Social media checks
With the rapid growth of the internet communications – especially social media – a huge proportion of the population now has a traceable digital identity. Online media checks aren’t a traditional part of background checking, but it’s possible to see the advantages of conducting them.
They can give you insight into an individual’s character, helping you to assess if they would be a good cultural fit for your organisation, while they can also reveal any offensive, violent or criminal behaviour. LinkedIn profiles in particular can be useful in helping to confirm the information on a candidate’s CV and understand how they are connected within their professional network, but they should never be used as a substitute for proper employment checks.
At the same time, you must be extremely careful with how you conduct media checks and ideally you should have a strong business case for doing them.
This is because of potential conflicts with the law, including the Equality Act 2010. Any information revealed through online media – such as race, religion, disability, and sexual orientation – can’t be seen to influence a hiring decision, or else a candidate could claim that discrimination has taken place.
The rules of EU GDPR must also be considered. The legislation dictates that employers must secure consent from the candidate before viewing their social media profiles, and should only conduct these checks when the information is relevant to the job role in question.