How Reliable is Social Media Background Checking?

 The advent of social media and the willingness of people to share information about many aspects of their personal lives via social media has created a whole new means of assessing job candidates. We all know it is as social media background checking and most employers do it and many could be considered folly in not doing it. Why? Because, research from CareerBuilder in spring this year shows that 43% of hiring managers who use social media to research candidates (which is most hiring managers really), have found information that has caused them  to not hire candidates, which is up 9 percentage points from 2012. It seems that there is a build up of more and more incriminating information on candidate’s social media profile’s year by year.

So, what kind of information are hiring managers finding on social media profiles and which pieces of information  are they relying on to reject candidates. Well, the most commonly reported social media profile candidate deal breakers that would cause a candidate to be rejected were:

• Candidate posted provocative/inappropriate photos/info – 50 percent
• There was info about candidate drinking or using drugs – 48 percent
• Candidate bad mouthed previous employer – 33 percent
• Candidate had poor communication skills – 30 percent
• Candidate made discriminatory comments related to race, gender, religion, etc. – 28 percent
• Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 percent

But, just how reliable are these social media findings as indicators of a poor candidate?

Well, according to a study by Carolina State University not all of these social media background findings can be relied upon as indicators of the candidate’s characters. For example, hiring managers might interpret incidents of drugs or alcohol use as showing a lack of conscientiousness or self discipline or being irresponsible. But, the researchers found that there was no significant correlation between conscientiousness and an individual’s willingness to post content on Facebook about alcohol or drug use. So, if you are eliminating candidates based on these erroneous criteria you may be eliminating conscientious candidates, so be careful.

But they did find some positive behavior correlations, for example, extroverts were significantly more likely to post content about drugs or alcohol on their Facebook profile, so if you consistently eliminate these kind of candidates you may unwittingly be reducing the amount of extroverts in your candidate pool.

However, there were some very reliable character indicators from a social media profile. For example, they found that candidates who bad mouth others and hurl insults rated much lower on personality traits for agreeableness and conscientiousness, making bad mouthing a very reliable indicator.

So, although the reliability of social media background checking is questionable in some areas, its more reliable in other areas which suggests it should be used with caution and with awareness of the limitations.

The stakes are so high these days, that I think employers would be folly to ignore social media profiles in their screening processes. Why? Because, there are regular stories in the press of people who have rendered themselves virtually unemployable (or worse) as a result of their social media activity. And hiring managers and recruiters arguably may now have a duty of care to their shareholders to social media background check all candidates. I mean how embarrassing would it be for your company or employer brand to hire someone without social media checking only for the world and his dog and your employees to come and tell you a week later that the person you hired is in fact a social pariah. These sort of cases do exist, as I am sure many of you are aware.