Social media screening is growing. Is HR ready to use it (Video)

A manager searching a candidate’s name before an interview may once have looked like an informal extension of recruitment. As social media checks become more structured and more widely used the practice starts to carry the same responsibilities as any other part of selection. Employers need a defensible reason for carrying out the check, a consistent process and a clear understanding of how the information will influence a decision.

Susie Thomson describes formal screening as a risk assessment focused on behaviour that could create a serious concern for an employer, its customers or colleagues. The relevant signals may include evidence of illegal, discriminatory or abusive conduct, threats, harassment or breaches of confidentiality. The purpose is not to make judgements about a candidate’s lifestyle or personal opinions. That distinction needs to be built into the process rather than left to an individual manager’s discretion.

Risk assessment needs firm boundaries

The principle of role relevance is central. A social media check should be proportionate to the work being offered and the risks attached to it. Employers also need to decide in advance what they regard as an unacceptable risk and apply those criteria consistently across comparable groups of workers, including permanent employees, contractors and temporary staff.

Thomson argues that employers should look for “patterns of behaviour rather than isolated instances”. This is an important safeguard because online material is fragmentary by nature. A single post can appear very different when separated from the exchange around it, the date it was published and the circumstances in which it was written. A fair process allows for that complexity rather than treating every flagged keyword as evidence.

Context is where fairness is won or lost

Social media screening can expose information about race, sex, religion and other protected characteristics that would not normally form part of a recruitment decision. Once a recruiter has encountered that information it may influence the decision even where it is irrelevant. HR therefore needs to control who reviews the findings, what is reported back and how a candidate can challenge or explain information that may affect the outcome.

Context also protects employers from poor decisions. Keyword searches can identify material for review but cannot reliably establish intent or authorship. Nor can they determine whether language was ironic or an account had been compromised. A robust process distinguishes between the discovery of content and the judgement made about it. Technology can support the first stage, while the second demands careful human assessment.

Transparency begins before the check

Candidates should know that social media screening will take place, what sources may be reviewed and how the information will be used. This should happen early enough for them to understand the process rather than discovering it after a decision has been made. Clear communication also gives candidates greater confidence that the employer is using a defined method instead of conducting an open-ended search through their personal lives.

The need for education extends beyond applicants already in a hiring process. Young people entering work may have created a large digital history before they understood that employers could examine it. Schools, universities, careers services and screening providers all have a part to play in explaining how public information may be assessed and what rights candidates retain.

AI can gather information; people must judge it

AI can help screening providers process large volumes of public information, identify possible risk indicators and reduce administrative delay. Its limits become more serious when it begins to determine whether a person should be hired. Automated systems may reproduce bias in their training data or place excessive weight on language that a human reviewer would interpret differently.

Human judgement is therefore part of the control system. Reviewers need the authority and time to examine context, test the relevance of a finding and consider a candidate’s explanation. Faster screening has little value if it produces decisions that are opaque, discriminatory or impossible to defend.

Key takeaways from this video

• Social media screening should be treated as a formal employment process rather than an informal search by individual managers.
• Checks need to be proportionate to the role and based on clearly defined risks.
• Patterns of behaviour and the context surrounding a post matter more than isolated keywords.
• Candidates should be told what will be checked, why the information is relevant and how it may be used.
• AI can support information gathering but final hiring judgements should remain with trained human reviewers.

👉 Watch the full video above to hear Susie Thomson explain how employers can use social media screening without allowing efficiency to override fairness. 

And listen to the full podcast Your Hidden CV: The Job Search Rule No One Teaches Young People.

Transcript

Some folks are saying, you know, 70% of employers are actually deploying social media checks as part of their frontline checks, part of their pre-employment checks. Glassdoor, for example, states that 91% of UK employers are using social media checks.

So we're seeing far more formal regulated sectors using this particular check. And we're seeing also that organisations outside of the regulated arena are looking at a sort of formal structured process around a social media check.

So yes, Google searches are still being undertaken by managers in advance of an interview, that's a given, but formal screening is most definitely more consistent and fair and auditable.

So what is an organisation looking for in undertaking a social media check? They're looking for potential risks to themselves, their customers, their colleagues. It's all about looking at context. That's hugely important. It's not about looking at lifestyle choices or personal opinions, but it's very much a rising check in the background screening world. And what we're looking for essentially in undertaking those checks as screening practitioners is evidence of illegal, discriminatory or abusive behaviour which conflict with professional standards. So that's it in a nutshell. That's what employers are actually looking for and it's on the rise.

What this check is all about, it's a risk assessment, essentially. The sort of red flags that are being raised are items such as hate speech, discrimination, anti-social behaviour, harassment. Those are the sort of red flags. And there are keywords that are used as part of the social media check, which would then identify whether that behaviour was a red flag for an employer. They're looking for threats of violence or any form of criminality that's perhaps shown on an online presence and also serious breaches of confidentiality. You know, if you're talking about your previous employer, for example, in derogatory terms or product that the employer had, that would be seen as a breach of confidentiality and that's clearly not a behaviour that organisations wish to have in their business. Content that directly conflicts with the values of the employer is also really, really critical.

Values-driven organisations will seek individuals who share the same values or similar values and also are a really good cultural fit for that organisation. So if an individual is showing the opposite of that online that would be a cause of concern for that particular organisation, obviously. So they're looking more for patterns of behaviour rather than isolated instances. Is this a recurring, repeated dialogue that we're seeing online, and is this something to be concerned about as a future employer?

When legitimate due diligence becomes unfair judgment I think it's when context isn't taken into account, when context is ignored. I think that's hugely dangerous. You've got to look at everything contextually. And when screening lacks transparency or consistency, I think that is a worry as well. You know, let's make people absolutely aware. I think the check needs to be relevant to the role. Always has been in the development of background screening practices. You know, the scope of checks is always relevant to the role, that is crucially important. And I think when decisions are made on protected characteristics and if you're looking at protected characteristics such as race, sex, religion, all of those items, that is absolutely a no-no.

So we've got to have a fair playing ground here and we've got to take into account all those points in order to make this a fair process. But context, I think above everything is hugely important. You can have a comment that taken out of context can seem alarming, yet actually if one were to look at the full scope of all the posts is actually a fair response to subject matter. So I think context is key for me.

It all starts with employers being given the tools if they are working with a social media checking company. The employer being given the tools in order to inform the candidates or applicants well in advance of the process. It's absolutely critical that everything is transparent, that the individual being screened knows what the process is, where data is drawn from or looked at so that they feel comfortable that they are still in control, but that this check is necessary for them to be engaged with that particular organisation. 

So I think it's all about the responsibility of the background screening industry to educate the employers, the employers to educate the individuals. That said, if we can speed up this and give access to the background checking industry to help educate students, and certainly we're working with organisations such as Jisc and Prospects to do that, that will be that will be essential because there we're helping the employer right at the start to educate young people who will go through the process informed before they reach the employment stage. So it won't come as a surprise. 

So yes, employers need to do a lot to inform their candidates, but it's also incumbent upon our industry to support that. Just as it's incumbent upon our industry to support credit checks, the education around credit checks. What does it mean if you've got a CCJ? How can you satisfy that particular county court judgment? All those pieces of information that take away the angst in a process and enable a fair chance for all individuals going through that process.

AI was a massive topic at the PBSA's conference in London this year, the way that it is now very, very visible in our industry. And it's interesting that clients are asking what part of the process is AI driven. They're far more comfortable if some of the backend processes within a screening organisation are AI driven to push for efficiency and speed, et cetera, to gather large volumes of information and to digest that. But they're not so keen in the front-end piece. And that's where human judgment is absolutely critical in this process. So if AI can work comfortably with human judgment and human intervention, then I think we've got a really good product. AI cannot be allowed to take over that human judgment thing, nor do I think it will be allowed. I mean, we've got a lawsuit at the moment in the States with regards to the way that AI has created some bias in the pre-screening of candidates' CVs. And that's a really interesting case because I think that will define a lot of the rules going forward about how far AI can go in the whole onboarding process. So, yes, AI has a role in gathering data, large volumes of data, and helping humans digest that, but the judgment needs to be human judgment so that we can give some real context to the results that were offered.

I think when they are looking at social media checks, they need to make sure that there is a consistency of decision making. Absolutely. They need to make sure there are no biases that have crept into the process at all. And they need to make sure that there are no discrimination risks whatsoever in a process.

And it's an interesting one that, you know, in the past, you would have background checking being undertaken on full-time employees, for example, and then temp folks and contractors also had background checking. But maybe at that particular time that their background checking scope was of a different scope to the core employees. And therefore, you probably got some bias in. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think you're seeing far more unilateral scoping applied to all those populations, or it should be to avoid any type of discrimination entering the process. 

So I think the employer needs to be aware clearly of GDPR and data privacy and all those obligations which are absolutely critical. And if they do engage with a professional background, screening organisation or social media checking business, they will find that in bag loads. They will find all the right protocols, all the right frameworks, all the right guidance, all the right risk matrices, all the right keywords, all fully defined and stress tested to make sure that none of those biases have gotten into the process, that it's fair. And as an employer, you can then select what risks are unacceptable to your business based on the values that your business has and what kind of a profile you want for your business. So that is all preordained within the background screening matrix and that eliminates bias from getting into the process. I think that's really, really critical. 

But I think, you know, do it yourself can be a bit of a dangerous game, if I'm honest with you, and I wouldn't recommend it. I've seen the industry evolve over the last 15 years and the products that they have now have been developed to make sure that employers are kept safe and that individuals' privacies aren't just not infiltrated in a way that the individual would not want them to be. So that's really, really important, that they consider working with an organisation that has experience in this, that has seen a multitude of scenarios and can give the employee advice when they get a result that they don't know what to do with. That is critical. So surround yourself with experts.

So if we look at digital wallets, which have been talked about for decades, to be fair, and many have attempted it, and many are working on digital wallets at the moment, the government is showing interest in digital identity wallets, all of that good stuff.

Why do we need digital wallet? So why is there an interest in it? It's for speed of engagement, especially in the gig economy. You know, so one individual can move to a job without having to time and time again produce their documents. That is the main reason, speed of engagement. And also from a candidate or applicant experience creating a positive experience where an individual has sovereignty over their data and is able to provide that data that is assured, that has been tested, that the employer trusts as being robust data. The issue to hand today has been that there's been no one organisation where it's been assured, it's been trusted, it's been verified, et cetera. And I think it's a great ambition to have. And if I had my magic ball here and I look to the future, I think that will probably be the future. 

But at the moment, what background screening organisations are trying to do, they're trying to be smarter in the way that data is being used. They're trying to be faster in the way that the processes work, so that there is a frictionless entry for individuals. But I think, you know, it would be in the future, potentially a good thing to have a data wallet. But that has been tried many, many times before and I think that it is the future, but not right now.