To ask if this is/shoud be standard recruitment practise

[InsomniacVampire]

Came across this as a recommended article and don't know what to think

schoolsweek.co.uk/teaching-hopefuls-asked-for-details-of-any-website-youre-named-on/

To sum up if you dont want to click, some schools ask prospective candidates to give up their social media handles (as well as sites they are mentioned on) info and do background search on candidates.

"An application form for Chesham Grammar School, in Buckinghamshire, asks teacher candidates to provide account names and handles for “all of your” social media accounts, including any under a nickname or pseudonym."

On the one thing, obviously recruiting a teacher who has a twitter account praising racism/homophobia/revealing them to be an Andrew Tate wannabe etc would not be great, I can't see it as anything other than another invasion into private life (also knowing teachers among other few professions seem to be held to higher standards than many other professions).

What are people experiences with this? Is it something already going on a lot outside teaching? Would you/Did you hand over your social media information to a prospective employer?

I have an incredibly silly blog I write for with a friend, a super locked personal FB I don't use my real name for and and two IG accounts, one where I put photos from travels and one of a hobby I do- none having my name/face/person on it. While admittedly I would not like anyone irl to ever read the blog as I would die of shame (super guilty pleasure stupid stuff), I would actually not like an employer to have access to any of the above even if they are harmless and there is nothing dodgy on them- they dont need to what I do in my free time. I'm a teacher, not an Mi5 agent.

Yes, but they won't be able to check your anonymous/pseudonym accounts unless you tell them what they are

I'm a teacher, not an Mi5 agent.

Funnily enough, MI5 don't ask for this information 😉

That's really wicked. Should be illegal, if it isn't already. They were impersonating you in order to falsify student satisfaction, to improve student recruitment? That's trickery.

It's not that teachers can't have a personal life. We just have to be mindful of the nature of our job and exercise appropriate judgement.

I've lived in catchment and would see 6th form students in local pubs on nights out. I know colleagues who have had bands performing on the local music scene and they'd see students. Other colleagues have seen students at their church/mosque/place of worship. Other colleagues have parents of students they teach in their amdram groups or sports clubs. I've also known teachers involved in local politics or standing for election, or been involved in campaigning for issues that they feel strongly about. All of this was in person so not even on social media.

Would I go to the local pubs where I know I'm likely to see students and former students? Yes.
Would I go out locally and get absolutely smashed and conduct myself in a way that's likely to show poor judgement? No.

Same for politics. Can a teacher post about political issues on their social media? Yes. Can they be involved in offline political events? Yes. Would having a public social media page with extensive political rants, including more fringe opinions, show poor professional judgement? Probably.

You’d be surprised what can be done by some employers…

Oh I know it's been standard to check/google people. I meant specifically thawl through their social media even if they are not linked to the person's name.

I'm presuming that's because they already know all about you when you first apply ect

I would give school my LinkedIn profile. They can google my name and won’t find anything. Teachers should lock everything down and use pseudonyms for obvious reasons!

Yeah but the article insinuated you should give them stuff under a pseudonym too.

Two things:

• as a recruiter I’ve looked people up and whittled down the list for drunk pictures, aggressive pictures
• BUT I don’t see why my children’s teachers need to hand this stuff over… their lives are their lives fgs