How Someone Might Use Social Media and Social Media Background Screening? And Why You Might Need One?

A pre-employment social media screening or a social media background screening is the task of researching a job applicant’s profiles and activities on social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. The idea is to get all the information on the applicant’s background and find out whether there is anything the company should be aware of before offering a job.

Social media screening in your company's background check process have both benefits and risks.

• Social media background checks have benefits because they dig out information that is often dificult to find through traditional screening processes.
• It is desirable to have social media background checks toward the end of the hiring process, and you can keep several best practices in mind.

You can check out a job candidate’s social media presence before hiring them. Based on how you use information when deciding which candidate to hire, you can be sued from someone who didn’t get the job.

What is social media background screening?

A social media background screening is the act of reviewing a job candidate’s social media pages to know more about the candidate. A background check is carried out using information available to the public for free through commonly used social media platforms. But if you don’t do the social media background screening with a certain regard for compliance standards, social media background checks can be illegal.

There are legal risks coming from the information you accumulate, which the candidate may later say was why they weren’t hired. A number of “protected characteristics” – such as age, race, religion, medical history and nationality –cannot be considered when figuring out whether to hire someone. Employers doing hiring decisions on that type of information can be sued. So hire private detective agency in Hyderabad for background check.

Why conduct a background check on social media background screening?

A candidate’s social media profile can reveal more about a candidate than traditional job interviews and background checks.

Employers may end up hiring someone who is “dangerous or unproductive,” While it’s reasonable to include social media screening in your background check process, it’s necessary to know when and how to do so.

When conducting a social media background check, there will be information coming to light that could inform that an employee is not the right fit for the firm. Certain actions of the person could include posts displaying excessive cursing, pictures of hard partying, or extreme political opinions. 

During a social media background check, certain unlawful acts that the candidate indulges in that the companies should be flagging are illegal activity (drugs, underage drinking, etc.), racist or sexist comments, violent or aggressive behavior (like trolling or stalking), sexually explicit material and confidential information.

The idea is to have responsible, well-informed and respectful employees being hired by officers who do not have these red flags come up during Social Media Background Screening.

Several benefits of social media background checks to employers include finding information that supports an applicant’s resume claims, saving time on calling and speaking to an applicant’s personal and professional references, discovering a potential employee’s business network and professional endorsements and decreasing employee complaints, disciplinary action, and turnover. Hire detective agency in Mumbai for these works.