National News
The Pros and Cons of Social Media Background Checks
August 10, 2016 posted by Steve Brownstein
While you may be tempted to check out a job candidate's social media presence before hiring, doing so might not be worth the risk.
Depending on what you see and how you use it when deciding which candidate to hire, you could be subject to a lawsuit from someone who didn't get the job.
Aliah Wright, a manager with the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM) and author of "A Necessary Evil: Managing Employee Activity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Hundreds of Other Social Media Sites" (Society for Human Resource Management 2013), said a lot of HR professionals are leery of learning things about candidates via social media, because of the potential legal risks.
"They have to tread carefully when they are using social profiles for background checks," Wright told Business News Daily.
The legal risks come from the information you learn that the candidate may later claim was the reason he or she wasn't hired. There are a variety of "protected characteristics," such as age, race, religion, medical history and nationality that employers can't consider when deciding whether to hire someone. Employers that do base hiring decisions on that type of information can be sued. [See Related Story: Best Background Check Services]
Research from the SHRM revealed that 76 percent of employers that don't use social media when conducting background checks said they avoid this practice mostly because of the legal concerns.
Jonathan Segal, a partner at Duane Morris LLP in the employment, labor, benefits and immigration practice group, said that while there are risks in checking out social media when screening candidates, there are also risks in not looking at it.
"Sometimes, lawyers think [businesses] are taking a risk [by looking at social media], but they could be taking a bigger risk [by not looking], because then they hire the person that is dangerous or unproductive," Segal said.
Segal said in his opinion it's reasonable to include social media screening as part of your background-check process. The questions are, however, when and how to do so.
