We might as well state this upfront. GroupOne Background Screening does not do social media checks. There’s a number of reasons we’ve chosen to avoid this service, the main one being the severe legal and discrimination risks.
It should be noted that social media background checks are common for job candidates, providing an assessment of cultural fit with your company. It can also be a useful way to identify potential red flags involving harassment or illegal activities. But it’s such a legal, if not ethical quagmire, as it can expose employers to protected personal information such as age, religion and sexual orientation, all factors that could lead to unconscious bias and discrimination.
Here at GroupOne, we’re not entirely convinced the data accumulated from a social media account can even be defined as accurate. Such accounts, whether Facebook, X, Instagram or even LinkedIn, are often curated reflections of personality rather than complete definitions of a person. Research suggests profiles do reveal genuine personality traits through interaction patterns. However, they are often idealized versions or incomplete representations of who a person really is.
Here’s a few pros of Social Media Background Checks:
- Red Flag Detection: Identifies unprofessional behavior, harassment, hate speech or potential safety threats before hiring;
- Cultural Fit Evaluation: Provides insights into a candidate’s values and personality;
- Skill Validation: Allows employers to see a candidate’s creativity or professional output such as LinkedIn projects and professional blogs;
- Protects Reputation: Helps prevent the hiring of individuals who might damage the company’s brand.
But there’s significant risks and drawbacks including:
- Legal and Discrimination Risks: Reviewing social media often reveals “protected class” information such as age, sexual orientation, disability and pregnancy status. Using this data—even unintentionally—can trigger lawsuits under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
- Unreliability and “Computer Twins”: Simply put, social media is unverified. Information can be taken out of context, and “computer twins,” or people with identical names, can lead to evaluating the wrong person.
- Privacy Concerns: Quite a few candidates would view social media screening as an invasion of their personal life. Accessing private accounts or requesting passwords is also illegal in 28 states.
- Lack of Predictive Validity: Recent research indicates that social media assessments have low “criterion-related validity,” meaning they are often poor predictors of actual job performance. While they may show adequate convergent validity for personality traits, they frequently lack consistent, reliable, and legally defensible links to job performance.
But if you insist on implementing a social media search practice, we recommend that you use a “third-party provider” which can filter out protected characteristics and provide only job-relevant information, though it should be noted that while this minimizes legal risks, it does not eliminate them. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between what is considered professional and private information. And no one wants to go to court to decide such a claim.