Our world was forever changed on February 9th, 2004 by at that time what was a little known website called thefacebook.com. It was something that barely anyone noticed at that moment. In fact, only those who had a .edu e-mail account (i.e. college students and professors) could even access the site. However, it did not take long before it was spreading like wildfire, and the company opened it up to everyone. They also of course changed their name simply to "Facebook".
It is a simple truth that in today's world, you have to know a little about a person's social media situation before you go about hiring them to work for you. This might sound overbearing to some people, but that is not the truth. In reality, it is just a way to protect yourself against the possibility of hiring someone with a less than reputable social media existence. Besides that, each individual decides what to put out for the world to see on their own social media page. To not at least take a look at that information would be a mistake.
A quick social media background check is just a little poking around on there to see what kind of person you are likely dealing with. What you are probably going to find out from them is not very likely to turn up a whole lot that is interesting, but every now and then you just might find something that you are glad you looked into ahead of time.
Many of the people with social media accounts are younger than the median age in the United States. Those are also the people most likely to be job-seekers at this point. They are worth looking into before you hire them. Some of those people may include things on their profiles like references (or even pictures!) to alcohol and possibly even illegal drugs. That could reflect poorly on your business if you hire someone who is willing to publish those kind of stories about themselves to the world.
While you ought to have an eagle eye out there for these types of things, also bare in mind that younger people tend to develop their own language and customs with time. They do not necessarily follow the rules that the "adult" world has created. You might have to try to bridge the gap between the way that you speak and present yourself, and the way that they do. Do not jump to conclusions about a person just based on what they put on social media.
The purpose of a social media background check is to see if someone you are considering hiring has things that are blatantly offensive or unseemly. You are not trying to go out there and police someone's language or the customs that they may have. You just want to make sure that whoever it is out there that you are thinking about hiring does not make you look bad.
At the end of the day, the best policy is often to bring in someone that maybe has some questionable material and literally ask them about it. Get their side of the story so that you know what is really going on. They may well have perfectly reasonable explanations for every single thing that they have ever posted. When you think about it like this, you can start to see why it is worth giving people the benefit of the doubt until you are completely sure of their intentions.
MisslJBeauty
