A resume can tell an employer about a candidate’s experience, education, skills, and professional background. But it does not always provide the complete picture.
A candidate’s public online presence can provide additional information that may be relevant to an organization’s hiring decisions. Social media screening can help employers identify publicly available content related to potential risks, culture, and other factors that may not appear on a resume or come up during an interview.
For organizations looking to build a consistent and comprehensive screening program, social media screening can provide another layer of information to consider.
The Information a Resume Doesn’t Provide
Resumes are designed to highlight professional qualifications. They can show where someone has worked, what they studied, and the experience they bring to a position.
What they generally do not show is how someone presents themselves online or what they have publicly shared.
Social media screening can help organizations review a candidate’s public online presence for information that may not be available through traditional screening methods. This can include publicly available content from social media, news sites, blogs, chat boards, and other online sources.
Looking beyond the resume can give employers additional information to consider as they evaluate candidates.
Public Online Behavior
Social media screening focuses on publicly available information.
Technology can analyze public social media and online content, including text, photos, and videos, based on criteria established for a particular screening program. This can make it easier to identify relevant information across a large amount of online content.
A structured screening process can also help organizations avoid relying on individual hiring managers to conduct their own searches. Instead of spending time manually searching multiple platforms, employers can use a consistent process to review relevant public information.
Risk Indicators
One of the reasons organizations use social media screening is to identify potential indicators of risk.
The goal is not to collect every piece of information available about a candidate. Instead, screening can help surface publicly available content that is relevant to an organization’s established screening criteria.
This gives employers another source of information to consider alongside other background screening results.
Culture and Organizational Values
Hiring is about more than qualifications. Organizations also want to build teams that support their mission, values, policies, and workplace expectations.
Social media screening can be customized around an organization’s specific recruitment standards, code of conduct, and institutional policies. This allows screening criteria to reflect the issues and behaviors that are important to each organization.
Public online behavior may provide insight into areas such as attitudes toward work, potential culture fit, and other characteristics an organization considers relevant to its hiring process.
The goal is to evaluate publicly available information in the context of the organization’s own standards and expectations.
Why Consistency Matters
One of the challenges with social media screening is making sure the process is consistent.
If individual hiring managers conduct their own searches, they may use different methods, review different information, or interpret what they find differently. There is also the possibility of identifying the wrong social media profile or encountering information that should not factor into a hiring decision.
A structured screening process can help organizations apply the same standards across candidates. Reports can be reviewed through a consistent process, with quality assurance measures in place to help ensure results are accurate and relevant.
Social media screening should also be conducted with privacy and compliance in mind. Candidates should provide the appropriate authorization, and screening should be limited to publicly available information and conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
Consistency helps organizations make social media screening a defined part of the hiring process rather than an informal search performed differently from one candidate to the next.
Using Social Media Screening as Part of a Broader Screening Program
Social media screening is not a replacement for other forms of background screening. Instead, it can be one part of a broader screening program.
Different screening services provide different types of information. Employment and education verifications can help confirm a candidate’s background. Criminal record searches can provide information from applicable court records. Driving record searches can identify issues such as moving violations, suspensions, or revocations. Social media screening can add information from a candidate’s public online presence.
Organizations can combine these services to create a screening program that fits their specific hiring needs.
Taking a broader approach can help employers gather more relevant information and make more informed decisions while maintaining a consistent screening process.
Looking Beyond the Resume
A resume remains an important part of the hiring process, but it is only one source of information.
Public online behavior can provide additional insight into potential risks, organizational fit, and other factors that may not be visible on a resume. When social media screening is conducted consistently and as part of a broader, compliant screening program, it can give employers another valuable source of information to consider.
Looking beyond the resume is not about judging candidates based on everything they post online. It is about having a thoughtful, consistent process for identifying relevant public information and using it alongside other screening tools.
For organizations focused on making informed hiring decisions, social media screening can be an important part of the bigger picture.
Questions about Social Media Screening? Contact us today by phone: 913.322.5999 or online .
