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Using Social Media Sites to Help With a Background Check

Top10.com Staff
Using Social Media Sites to Help with a Background Check
Social media is becoming the ultimate place to perform a background check. Yes, you will want to do a people search and run a real background check for an arrest record. However, there is a lot on social media that you will not find in a simple background check. Nobody wants to feel cynical, but some people who have clean records are not necessarily clean people. Searching social media helps.

Social Media Exposes Political Beliefs

If you run a company or institution that is hinged on religious or political beliefs, and you need to have people working for you who think like you, it would be wise to read their posts on social media.

Social Media Exposes Immaturity

You might be considering someone for a promotion, and you might head over to the social media pages and notice that they are relatively immature based on the position they are being considered for. It's one thing to like to have a good time, and it's quite another to not act your age. When a manager is checking social media pages, they can tell the difference rather quickly.

Social Media Exposes Interpersonal Skills

Someone may have thousands of "friends," but they may not really be good with people. You can see this in very open settings on social media pages. Simply the way people interact with others is a large clue into how they will treat their others if they come to work for you. No longer do you have to take people to dinner to find out if people are polite. You can now read a few comments on a social media site and see the writing on the wall.

Social Media Lets You See Their Family

Not that someone having a family or not is necessarily a deal breaker, but some managers prefer people who need the job the most. Someone may come to an interview and not choose to disclose that they have a child with special needs, an ailing parent who lives with them, or other circumstance. However, you could easily discover this on social media and realize that person is equally qualified and truly needs the job. Social media can enhance a background check many times over because it tells you so much more than a simple printout on someone. Read over social media pages today to see where your candidates are really coming from.

Top10.com Staff
Top10.com's editorial staff is a professional team of editors and writers with dozens of years of experience covering consumer, financial and business products and services.

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