Question

What do you think about using Social Media as a background check? Please use the 5 criteria (i.e., reliable, valid, generalizable, practical, and legal) to argue your position.

Answer 1

Ideally, it is fair to check into applicant’s basic background that is absolute pertaining to the work requirements of the applicant in the Organization, for example, the educational qualifications, work experience, etc., but unfair to research an applicant’s social media profile her than if it is an official profile especially intended for the job and recruitment purpose such as LinkedIn. The reason being, the personal aspects of an applicant might create a biased impression of the applicant on the minds of the recruiters which is certainly not desirable in a job recruitment process. The recruiter needs to maintain a neutral stand, free from any sort of biasness, in order to recruit a candidate based upon his professional worth to the Organization and hence to uncover information about a candidate through his social media profiles is rather an unethical approach.

Social media such as LinkedIn provides an excellent platform to search for the jobs and that could be used in favor of both, the employers as well as the job aspirants. The employers can come in touch with relevant job aspirants and therefore it would ease their process of lengthy physical document screening processes. On the part of the job aspirants as well, they can directly get in touch with the employers and other relevant persons in an Organization to inquire about the vacancy in the system and accordingly going ahead in applying for the same without resorting to the formal lengthy procedure of job interviews. In fact, even for the employers who are urgently searching for replacing the current employees for whatsoever reason, social media platform can play a significant role in supporting the same. So legally, the search is desirable and especially intended by the candidates to let the information be published for the Recruiter’s perusal.

However, on the flip side, social media websites which are not meant to serve the professional purpose but only to facilitate a medium to interact with each other socially, can backfire the recruitment process if the employers choose to resort to the unfair means of uncovering information about the candidate on such platforms and forming a biased opinion thereupon. For example, an employer discovers that a certain job aspirant is found of ABC Band group, something which the employer highly dislikes, then accordingly, the employer may choose not to shortlist the candidate or select him even though the candidate’s personal liking for the band has got nothing to do with the job.

Therefore, the social media sites like Facebook itself is a highly popular Social media tool but gives sort of irrelevant information that could be value by an HR Recruiter. For eg., the ‘About me’ section of the Facebook user’s profile page, contains vague information about an individual in terms of his Professional worth and skills. Moreover, the Community or the groups that interest the Users may also not be of much concern to an HR recruiter because the relation to professionalism would be limited. The Family and Relationships and other events in life, are so personal in nature that the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 anyway prohibits any discrimination based on those grounds. On the other side, LinkedIn is highly professional social media tool that concentrates mainly on User’s work profile and CV that could be of use to the HR recruiters.

Hence, to conclude, Social media is a platform to socialize with the Public. If there are reservations of any social media user, to share certain information with the Public, then that User can limit its information access accordingly. This consciousness shall help the individuals from being monitored by the potential employers. Legally, any discrimination based on age, gender, sex, race, color, religion, etc. is prohibited by the Federal laws, but when the information is well displayed before the Public, it includes its accessibility to the potential employers as well and to that extent, it becomes difficult to bind the employers to such acts. However, ideally, when the background screening is done by a third-party company for an employer, it shall omit the information pertaining to age, gender, sex, race, color or religion before the same is passed on to the employers, So it becomes a significant resource to gather information without legal interruptions, if carried out wisely. Federal laws can only prohibit discrimination policies exercised by the employers but there is no prohibition to view the content that is willfully shared by the individuals on the social platform for any Public, including the third party.