Ethical VS. Legal. Maybe you are trying to hunt down contact information for a very secret squirrel-ish candidate, or maybe you are in between two rockstars that you’re seeking a final disqualifier for. But it’s a valid question: Should recruiters actually be googling their cleared candidates?
SHORT ANSWER: MAYBE
Long story short, it is completely legal for employers to check employees’ social media profiles. For a while now, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have even aggregated online public profiles if someone applies to your employer, too. A few states might also allow companies to request usernames and passwords from employees. Generally, both specific state and federal privacy laws determine what hiring managers and recruiters are allowed to ask for.
However, all of this must be done correctly – and legally. If you are a recruiter or hiring manager that makes the final call on whether to extend an offer to a cleared candidate and perusing their social media profiles without any process or rubric was an activity you completed on your own through the hiring cycle, you’re submitting your HR or recruiting team to probable issues like a discrimination lawsuit, so a “do it yourself approach” is not advised. What if you stumble upon protected class information for a prospect and decide not to hire that candidate? Could they sue you or put you in a legal bind?
Protected class information includes:
- Ethnicity or Nationality
- Religion
- Gender or Sexual orientation
- Age
- Disability
- Veteran status
- Citizenship
- Marital Status
Generally, monitoring a candidate’s social media profiles for hiring decisions can be both legal and ethical if the findings and your hiring decision are related to job performance, their profiles are public, and if the investigation is compliant with state and federal laws.
SAFETY OF GOOGLING CANDIDaTES VS. HIRING A THIRD PARTY
Utilizing a third-party screener that can sort out any protected class information from user profiles is your absolute safest bet in adding this investigation to the hiring process – whether that be for background checks, criminal checks, or social media investigations. A 100% compliant social screening, if your recruiting team is looking to invest in this portion of the hiring process, receives permission from the candidate beforehand, focuses only on business-related “actionable” information, and ensures that the correct candidate is actually being viewed (i.e., no spam accounts or look-alikes).
Bottom line: Most candidates have at least one online profile that has become an extension of themselves. Screening cyber personas is becoming more commonplace to consider categories like whether a candidate posts intolerant views, sexually explicit remarks, talks about illegal activities, or discusses potentially violent events / actions. It can be the deciding factor between two candidates who look great on paper but may not work well with the team you’re staffing for.
Just make sure your team is obtaining this information legally.
THEÂ CLEARED RECRUITING CHRONICLES: YOUR WEEKLY DoD RECRUITING TIPS TO OUT COMPETE THE NEXT NATIONAL SECURITY STAFFER.
