Introduction
The selected topic is “Importance of Checking Candidates’ Social Media Profiles” when making a decision to hire. Checking the social profiles of candidates in different social channels have become a trends among companies. This trend has a number of benefits; nonetheless, companies should reconsider the decision of checking social media again because of unavoidable biases resulted from such act. There are about 3.8 billion social media users globally which represent 49% of world population (Kepios, 2020). Consequently, companies use social media to check the qualities and background of candidates. 2018 CareerBuilder Survey has found that 70% employers use social media to check candidates’ profiles before making recruitment decision; (PR Newswire Association LLC, 2020). Hence, evaluation of the selection topic is important. Checking the social sites can be beneficial in many instances; nonetheless, there are many demerits as well.
Importance of Checking Candidates’ Social Media Profiles
Pros of checking candidates’ social media accounts
Importance of Checking Candidates’ Social Media Profiles cannot be ignored in this advanced business world. The first argument in favor of the statement is that many people do not have the financial capability and enough time to regularly be active on Social Media Websites (SMW) and update their activities regularly. In fact some people have extreme perception that allocating time in social media is a waste of time. Hence, the effectiveness of companies’ approach to hunt the social profile of a potential candidate may lead to misleading decision since the company might be disappointed because of the lack of information on the candidate’s profile.
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Similarly, there are a number of people who do not feel interested to share some events on social media; moreover there are people who update their profiles based on false information and publish false contents. Only browsing the social profiles of such candidates will definitely lead to wrong judgment on the possible candidates. Therefore, the company’s decision, after being satisfied with the fake social media profile, might be reasons of severe harm and loss of corporate image. Therefore, companies having such trend should reconsider the effectiveness of hunting the social profiles of candidates.
Next, there are abundant of people who distinguish between professional lives and social lives; in fact, their presence on SMW do not represent their real professional outlook. These people do not update their professional career and status in social profiles. As a result companies will not be benefited by browsing the social profiles of such candidates. Even, the companies may find themselves landing in wrong place by underestimating the candidates because of not finding their profiles updated and interesting. Therefore, again, it is important that companies should re-evaluate their strategy of checking the social media profiles of candidates.
A significant argument supporting “Importance of Checking Candidates’ Social Media Profiles” is related to making discriminated decision based on age, gender, sex, appearance and race. Companies’ searches for candidates’ social profiles are generally subjective where the HR staffs look for certain information form candidates’ profiles. Such subjective approach often leads to biased decision because of gender, race, sex and appearances. For example, the HR executive himself might be from the same School/University of those of candidates. Such similarities may inspire HR to unethically select the candidate even if the qualifications do not meet the requirement of the position. As a result, the selection might lead to poor decision which result in financial losses of the company.
Laws, rules and legal obligations are different across countries worldwide and most of the countries put secrecy and privacy of people in top priority. In fact companies might be in problems if they subjectively look into the profiles of candidates and see personal information such as race, age, gender, marital status, origin, education, location etc. If a company looks into above personal information subjectively and somehow exposes the information to the candidate wrongly through asking a question related to those, the candidate has the legal power to sue the company. This implies that companies have big reasons to worry before they do such profile hunting.
Finally, social profile hunting sometimes lead to favoritism and unavoidable biases while making the final selection. Browsing the social profiles create a deep impression in the mind of HR staffs and such impression is not likely to be correct if the candidates distinguish between professional live and social lives. Clearly, the deep impression of the HR staff will unintentionally and naturally influences himself to make a biased decision based on the impression of the specific social profiles. As a result, there is high chances that the decision is wrong and biased.
Cons of Checking Candidates’ Social Media Profiles:
The most prominent argument against the statement is that social media profiles of the candidates offer an excellent opportunity to the HR staff to have an overall idea about the type of personality of the candidate. For instance, while the staff have a look in the Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter wall, he can see the posts, comments, and activities of the candidate. Such activities provide good knowledge to the staff about the type of personality of the candidate. To further illustrate, a company might need a candidate who is intensely interested and participate in sports. If sports related activities, comments, updates are found on the social media walls of the candidate, truly, it can assured that the candidate is interested about sports. Hence, hunting the social profiles of the candidate really make good benefits for the company.
Secondly, cross-checking the provided information (about education, experience etc.) in the CV with those in the social profiles also play good role to validate if the information provided are correct. A HR professional can check the social profiles of the candidates and can be assure if the provided information about education and experience are authentic. To exemplify, HR can check the friends, comments on the social accounts; if the commentators and friends are from the same University circle or from same organizational circle; then it can be assumed that the provided information about education and experience are authentic. However, one important issue here is that the secrecy of the information must be kept assured and the company must not ask the candidate any information about the issues. Otherwise, candidates have legal grounds to sue the company because of breach of privacy.
Thirdly, checking the social profiles of the candidates is also time and money saving. On an average, checking the background of a candidate through professional service provider cost a company $2.00/candidate and it takes about 2 weeks. In contrast, checking the social profiles takes only a few minutes/candidate through just scrolling the page wall and it takes no money. Even, looking into the profiles personally rather than the third party is much more authentic because the company can itself check the validity. Therefore, it can be argued that checking the social profiles of the candidates provide the company much more authentic information to evaluate the validity of the information provided by the candidates on their CVs.
Hunting the social profiles of the candidates can be a great tool to remove the disqualified candidates and this saves money and time to the company to a large extent. Usually a large number of candidates for a single position and consequently, companies have to allocate huge time to assess, validate the resumes, taking interview. However, social media can help companies to save a great extent of time through eliminating the less-qualified candidates. Companies can check the social profiles to eliminate the candidates who do not meet the job requirements. As a result, companies can be greatly benefited in terms of eliminating the less-qualified candidates through social profile screening.
Conclusion
Hunting the social profiles of the candidates can be a great source of information to evaluate the qualifications and personality of the candidates. However, there are several demerits of this method which may result in biased decision, wrong decision and legal consequences. A large number of companies worldwide have been using this method as a potential way to evaluate the candidate before making the recruitment decision because the method has a number of benefits such as evaluating the personality, cross-checking the qualifications, removing the disqualified candidates etc. However, companies should be conservative before they check candidates’ profiles because of disadvantages such as many do not use social channels, many provide false information etc. Companies can check social profiles but it should be objective checking which is difficult to implement because checking profiles will certainly lead to biased decision.