With the increasing dominance of digital platforms, social media searches have become an integral part of the recruitment process, not only for evaluating new candidates but also for rescreening existing employees. As the lines between personal and professional lives blur, it’s crucial for organisations to adopt online screening tools that help them make informed decisions while maintaining compliance with various legal standards.
In this article we explore best practices for social media searches and highlight how your organisation can detect potential misconduct, safeguarding your organisation while ensuring a fair and compliant process.
The Pitfalls of uncontrolled screening
While social media searches can be a valuable tool in assessing candidates, conducting them informally or in-house without a structured approach presents significant risks. With 70% of employers using social media to screen candidates, a careless or unstructured approach could lead to claims of discrimination or reputational damage.
It’s crucial that social media checks focus solely on job-relevant information. Algorithms, such as those used within Giant’s social media searches, are designed to exclude protected characteristics like race and gender, ensuring the screening process doesn’t inadvertently reveal personal details. Additionally, the data sourced is limited to publicly available information from the past seven years, ensuring compliance with GDPR and other relevant regulations.
Why outsourcing social media searches is the right move
To mitigate the risks of bias and non-compliance, many organisations choose to outsource their social media searches to a trusted third-party provider like Giant screening. Outsourcing ensures that the screening process is structured, objective, and compliant with employment law.
Third-party providers focus only on job-relevant information and utilise compliance filters, (which we’ll explore shortly) filtering out personal data that may lead to bias. This protects organisations from potential legal repercussions and ensures that all candidates are evaluated fairly and consistently.
In addition, these solutions adhere to the GDPR and FCRA’s consent-based digital screening process, ensuring candidates are aware and provide consent before any checks are conducted, and uphold candidates' rights to challenge the screening process if necessary.
What are compliance filters?
As we touched on briefly, compliance filters ensure that during a social media search, you focus on workplace-relevant behaviour without invading an individual's private life. They use AI, text, and image analysis to review online presence, flagging relevant misconduct for user review. Compliance filters are highly customisable, allowing you to align them with your organisation’s code of conduct.
For instance, filters can be configured to screen for behaviours such as crime, threats, violence, harassment, drugs, and more. This ensures that only the most relevant, business-impacting information is flagged, leaving out personal aspects irrelevant to the hiring decision.
Screening solutions should be built to fulfil global standards such GDPR, FCRA, EEOC, as failing to do so may expose your company to legal risks. Giant’s solution is designed with universal compliance in mind, to ensure organisations meet these regulatory requirements.
What do compliance filters screen for?
Our screening solution typically includes the following nine filters, which can be tailored to suit your organisation's needs:
- Crime: Flags instances of criminal activity, such as theft, gang affiliations, or supporting criminal activity.
- Violence: Identifies violent tendencies or endorsements of violent acts while excluding advocacy against violence or non-threatening content.
- Threats: Detects threats of physical harm, property damage, or intimidation.
- Harassment: Flags online bullying, name-calling, or offensive comments directed at individuals.
- Intolerance: Screens for content that promotes racial, gender-based, or sexual orientation-based prejudice.
- Sex: Detects explicit or suggestive content while excluding swimwear or educational material.
- Drugs: Flags content involving the use, sale, or promotion of illicit substances, with exclusions for legal use or rehabilitation advocacy.
To ensure maximum accuracy, our social media searches are built to triple-authenticate profiles using a combination of AI and human analysis, boasting an impressive 99.98% accuracy rating. In cases of disputes, we re-runs reports up to five times to guarantee accuracy.
Best practices for conducting compliant social media searches
When it comes to social media searches, following best practices is essential for maintaining compliance and fairness and be achieved with the following steps:
Create a clear screening policy: A documented policy ensures consistency and transparency throughout the hiring process. It provides a clear framework that helps protect your organisation from legal challenges.
Obtain candidate consent: Always obtain explicit consent from candidates before conducting any social media searches. This ensures compliance with data protection regulations and establishes trust with the candidate.
Offer candidates a right to respond: If any potentially concerning content is flagged, give the candidate an opportunity to explain the context. This helps avoid misunderstandings and ensures a fair hiring process.
Focus on job-relevant behaviour: Social media searches should only assess behaviour relevant to the job. Information that is irrelevant or discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010 should not influence the hiring decision.
Protecting your organisation with effective social media screening
Every person in your organisation has an impact on the company culture, brand, and performance. Conducting thorough and compliant social media searches is a powerful way to ensure you hire great people. However, it’s important to approach these checks with a clear process to avoid legal issues and maintain fairness.
By outsourcing your social media searches to a trusted provider like Giant Screening, you ensure that the process is compliant, objective, and aligned with best practices. Our solutions provide you with the insights you need to hire confidently while safeguarding your company’s reputation.
