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

We always did it (this is going back ten years) but found through experience that there was not necessarily a link between what they were like as an employee and their behaviour on social media.

Best production worker we had turned out to have the worst history.

I personally never look at candidates' social media, but it's pretty common for employers to do so.

Your friend, however, is extremely unprofessional for talking about candidates and the recruitment process like this. She shouldn't be gossiping about candidates to her mates.

And many people don’t care if you know what their kids look like or where their running club is. Some people’s running clubs are public information anyway.

It’s just weird to assume that somebody having an open page is necessarily showing poor judgment. For some it’s a public page because there is absolutely nothing on there they care about strangers seeing / knowing about. I know people whose social media page is merely travel photos, some who only have dog photos and a friend whose open page is about her yoga.

I'll just reiterate that my posts in this thread were from the viewpoint of someone who absolutely has to engage with potential employees regarding their SM because it is relevant to their employment, so to that end I would worry about the judgement of someone seeking a role that means working with the sort of people I'm describing, while seeing no potential problems with having open SM.

Once it's discussed they invariably understand and comply, but if it was a line in the sand for them, then I simply wouldn't be able to let them work in that role, and I would indeed question their judgement.

Yes but it’s about how they are expressed. In this particular example, it was all about stop immigration and that’s not a great starting point if you are going to work in a team where 80% are foreigners….

We are absolutely not allowed to do this as it couldnn no prejudice decision. We are a financial services company if that makes a difference

the HR and lawyers say that looking at social media could unconsciously prejudice us, and we lays ourselves open to being sued by candidates.

they aim for blind recruitment practices

Used to work in internal recruitment/HR of a company with huge hiring waves. Yes, we’d check social media, but only if there was some other red flag already that made us unsure. If you dont want information about yourself to affect your career, it shouldn’t be publicly available to someone who only has your name to go off.

Of course - every company does a SM search.

Open source data checks are a real thing and a lot of people pride themselves on what they can find out about people from very little information. People have very recently been jailed for social media posts relating to their political views.

@Japanese2024 our HR does background checks before offer. If I’m interviewing someone I might check SM. However, in our contracts it states we’re expected not to bring the company into disrepute and to consider any SM posts carefully. Even though not identifying people, it sounds like your friend is acting more like a gatekeeper based on her feelings rather than applying a set of standards. We do capability tests as part of the interview process - checking spelling doesn’t come under HR really.

We do, but only to check for conflicts of interest in the interview panel and to see if they're some kind of insane fascist.

It's fine to do it but organisations should have a policy for it. If they're using social media checks to screen people out very early on or where it's not necessary, there are potential legal issues. Both in terms of GDPR and the Equality Act.

A member of the public doesn't have to comply with data protection law when we look up someone's Facebook page. An employer does. Even if a social media account is public, employers are still under a legal obligation to document and justify why they're 'processing' that personal data.

Employers also need to be able to prove that they didn't discriminate against someone when hiring. So someone might be qualified for a job but a manager might not want to call them for interview because they've seen from social media that the person is permanently pissed or does things that would reflect badly on their organisation.

But the job seeker could argue that you've actually rejected them because you've looked at social media and dislike their race/sexuality/the fact they're in a wheelchair/their lawful (but unpleasant to you) political views - would the employer be able to prove that wasn't the reason?

If social media checking is only done where necessary (like towards the end of the recruitment process as part of pre-employment checks) and applicants are told that it's going to be done... that's totally fine.

But, being realistic, whatever the law says, most employers are clearly doing it, so if applicants are too daft to lock down their social media accounts then they're going to get rejected!

www.acas.org.uk/if-an-employer-says-you-cannot-apply-or-rejects-you-for-a-job/checking-if-you-were-discriminated

Absolutely. Normal practice now.

I would expect that most companies consider this for anything other than entry level roles, in the same way as I would expect larger companies to have a staff 'social media' policy.

I work as a senior clinician in the NHS. My social media accounts are in a different name, are private and are not 'findable' on search engines.

Our company always googles the persons name & checks social media etc. Very normal.

I was offered a job where as part of the pre-employment screening I had to give them my social media passwords.

I think it’s naive to think potential employers aren’t checking out your social media

Unless that was MI5/MI6 Or the police (or similar organisations) that would be a gross invasion of privacy.

Very common. I search potential hires on social media. Those that share anything racist or seem susceptible to sharing absolutely bollocks (eg. Share this post to not give Facebook permission to the rights to your content) get immediately put on the ‘no’ list. It’s a handy, legal, window into people’s existence.

What an insane way of ascertaining if someone is good at their job or not. You can be naive about how a website works, but be a brilliant paediatric nurse or sign-writer, surely.

No, it doesn't. Very few people brag about their convictions on social media. There is a legal way to find out about a person's convictions - it's a DBS check and it is unlawful to carry one out without informing the person you are checking. It's high time this kind of covert surveillance was tested in court.

Well, I’m not employing paediatric nurses or sign-writers. I’m employing people for roles where they would struggle massively if they were naive (or just plain daft) enough to believe things like that.

I don’t but I know others that do.

I’m ruthless with LinkedIn though.

Official guidance now says that schools should search online for potential employees so think it's becoming the norm now.

"No, it doesn't. Very few people brag about their convictions on social media. There is a legal way to find out about a person's convictions - it's a DBS check and it is unlawful to carry one out without informing the person you are checking. It's high time this kind of covert surveillance was tested in cou"

A general Google search will show any press stories etc about court cases.

Its standard practice to do a Google search in my work for all client based work to see if there is any adverse media about them. You might find that you are search for in that way far more than you realise.

It's not covert. It's public information.