Cyber screening

By Stacey Sheppard

“Cyber-vetting job applicants using social networking sites is now fairly common practice for recruitment specialists looking to gain a competitive edge by identifying and engaging the best candidates available.”
-Stacy Sheppard

One of your employees has recently handed in his notice and decided to leave your company in order pursue a new life overseas with his wife who has been asked to relocate for her job. The task of finding a suitable replacement to fill this position falls on your shoulders as the company's HR manager. As the CVs come flooding in, the arduous task of sifting through all the potential candidates begins. Verifying all the information that a particular candidate has disclosed and conducting the necessary background checks and screening processes is all part of the job.

But what if there was an easier, quicker, cheaper way to check up on applicants and the information they have provided? You decide to do a quick search for one of the prospective employees on the social networking site Facebook to see what you can find out about her. From the information and photographs posted on her profile you discover that she is a frequent user of recreational drugs, is a prominent animal rights campaigner and belongs to a number of groups for expectant mothers.

Whilst this information provides you with a much more candid insight into the candidate's personality, it is also information that can answer a whole host of questions it would normally be illegal for you to ask them directly at interview. But like it or not, you are now in possession of this information, so what exactly are you supposed to do with it? Not giving someone a job because you suspect they may be pregnant could be classed as discrimination. So what do you do? Give them the job anyway knowing that six months down the line you will be recruiting to fill this position again? Now that you possess this knowledge, there is no way to unlearn this information. This is a dilemma that HR professionals today are faced with.

Although most social networking sites have been around for less than a decade, their popularity has exploded in recent years taking them from what was once a novelty designed to enable socialising in cyberspace, to what has today become one of the most powerful recruiting tools available to HR professionals. Cyber-vetting job applicants using social networking sites is now fairly common practice for recruitment specialists looking to gain a competitive edge by identifying and engaging the best candidates available.

Recent research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79 percent of US hiring managers and recruiters surveyed have reviewed online information about job applicants. In addition, 75 percent of those surveyed report that their companies have formal policies in place that require hiring personnel to research applicants online. With so many HR professionals resorting to this medium for checking the veracity of the information that candidates are including in their applications, job seekers need to be more wary than ever of the kinds of thinks they are posting up in cyber space and the effects that such information could have on their professional career development.

And yet there exists a huge discrepancy between the percentage of HR professionals who claim to have rejected candidates based on the outcome of what they discovered online (79 percent) and the comparatively low percentage of consumers who believe that online information had an impact on their job search (seven percent). Such a view is slightly naïve given that a person's online reputation can seemingly make or break their chances of being recruited. There is also a great deal of inconsistency in what HR professionals consider appropriate to review online for screening processes and what consumers believe to be acceptable.

Of those recruiters and HR professionals surveyed for Microsoft's research, 89 percent find it appropriate to consider professional online data when assessing a candidate and 84 percent of them think it is proper to consider personal data posted online. However, only 15 percent of US consumers surveyed think it is very appropriate that employers review candidates' photo and video sharing sites, 25 percent think it is somewhat appropriate, and 44 percent think it is somewhat or very inappropriate. Yet, 59 percent of recruiters and HR professionals surveyed check these sites.  

In the coming years, the use of online reputational data by HR professionals and recruiters will dramatically increase; 84 percent of those surveyed believe its use will increase over the next five years. And with this increased usage come greater ethical and legal questions that HR professionals will be faced with. Social media can very easily become an employment compliance issue as information that would normally be considered "protected" is now accessible, free, and voluntarily displayed on people's social networking profiles.

The challenge that social media presents to applicants, despite many of them not being aware of it, is knowing when and how to keep their private lives private and prevent their personal information from falling into the wrong hands at the wrong time and so impeding their chances of climbing up the corporate ladder. However, what is not discussed quite so readily are the risks and drawbacks that can be encountered by HR professionals using social media as an applicant screening tool. A recent white paper report published by talent management solution provider Taleo, entitled Social Network Recruiting: Managing Compliance Issues, highlights the legal pitfalls that recruiters can fall foul of.

The report states that the challenge of using social networks as a business tool is "making the most of what they have to offer while maintaining compliance with government regulatory bodies such as The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)."  Many businesses that use social networks either to advertise their job openings or to screen candidates are opening themselves up to the risk of lawsuits on the grounds of discrimination. "The risk  [...] hinges on whether or not the use of social networks is motivated by an intent to discriminate ("disparate treatment") or whether the practice, although it appears neutral at face value, has an unintentional and unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class ("disparate impact")," states the report.

Whilst companies have every right to reject applicants on the grounds that certain character traits are not compatible with the requirements of the job and should do so in order to avoid the risks of negligent hiring, it is impossible to ensure that any information gleaned from social networks will be job-relevant. In rejecting an applicant, the burden falls firmly on the recruiter or HR professional to prove that the information discovered online did not affect the hiring decision.

There will always be a small minority of candidates, who, when rejected, may assume that the decision came down to their so-called 'net-rep' and consequently take legal action, especially if it is a known fact that an online search was conducted. In this instance, a business must be able to prove that the decision was based on objective, relevant job criteria. If they can do this, a court case is unlikely, but the risks are still substantial enough to make HR professionals take the issue seriously.

However, at the moment there are no specific laws or guidelines in the US from the EEOC or OFCCP governing the use of social networks. Given that the information that sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace can supply and the fact that this information is a free resource that can provide myriad benefits to the hiring process, most HR professionals find it almost impossible to disregard.

In Europe, privacy concerns are starting to make an appearance on the political agenda. A draft law, which includes provisions that would prohibit employers from using social networking sites to research prospective candidates, has recently been endorsed by the German cabinet, but is yet to pass through parliament. The proposed legislation would see violations punished with prison sentences of up to two years or monetary penalties.

"Private social networks are private social networks and not gateways to gaining information on job applicants," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziére told reporters. Without similar legislative proposals in the US, HR professionals are left with no other choice than to use their own common sense in conjunction with reference to existing OFCCP guidelines to ensure their cyber searches do not result in a discrimination lawsuit.