” It’s become an essential tool that all companies should include in their hiring practices. It’s fast, convenient, and gives you a better insight into the person you are about to hire or promote.
The digital world can be a wild place. While some candidates may present a professional image, their private lives could be more stellar. This can be a red flag for companies hiring employees to represent their brand well. Red flags like excessive cursing, photos of parties and hard-drinking, or extremist political opinions can put a company off. This is especially true if they represent the company’s values.
A quality third-party consumer reporting agency can conduct these searches quickly and legally. They have the tools to review multiple accounts and search for the specific criteria that the company wants. They can also focus on job-relevant information and redact protected class information when presenting results.
Know what you are doing if you decide to use social media background checks. You must have an authorization release form that allows you to use the search tool, vetted by legal counsel, to ensure compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). A professional screening service can perform these searches on your behalf and help you avoid discrimination claims or breaching the FCRA.
Prevents Recruiting Mistakes
Choosing the best social media background check is critical in an effective hiring process. With them, a hiring manager can avoid accidentally hiring an individual with evil intentions or a history of illegal activities. This can cost the company money in terms of training and lost productivity. It can also hurt the reputation of the company as a whole.
Using technology from a leading specialist makes it possible to carry out the check quickly and accurately. By searching for the candidate’s name, it is possible to explore a variety of platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The check can be automated with human oversight to ensure the correct information is spotted. If a candidate has not given consent, the process can be paused.
When carried out correctly, social media screening provides a comprehensive look at an applicant’s online presence, which may indicate their character more than a standard background check. However, the search must be carried out transparently and consistently with clear criteria to promote fairness. Avoiding invasive searches, circumventing passwords, or accessing personal accounts that violate privacy laws is essential.
Using a service that filters out protected class data, such as gender, sex, race, religion, disability, and so on, allows companies to gain valuable insights into a candidate’s personality without infringing on their rights.
Prevents Harassment
Social media background checks help prevent hiring employees likely to harm your company and its customers. Having an employee with a history of bullying, violence, or extreme language could damage your reputation and put others at risk.
While conducting in-person interviews helps weed out applicants who may have membership in protected classes, performing a social media check can reveal additional details about a candidate’s past. This is especially important when the position requires access to sensitive information or working with vulnerable populations, such as children and older adults.
Using a trusted 3rd party reporting agency experienced with social media screening can save you time and money by reducing the amount of manual work needed. Their software combines artificial intelligence with human oversight to eliminate data collection and verification errors. This saves HR and management time while delivering accurate results faster.
While some candidates and employees may feel violated by being snooped on, the fact is that this type of investigation can be essential for maintaining a safe workplace and ensuring the integrity of your brand. Your HR team can educate job candidates on your screening process before accepting a job offer so they know their social media will be reviewed. This can also help them avoid posting inappropriate content online that may impact your business.
Prevents Fraud
Most background checks ensure job candidates provide accurate information about their employment history, education, professional references, and criminal record. While they help you mitigate security risks and find the right fit for your company, social media checks go further by assessing a candidate’s personality and moral code.
Social media searches may reveal a variety of red flags, such as violence, racism, drug use, and negative attitudes toward coworkers or clients. A qualified service provider will have software that scours social media profiles and analyzes posts, likes, groups, and replies for specific keywords. The company will also be able to identify and redact information protected by privacy laws, including marital status, age, sex, religion, veteran status, or disability.
While it is possible to perform these searches independently, using a social media screening service is more practical and effective. These services will be able to search all publicly available content and provide you with reports that are easy to read and contain valuable information about the candidate’s online presence.
Many offer a robust social media screening solution that can be customized to your specifications and includes the following:
- Word clouds.
- A timeline of the content.
- Other data points that are useful when making hiring decisions.
In addition, it is entirely legal to conduct social media searches for employment purposes if they are conducted compliantly with the candidate’s consent and the search is relevant to the position you are hiring for.