5 Things Recruiter Should Look for on a Candidate's Social Media Profile

With the growing importance of Social Media today, the time has come to back your background check process with the in-depth candidate’s social media profile screening. It helps you get a comprehensive view of your prospective employee.

Therefore we have listed 5 points you should consider while scanning the candidate’s social media profiles.

Consistency:

To start with the screening, check whether the details (i.e. academics details, qualification and experience) provided by the candidate match with his/her social media profiles.

• During the process, if you find out that the candidate is connected to someone you know, then you get additional reference too.
• Check the candidate’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for this.

1. Know the candidate ‘as a person’:
• Through “About” and “Intro” section on any social media platform, you’ll get to know how the candidate wants to describe himself/herself. So never miss them.
• Check the ‘Recommendations’ on the candidate’s LinkedIn Profile.
• By quickly taking a glimpse of candidate’s photos on social media along with their description; you’ll be able to gauge how positively, engagingly and aptly can the candidate represent himself/herself to the world.
• Lastly also check the candidate’s Instagram profile and his/her followers and whom he/she follows back, to see how much socially connected the candidate is.

1. Passion, Interests and hobbies:
   • The LinkedIn profile gives a fair idea of  how professionally active the candidate is. But besides that see if the candidate has gone that extra mile in his profession. Ensure it by checking the research & projects on his/her LinkedIn Profile.
   • To know more about the candidate’s interests and hobbies, check the ‘Featured Photos’ space on his/her Facebook account. But only do this exercise, if you find it relevant for the job.
2. Inherent qualities:
   • The candidate may have many qualities, which he/she may not have highlighted in the resume. Discover such qualities from Social Media, if as a hiring manager, you think have immense growth potential.
   • Check the candidate’s social media posts and stories on Facebook and Instagram for this.
3. General Points: The hiring managers also need to keep a tab of some general points during the candidate’s social media screening.
   • Check the candidate’s Tweets to see if he/she shares useful information (i.e. information relevant to your industry) or just the irrelevant tweets to know how thoughtful person he/she is.
   • Checking the candidate’s activities on different social media platforms will make you realize how dynamic the candidate is. However, this may not be very crucial for every job.
   • Though the very minute yet very important point is – to check the spellings and grammar on some social media profiles like LinkedIn, Twitter (and also Facebook and Instagram in some cases).

So if your hiring process also involves social media screening, share with us how you check the social footprints of the potential candidates.