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Recently I have been reading a lot about the controversies around practices of many employers, mostly in US, UK and other developed economies, occasionally also in India, to ask the potential candidates for their account passwords on Facebook and other social networks. This post will cover my thoughts on this topic and will also explore how social media background checks can be done in lawful, ethical and fair manner. |
| Asking candidates for passwords to their social media accounts is already under investigation in USA and has been warned against in UK. It is just a matter of time before strict legislation is brought in place to prevent such mal-practices. Other countries are bound to follow suit and hopefully India too will put in place right laws to prevent these. This is great news as snooping into private and personal sections of the social media profiles is pretty much a gross invasion of privacy and a severely unethical practice. | |
| While such practices are best curbed, the fact does remain that the web still offers a plethora of publicly available information which can help employers in learning more about the candidates and making well informed decisions, which take into account more comprehensive view of a candidate’s capabilities, beyond the typical resume. This public information could encompass candidate’s LinkedIn profile, blogs and posts authored, other public sections of their social media profiles, their tweets, and other such references. A comprehensive review of this public data can definitely enrich the evaluation and lead to more informed decisions on the candidates.
The Social Media Scan offering from JantaKhoj aims to leverage the publicly available information in an ethical and fair manner, providing more details to the recruiters, and letting them take more informed decisions in the area of employee background checks. |
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| What do you think? What is your take on using social media for background checks? | |
