More than a third (36 percent) of employers rejected a job candidate in 2015 because of information such as illegal activity or discrepancies with applications found on public social media sites or through an online search, according to survey results released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Overall, 43 percent of HR professionals said they use public social media or online searches to screen job candidates, up from 33 percent in 2013. Forty-four percent agreed that a job candidate’s public social media profile can provide information about work-related performance.
“Unlike traditional hiring tools such as interviews and contacting past employers, social media sites hold out the promise of revealing the ‘real’ job applicant,” said Les Rosen, an attorney and the CEO of Employment Screening Resources, a background screening firm based in the San Francisco area.
