Social Media is becoming a significant tool for people to use to get to know each other. This also applies to the corporate structure where recruiters are now choosing to use social media screening to determine whether or not a candidate is good enough for the job. Recruitment processes are changing with the times, and are becoming more dependent on technology and the online world, rather than previously where the focus was only on physical representation.
What is social media screening?
Social media screening is where a company looks through an applicants social media channels to see what they are posting publicly. Some believe this is immoral, others believe it is a very good screening tool when selecting applicant for jobs.
The benefits of social media screening
Social media screening has proven to be a great tool for recruiters because of the different perspective that it gives them when they are selecting candidates who are right for the job. For one, it helps them see how these potential candidates are in their life outside the office. When a person comes in for an interview, they always try to present their very best to the person taking the interview. They dress well, try to talk politely, and more often, bend the truth to work to their benefit.
Social media, on the other hand, gives interviewers an unfiltered look into the person they are interviewing. It helps them gauge the real interests of the person they are looking to hire, and helps them understand the person they are like. For example, if a person has pictures of him partying every night on their Facebook page, that could be an indication that they drink a lot, even though they might have been one of the most well-kept people at the interview. A person might say they work well with everyone and are incredibly friendly no matter what during an interview, but if they are continually posting obscene content and bashing on people, you know that they might be a little harder to work with at the office. This can help you figure out the red flags that people might have when they are applying for the job, and helps the recruiter better understand the person that they are interviewing and potentially thinking of hiring. Looking through a persons social media may also highlight whether that person is trying to turn a hobby in to a business, like selling cakes, if so they may not be as dedicated to this role as they are making you believe. Instead their real goal is to become an entrepreneur and your job is just a stop gap to keep the money coming in whilst they perfect their side hustle.
But be mindful
However, while screening candidates for a job, it is essential to note down the sociological implication that their posts might have on that preferred medium of social media. Twenty-one year’s olds live in a generation where it is alright to post pictures of themselves getting drunk, whereas a forty-year-old man might not think it would be appropriate to do so on Facebook, even though they do the same thing in real life. It is essential to know the demographics of the people that you are interviewing and their social media trends to accurately get an in-depth analysis of the life of the person.
There are of course certain things that a recruiter cannot use when they are trying to screen candidates to hire potentially. When interviewing a person, a recruiter cannot ask them about their sexual orientation or religious affiliations for example, and the same applies when using the information you get from social media. Caution must be exerted with the kind of information that the recruiter acquired through social media to prevent any altercations between the applicant and the company.
Manually trying to screen applicants for a position and identifying their flags can take a lot of time, which is why automated processes and programs exist to make the process easier. Programs like the ones provided by FAMA help the automate the process of social media screening, so that recruiters can have a more in-depth look at the lives of the people they would want to hire. It makes the process of social media screening more efficient and helps prevent the probability of human error during these screening processes.
Baring all this in mind it is vital that as a parent you teach your child about the appropriate uses for social media and internet safety to ensure a social media screening doesn’t stop them from pursuing their reams in the future.
(This is a sponsored post written by a third party).