Why Social61 Social Media Background Checks?

Why are social media background reports so important these days? Are employers negligent in demanding credit and criminal background reports (which only show matters of record) and NOT looking at publicly available social media content? For purposes of employee recruiting / employee retention, and in protecting your company from claims of discrimination and the distribution of untrue, negative, or confidential information consider adding Social Media Background Checks as part of your regular processes.

Protect against:

  • Negligent Hiring and Negligent Retention – when background-checks do not include obvious sources.  For example, what if a technician on assignment from your company to a client is blogging about a desire for violent or discriminatory actions?  And what if your client sees this before you?

  • Bad hiring decisions – Are employee/candidate social media postings consistent with their resume?  Do they discuss actions and behaviors that would be unallowable or merely not a good mix with your current team?

  • Claims that protected classes (e.g, race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, handicap or age)  are over- or under- investigated.  This can occur if internal recruiters rather than third parties conduct Social Media Background Checks, since such revelations should be redacted.  But once your internal staff sees this information – the bell cannot be unrung.

  • Charges that your internal online research is not consistent – Would you look longer for postings associated with certain protected classes?  Can you prove it?  That’s why we are careful to spend exactly 61 minutes on each Social Media Background Report.  We can do more if warranted, but will advise if this could be in violation of the FCRA.

  • Personal use of company time and assets – For current employees or potential new-hires, do we see frequent postings or blogs during business hours?

  • Employee/contractor posts of negative, untrue or confidential information – Sometimes employees, vendors and contractors take their frustrations online, and post or blog negative, untrue or confidential information that could damage your brand, disrupt relations with business partners, or violate various agreements.

Social Media Background Reports may alert your company and provide needed information to mitigate these problems.

Contact us to begin.