Dating is a screening process. Each of us are or have been our own version of a hiring manager for our lives, selecting and interrogating candidates for romantic partnerships, vetting and disqualifying, hiring and letting go. With the proliferation of dating technologies, we’ve been given a few interesting tools that make the work of protecting ourselves while finding new love or connections just a little bit easier and safer.
Dating Apps and Background Checks
You might be thinking that the pairing of the two seems like a no-brainer, but a newly launched dating app called Gatsby (named after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional character Jay Gatsby) is the first mobile application to unite the swiping-based functionality of Tinder with the no-nonsense vetting philosophy of a corporate firm.
Gatsby seeks to protect its romantic-minded users by:
- conducting background checks on everyone who signs up for the app
- using profile to search public databases (criminal records and sex offender registries)
- rescanning matches on a monthly basis
- deterring those with criminal records from attempting to sign up at all
A Step in the Right Direction
While Gatsby isn’t the first to rigorously vet its members (websites eHarmony and Match have made strides in that direction), it is the first to do so on a mobile platform. In the future, it is likely that Tinder will join the movement, making the work of finding committed and casual partners that much less nerve-wracking.
What Do You Think?
You do it with potential employees, but if you could run a background check on all of your dating prospects, would you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
