Should Your Company Be Able to Look at Your Social Media Before and During Your Employment?

What’s one way for hiring managers to learn who you are outside the confines of the résumé, cover letter, and interview? Scanning your social media profiles.

Social media is great for staying connected to family and friends, sharing jokes, opinions, and interests, and keeping up-to-date with current trends and events. It can also be where potential employers go to do additional screening before making their hiring decisions. In fact, according to a study by CareerBuilder, nearly 70% of employers screen their candidates using social media and what’s more surprising is that 57% of employers are less likely to even contact applicants who lack an online presence.

Sure, finding a new candidate can be tough, and using all your tactics to determine if a candidate is a good fit before sending out an Employment Offer Letter is usually a good idea. But can reviewing someone’s social media put you in a difficult legal situation?

The truth is if you use information under protected grounds (e.g. race, religion, color, gender, etc.) to make your hiring decision, yes. Moreover, even when you think looking at your applicant’s Facebook profile won’t influence your decision inappropriately and possibly illegally, it could.

I reach out to the Kevin Neudecker he is the VP of Quality & Compliance Corporate Screener 

Kevin for those who are making considering using Social Media as a background check what are the benefits? 

How Do Biases Affect Your Hiring Decision?

A bias is when prejudices cause you to favor (or disfavor) a certain type of person or group in an unfair way.

For instance, humans are naturally drawn to people who are similar to themselves. This means something like finding out a candidate has similar religious beliefs as you could cause you to favor their application over others, even if you don’t think you are doing so.

Another instance of bias could be if a person has unconscious, stereotypical views of a certain type of person or group.

For instance, if someone thinks an individual of a certain gender or race is more skilled or less skilled at something than their counterpart (like if a person thinks women are better communicators than men), they could unknowingly allow their views to influence their decision and hire a particular applicant over another for the wrong reasons, even if the other applicant is equally as qualified for the position.

The issue here is that most people aren’t aware of their biases and how they can affect their decision-making. Reviewing an applicant’s social media can bring to light inappropriate information that should never be used when choosing a new employee like gender, race, or religious beliefs.

So we know there are risks with doing these types of background checks what would be some potential consequences? 

With the world being always accessible in the palm of our hands, it's often difficult to disconnect. It's hard to believe that in 2005 only 5% of adults in the US used at least one social media platform. Now, in 2022, almost three-out-of-four (72%) people are active on social media, so it's no wonder that the lines between our home and work lives are becoming blurred. We are suffering from Social Media Overload.

But what happens when your co-workers (or even boss) decide they want to follow you online?

Vancouver, BC-based job interview company The Interview guys studied data from 1,024 employees who had been followed by a friend or colleague across their social media accounts. It wanted to discover more about their self-censorship behavior online.

Three in 10 employees accepted friend requests to keep the peace at work, as having a good relationship with your co-worker is crucial to job-related success. Is it worth accepting a friend request from someone you do not particularly like, or have a difficult relationship with at work?

Social media contributed to the burnout that many experiences at work, and added to anxiety about their colleagues monitoring their social activity. Perhaps it is time to take a step back.

Remember that almost everything you post on social networking sites can be used by businesses to determine what kind of employee you are or will be. The internet is written in ink, not pencil. Be cognizant of what you post and you won't need to worry about it getting used against you at a later time.