Social Media as part of hiring policy

              
        While there is some data on companies using social media sites for recruitment purposes which shows that more than half of companies have used social media sites for recruitment, there is almost no data on how many companies use these sites for purposes such as backgrounds check or pre hiring checks. However, based on our own talks with clients, it is clear that the percentage of companies doing this is quite small. There is a reason for that.

Social media sites like linkedin, facebook, twitter are excellent ways of identifying qualified relevant candidates; connect with them and complement the overall hiring process. But taking the decision of not hiring a candidate based on what is posted on these sites, may make the company liable to law suits based on discrimination. No company would want to be in that position. Hence, not many companies will ask the interviewee about their facebook user id. We will also see more and more companies making explicit rules of how to use social media sites for their hiring practices. However, posting such things as drinking binges, drug use, or even spelling and grammar mistakes can bias the company against hiring a certain candidate, if the company decides to go through the social network profiles of the potential candidate.

On the other hand, a company can use social media for a two pronged recruitment purpose. On the one hand, they can create a presence which helps in building a brand identity, and increasing brand loyalty among job seekers or potential employees of the company. They can also use it to post jobs and create awareness of existing positions among active as well as passive job seekers. On the other hand, the company may be able to identify relevant candidates to contact for positions in the company. This makes the hiring process more efficient.

2.      Inappropriate content: We still dont know of instances in India where an employee has been fired because of inappropriate content. This is more prevalent among school students who are warned, suspended or rusticated for posting against teachers or the school. However, there have been instances of employees being warned against making derogatory comments. In some cases, social networking sites have been banned from the office altogether and in others employees have been gagged on networking sites against speaking about their employers.

Today, whoever uses networking sites is also careful enough not to comment about their employer or manager. Not only will it harm their present situation, it will also permanently scar their profile in the eyes of future employers.

3.          Social media profile screening has been complementing our hiring methods for some years now. Linkedin was originally created as a professional networking platform and today more than 90% recruiters are using it in some form in their hiring process. More than 50% use facebook for the same purpose. Today with this kind of technology becoming part of hiring, it becomes even more important for the screening process to be more stringent. Ironically, this screening is best done by an experienced head hunter, who, I dare say, can easily separate the wheat from the chaff, even from a linkedin.com or a facebook.com!