With the United States presidential election drawing nearer, candidates have become increasingly scrutinized, including their posts on various social media outlets. A company called Social Intelligence provided background screening reports of the two major party candidates on a number of social media outlets. According to their website,”The Social Intelligence Social Media Hiring Report will supply (employers) with a fuller understanding of (the) candidate’s behavior, while protecting privacy rights. Our analysts review content for only negative behavior that covers the most dangerous workplace safety areas: Activity that is potentially unlawful, potentially violent behavior, racism and/or demonstrations of intolerance, and sexually explicit material.”
According to Alfred Ng of CNET.com, Social Intelligence finds that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fail social media background checks. These are the areas in which the report found “hits” with each of the two major party candidates:
Donald Trump
- Potential Racism and/or Demonstrations of Intolerance
- Potentially Violent Behavior
- Potential Unlawful Activity
Hillary Clinton
- Potential Unlawful Activity
- Potential Racism and/or Demonstrations of Intolerance
You can see the full reports of both candidates on Alfred Ng’s article.
With the tremendous growth of social media, many companies are finding it more important to look into a potential candidate’s social media behavior. According to Bianca Calhoun Lager, “The increased demand comes from what social media now means to our lives — we have accepted this medium as part of our daily lives in society,” Lager said. “No other background screening gives you behavioral data that can provide insight into workplace safety issues.”
In my opinion, social media background checks can be very subjective according to what one might believe or perceive about a person’s social media activity and behavior. However, you can’t argue that it’s not an interesting topic of discussion.
