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Why are social media checks important?
Social media checks can enhance your recruitment process and will provide comprehensive, objective, and compliant assessments of candidates.
Table of Contents
Social media checks allow businesses to identify potential negative behaviours and privacy concerns exhibited by candidates across various online social media platforms. This comprehensive assessment identifies the types of language used by individuals particularly in relation to bullying, racism, nudity, and the excessive use of inappropriate language. Moreover, it helps uncover any potential leaks of information that could harm your organisation’s reputation.
A professional social media checking service, such as the one provided by Yoono, plays a crucial role in safeguarding your brand, reputation, and data security. Conducting social media background checks is of paramount importance for businesses due to the risks they face. These risks can range from hiring individuals associated with proscribed organisations or illegal activities to candidates who may expose your company to bribery, corruption, or fraud.
Negative behaviours exhibited by candidates can have far-reaching consequences for your staff, customers, and brand. Breaches of company policies, undesirable characteristics, or leaks of confidential information can all be identified through professional social media checks.
Social media checks also serve as a means to validate the information shared by candidates, allowing you to look for any signs of inconsistencies or misrepresentation and assess intangible qualities such as trustworthiness.
By conducting professional social media checks, you can eliminate unconscious bias, which can lead to discriminatory decisions in recruitment, promotion, and performance management. Most professional checks are AI driven and ensure both a consistent approach within an organisation and provide a level playing field for all candidates, using the same processes, and procedures.
Demonstrating a commitment to addressing diversity, inclusion, and bias is not only a challenge but also an opportunity for businesses. Failing to improve candidates’ perceptions can damage your brand reputation and discourage top talent. By working with an automated intelligence service such as Yoono, you can reassure candidates that your social media checks are compliant, fair, transparent, and consistent. This fosters trust and shows that your recruitment process is robust and of high quality.
In addition to specific skills, experience, and education, it is important to identify intangible qualities that fit with your company culture. Social media checks aim to provide your company with a better understanding of an applicant’s personality, professionalism, and potential alignment with your values. Passion, enthusiasm, drive, accountability, and quick learning abilities are all valuable attributes to consider. Recent events have highlighted the importance of adaptability, self-motivation, and innovation in employees. Social media checks provide a fast, simple, and effective means of assessing whether candidates possess these qualities.
With the rapid digital changes in our lives, evolving workplaces, and shifting employee expectations, it is essential to ensure that your employment practices are up to the challenge and ready to embrace opportunities. Social media checks are no longer just a HR concern; they should be on the radar of every business leader and board member and intertwined within every company’s recruitment policy.
Professional automated social media checks employ a behaviour analysis and reporting tool to objectively evaluate an individual’s online profile. By utilising an individual’s basic data provided by the employer, it is possible identifies an individuals complete online footprint over a specified period. Through specialised search techniques and search engine software, a detailed footprint encompassing millions of web pages and numerous social and professional websites is quickly and accurately identified.
The collected information, which includes both written and visual content, is then analysed using a specialised online behaviour assessment tool. This provides employers with an objective, fair, and consistent evaluation, summarised into key behaviour indicators. The report generated by Yoono includes potential risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.
Social media checks are designed and optimised to maintain compliance, objectivity, and privacy. The checks strictly exclude the use of protected characteristics and other discriminatory factors, such as age, disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, relationship status, and pregnancy.
Employers should establish clear policies regarding social media checks and social media usage to ensure consistency across the organisation. it is important to recognise that social media checks should be part of your risk management strategy rather than solely an HR issue.
Ensure that all staff members understand and adhere to regulations, legislation, and good practice guidelines related to social media checks. This includes staying up to date with the latest developments in this area.
Work with a tool such as Yoono to carry out objective social media checks and address unconscious bias. These checks can provide an alternative to traditional pre-employment checks and offer a fair and consistent approach to candidate assessment.
Use social media checks to broaden the scope and depth of your recruitment processes. Assess intangible qualities that fit with your company culture and the specific requirements of each role. Social media checks can be integrated into various stages of employment, including promotion and performance management.
Ensure that as an employer, you are aware of the changing digital landscape. As our lives become increasingly entwined with the digital world, being aware of candidates’ digital personas is as important as reviewing their CVs or references. Professional social media checks will analyse all social media sites and professional networking platforms, ensuring a comprehensive assessment.
In conclusion, it is clear that professional social media checks offer a powerful tool for fair and compliant recruitment processes. Employers can make informed hiring decisions, safeguard their brand and reputation, and attract the best talent for their organisation.
For more information regarding the importance of social media checks, or to find out more about how Yoono works, please do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of our friendly team.
