Social Media Employment Background Checks, Yes They Do Happen

I’ve talked about employment background checks that are conducted by companies who provide criminal and credit checks and verify employment.  But, are you aware there is a company that conducts social medial background checks?  The company is Social Intelligence Corporation headquartered in Santa Barbara, California and has been in business since August 2010.

Social Intelligence uses a combination of automated and manual review to provide information from social media including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, LinkedIn, and individual blogs.  They do not use “spy” tactics such as becoming a friend on Facebook.  Employers define what information they want to be included, which is both negative and positive.  Negative examples are racist remarks or activities, sexually explicit photos or videos and illegal activity such as drug use.  Positive examples are charitable or volunteer efforts, participation in industry blogs, and external recognition.

Legal obligation

Social Intelligence is considered a consumer reporting agency (CRA) and has to be compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).  As a consumer reporting agency they have to provide accurate information and negative information can only be reported for 7 years.   Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, they can’t disclose race, sex, gender, religion, age, nationality, etc.  In addition, they have to disclose reports that were used to deny you employment. Therefore, these reports are stored to comply with the law.  If a report on the same individual is requested by another employer, a new report is run each time.  According to Social Intelligence, they are not building a database.

The extent of social media screening by most companies has been to conduct a Google search on their own.  Social Intelligence takes this to another level.  They have developed their own software to search the web, categorize data to generate matches, manually review the information to include what the employer requested and filter out legally sensitive information.

You need to be concerned about your social network image whether you are employed or unemployed.  Present and potential employers can conduct Google searches or hire companies like Social Intelligence to do it for them.  Google yourself to see what shows up online about you.  Delete anything that is damaging including comments and photos.  Check our privacy settings and restrict access to friends, if possible.  This is your personal image.

John Ulzheimer is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  Follow him on Twitter here.

Categorised in: Employment, Money & Identity

This post was written by John Ulzheimer