'Social Media & Candidate Screening'

"Nowadays Hiring Professionals have an additional weapon to screen candidates. We are talking about social media as a recruitment tool. It would be unwise not to take advantage of this powerful opportunity which is free, even though a bit time-consuming. However, studies have shown that 5 % don’t use social networking sites to screen prospective employees.

91 % of companies do check candidates via social media and 69 % stated that they REJECTED candidates because of what they saw online about them. Some of the reasons were: lies about their qualifications, inappropriate photos and comments, negative comments about a previous employer, poor communication skills, discriminatory comments, content about them using drugs and drinking alcohol, and last but not least, sharing confidential information from a previous employer.

Online technologies are increasingly bringing once private information to the public sphere. If you type a person's name into an online search engine such as Google, you might pull up a video from YouTube, a profile on Facebook, photos and myriad other pieces of information that are akin to an individual's social "resume." For those born after 1993 who have always lived in coexistence with the Internet, the blurring of lines between appropriate and inappropriate use of this type of information is common. However, for other generations, it may be disconcerting to know that one's personal information is only one click away. When recruiters use online search engines and social networking sites to screen job candidates quickly, easily and informally, they may pull up either a wealth of helpful information or very little, depending on how protective the prospective employees are of their online privacy. In spite of these risks and uncertainties, human resources are increasingly using the Internet as an HR tool.

For example, social media can provide a snapshot of applicants' professional personas. Do they belong to professional organizations? What type of volunteer activities are they involved in? What type of other organizations do they align themselves with? Will they represent the organization well in the community?

Survey of the year 2018 by TISS on Using Social Media for Talent Acquisition—Recruitment and Screening, found that 84 percent of organizations are using social media for recruiting, that 43 percent are using it to screen applicants and that 66 percent are taking steps to leverage mobile recruiting to target smartphone users.

Depending on the privacy settings of the social networking site and what the job candidates actually have on their profiles, hiring managers may be able to view pictures of the job candidates and information about their education, political views, work experience, geographic location, hobbies, and interests, as well as the list of people they are "friends" with.

Despite the obvious advantages of using social networking websites in recruiting, staffing professionals should be aware of caveats and possible pitfalls. Key reasons many employers give for not using social networking include concerns about the accuracy of the information gained, invading the privacy of the applicant or creating an inadvertent issue of job discrimination. "