Social Networks

A Tool for PreEmployment Screening

Social networks are here to stay. Right now Facebook says they have 110 million users worldwide. It can be a valuable insight into a person's life and character. On the other hand, it should be used within the context of legal hiring practices.

What are Social Networks?

Facebook and Myspace are examples of the phenomenon of people networking over the internet. Essentially people are given a personal web site where they interact, socialize and network within communities. Communities can organize socially, geographically, by workplace or any other number of ways people can interconnect. It is done by making a post to their web site in the form of pictures, words, videos etc.

How Can They Help?

The simple answer is to search for the person you are about to hire and see what it says! Actually it is not that simple. Users can make their profiles public or private. If a person makes their profile private you need to request to be added to their network. As a potential employer it is unlikely that would be appropriate so what you are left with is the public profiles.

An example of how it might work is as follows. You are interviewing youth counselors for a program to keep kids off the street. You log into Facebook and one of the applicants is talking about all the drugs and partying he/she has done on the weekends. This probably is not a good influence for kids. In other words you gain insight into the person and who he/she is away from the office.

Conversely, you find a candidate's profile and you see that they are working weekends volunteering to coach a youth soccer league and part of the big brother program, then you probably have a winner.

Final Thoughts

As with all information gathered online for free, take it for what it is. It can add or detract from a candidate's overall profile but should not be used as a litmus test.

A perfectly good candidate could have had one wild weekend in their life and unfortunately for them it is now in the public domain. Other candidates may not have anything published online but are constantly 'living life to the fullest' so to speak. So keep the information in context and make it part of your pre-employment screening but don't base a hiring decision solely on what you found on Facebook or MySpace.

More info

If you would like to know more about Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or other Web 2.0 tools please subscribe to the newsletter where we will update all the latest tools and how you can use them in your business. Or feel free to drop us a line in the comments section with any questions you may have on this subject.

As an aside, you can now follow me at twitter.com/StaffRecruitTip where I'll put up links to articles I find and general info on staffing and recruiting. See you on the web!

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