Social media has not just intrigued the marketing world, bridged gaps in communications, and infringed upon much of our free time—it has also created new ways for hiring teams to investigate candidates. This new insight to applicants comes with a huge warning sign however—it's a litigation risk.
As resumes come pouring in, it's tempting to log onto the hot social sites for a quick glimpse. It's certainly faster than making a ton of phone calls, or scheduling a week's worth of preliminary interviews. You might be thinking, "With LinkedIn and Facebook alone I can virtually trim my preliminary interviews down by a third just by getting the scoop on people, and if I throw Twitter into the mix, I could essentially narrow my first-interview efforts down to a selective core of applicants."
However, tapping into the social media world to gain personal information could cost your school thousands from a discrimination lawsuit.
Using social media sites to scan candidates or conduct background checks should only be done with great caution. Before you start investigating candidates, stop and think about the information you might find. Much of what is shared on social media and networking sites is protected information under federal law. Most profiles include information that indicates a person's race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, etc. All of these are protected classes, and can't be used in the hiring process. Once you've seen the information, you can't pretend you haven't—you're now at risk.
In the same way that you wouldn't ask a potential new hire to disclose their religion (unless you're a faith-based school), age, sexual orientation, or a slide show of their last family gathering, you don't want to seek that information out online. A rejected candidate can claim that the reason he/she wasn't hired was because of personal, protected information you found online (i.e. about their race, ethnicity, religion, etc.), not because he/she wasn't the most qualified for the job.
