Do you search social media of a potential employee?

[Japanese2024]

A friend of mine works in HR. Lately I have found her to be very gossipy/talking badly about other friends etc and it's getting my back up.

Today she told me they won't be hiring someone because they searched her Facebook in the office and it's all about being drunk/hungover/badly spelt words etc. She was talking about it like gossip, saying she can't believe someone would post like that. Surely that's not OK, do people actually not hire someone for a private search of their social media? The job is with kids and my friend seems to think the woman shouldn't post that but it's her private business!

Yabu - friend is right. This is quite normal to do

Yanbu - someone hiring shouldn't judge on social media

I have not appointed someone to a post before, based on their social media posts.
The line of work I'm in means that people need to have good judgement and be able to make sound decisions, under a lot of public scrutiny, often in very challenging circumstances.
That was completely at odds with the images they had decided to publish of themselves on completely-open social media platforms.

I've let other things go previously (particularly where dubious posts were from several years ago) but people really need to be cognisant of the fact that if you share information about yourself publicly, you are handing it to future employers to build a picture of you.

How do you like the idea of you and your family being harassed, stalked, accosted, or confronted by people who are severely mentally unwell, or have convictions for utterly appalling crimes against individuals, or are on the Sex Offenders register, purely because you think open social media profiles are perfectly great with no downsides?

NB some employers nowadays ask you to disclose any sm usernames as well……

She shouldn't have been gossiping, but I would have thought it's a fairly standard part of the recruitment process to check whether a candidate has an online presence.

Twenty years ago, I had a friend who got fired as a colleague reported her for inappropriate Facebook content. She'd posted a photo of a cartoon she drew at work of her slagging a customer off amongst other similar things. I've always just given limited profile access to colleagues. It's not hard to change your settings to private, so potential recruiters can't really see much info about you.

It’s funny as I have been a hiring manager and have never once searched a potential candidate’s social media beyond LinkedIn and have never worked in a corporate environment where that is the norm.

Also not hiring somebody because they get drunk in their own time is fairly pathetic and smacks of discrimination. Unless it can potentially impact the company it should be non of the company’s business. But this is why people should lock down their social media.

How does social media tell you somebody has convictions / is violent / is a paedophile?

How have you married these two things?

I teach and I don't have my surname or even a picture of me on my SM! I never have colleagues as friends on FB anymore either.

Why do you assume people having an open social media (because they don’t really care about people seeing photos of travels and their dog) means they don’t know how to keep work information confidential.

Every company would do this. Before interviewing anyone I would Google them. See what Facebook / Insta / X / Google / companies house brings up.

Anyone still using Facebook to talk about getting pissed / being hungover is pretty immature in my book. Anyone working with children who hasn’t got their profile private is frankly stupid.

You are assuming they have highly sensitive information on their social media though. A lot of people don’t hence don’t, care who sees it.

Oh yes. Fj d what the real person does and thinks. Not the pretend version at interview.

Me too.

Good way to root out misogynistic arseholes and racists.

I am surprised by people have an issue with people having being drunk at some point in their lives.

Somebody goes out on a Saturday and gets drunk with friends.

This makes them an unsuitable work candidate because…..?

I have never worked in a company where it’s NOT the norm.

The woman is an idiot

She's posting embarrassing things under her real name on a public forum. It's easy enough to lock your profile down if you want to, or keep the embarrassing details of your social life offline.

Total liability, why would any company want someone like that working for them?

It’s interesting how our experiences can differ so much!

Because the poster I replied to appears to think that having open social media poses no problems because it's just photos of running, mountains etc.

The reality is that people who have the inclination can do exactly what I've just described, purely by going and having a look at your open social media profile, even if it is nothing more than photos of running and mountains. Hence why it isn't appropriate or possible for some employers to hire people unless they are willing to forego open social media.

It isn't about work information. It's about leaving yourself wide open to certain consequences.

It tells someone about the type of person you are - of course it is relevant.

Yes, of course social media gets reviewed.

Why wouldn't it? it's the simplest of tasks to have a quick glance at freely available content a candidate has chosen to put out there.

I'd argue it's less invasive than directly asking a former employer for a reference. In the case of checking out someone's social media, they have deliberately put it out there for public consumption, so why not?

If you're posting behaviour and/or thoughts, without restriction, that you wouldn't want a potential employer to see, more fool you.

It's no different to espousing those views or behaving embarrassingly directly in front of them.

No.

It's not always about the information on your specific page.

Take FB for example. If you have an open profile and people can see your running pics, perhaps you run as a member of a club. They'll go to the running club website to see if there is any info on you there. There might not be, but there might be photos of other people you run with. They can discern from that roughly where you might be located, and who your running buddies are. They go back to your FB page, they can see your FB Friends. Most people who use FB will have immediate family and friends on there. It's not difficult to take a guess at which of those FB friends might be your parents. Perhaps Granny isn't as careful about what she posts on her page, so then they see Granny's photos of the grandkids. They know what your children look like. Then they trawl Granny's feed, they discover the names of your children because Granny dotes on them. Then they google them to see if they can perhaps find out where they go to school. They can't, but they now know the name of the club your son plays football for, so they can go along there on matchday...

That's assuming you aren't just on open electoral roll, in which case they can just go and find your home address straight away.

I work with unhinged people, I know what they'll do. This is mild, but it's why it isn't appropriate for the people I hire to have open SM.

It's not necessary to have your name, address, height, weight, birthday, DH's name and workplace, kids names and schools listed on there in order for really determined people to figure that sort of thing out, because if your SM is open, then there is a web of other people's open SM, and if they aren't so strict about what they post then dots can easily be joined.

Mine is locked down, although the real thing is boringly sensible anyway. Just my basic fb profile page is there.

My previous manager said he'd looked and I came across as sensible.

It works the other way round too. I've searched profiles of potential managers/colleagues for jobs I'm interested in. I'm amazed how many people have their SM wide open. I only have a professional profile now as I only use SM for work nowadays. It's such a time sucker. Bit like MN
I would never disclose I'd done this to anyone though, your friend is very unprofessional.
You say she also talks badly of other friends, she just sounds like she's not very nice, I'd dump her but I'm pretty ruthless like that. By telling you these opinions she's inviting you to join in her bitching, don't fall for it. People who behave like this are usually very insecure.

What might happen if there are two candidates, one with an unusual surname and/or first name, the other with a very common name or name shared with a famous person? Both could have stuff they wouldn't necessarily want prospective employers seeing, but the first one would be easy to Google or find on social media (if set to public), the other much less so.