Social media in recent years has become an increasingly popular and prominent form of communication between businesses, individuals and even governments. They are extremely useful platforms for some in terms of contacting long lost friends or distant family, disseminating news across the world and promoting a brand, among other uses. However, these platforms also present issues for companies and individuals as a result of the successful and far-reaching nature of the likes of Facebook and Twitter – these being reputational, financial and security risks. Hence, there is a necessity to incorporate social media content into the background screening process.
However, conducting such searches and basing employment on social media content can be somewhat sensitive and many high profile legal cases have proven that dismissal based on social media activity can be found to be both justified and unjustified.
So says the consultancy Inkerman Group in a recent blog. The company points to evidence of drug use to gun wielders, and swathes of other interesting activities in between; all questionable material found through the use of such checks by The Inkerman Group’s screening team, which all could have proven highly damaging to a client’s reputation had they not been identified.
