Misconceptions About Social Media Background Checks

Recent data indicates that 95% of U.S. businesses conduct some form of pre-employment background check on candidates during the hiring process. These reports typically include criminal checks, but many organizations are also looking at an applicant's social media presence. In fact, roughly 75% of employers use social media as a tool when it comes to candidate screening. And, 85% of companies report passing on candidates as a result of the content found during a social media background check.

Given the rise of social media usage and the role it plays in the candidate screening processes, let’s clear up how social media background checks are conducted and discuss what employers are allowed to analyze.

Understanding Social Media Background Checks

Technology is constantly updating, and so are the methods we use to screen and evaluate candidates. With nearly everyone maintaining a presence on multiple social media platforms, and that usage to grow overtime, it’s no surprise that social media screening has become a valuable resource for screening practices. 

Social media background checks are a modern approach to screening candidates by reviewing their public online presence across platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and more. These checks uncover warning signs such as violent, illegal, or discriminatory behavior, that could pose risks for employers. However, simply conducting these searches on your own can lead to ethical and compliance issues. This is where third-party social media screening solutions come in. 

Third-party social media screening is a structured approach that allows employers to focus on insights that matter—such as identifying patterns of misconduct—without overstepping legal boundaries. As part of a comprehensive hiring process, social media screening provides a deeper understanding of a candidate's behavior beyond what a traditional resume or interview reveals. These insights uncover qualities that align (or conflict) with an organization’s code of conduct, ultimately empowering them to make the right hiring decisions.

Ultimately, these checks provide candidate behavioral intelligence and insights that can help organizations build positive work environments and strong teams. Understanding this process is essential when addressing common misconceptions surrounding social media screening. 

Ethical Considerations of Social Media Background Checks

While social media screening can be an effective tool for protecting company culture and reputation, it’s natural for ethical concerns to arise, especially around privacy and data usage. This isn’t all that surprising given the nature of social media platforms and websites. However, third-party providers can help ensure social media background checks are to be compliant with the regulations established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and other regulatory bodies to ensure fairness throughout the hiring process.

With this process, employers must navigate the fine line between responsible screening and respecting personal privacy. Conducting social media checks manually can lead to ethical dilemmas, as employers might inadvertently come across protected-class information–such as gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, and more–that aren’t job-relevant and are illegal to consider in employment decisions. Using a third-party solution can prevent employers from considering protected-class information and other content that isn’t job-relevant by removing those data points and content from screening results and only showing content that may reflect a candidate’s conduct in the workplace. 

Additionally, there are legal risks to be aware of, and states have varying degrees of regulation around social media use in screening processes. This is why partnering with a third-party social media screening provider is essential to remain compliant with these regulations and avoid legal repercussions. Fortunately, social media screening solutions can tackle all of these concerns. 

By utilizing third-party social media screening tools, businesses are able to remove bias from the screening process while gaining valuable behavioral intelligence insights to make informed hiring decisions. These tools generate data-driven reports which only consider publicly available information that’s relevant for employers to know. And, these tools are FCRA, EEOC, PIPEDA, and GDPR compliant. 

7 Common Misconceptions About Social Media Screening

While candidate screening isn’t a new concept by any means, many candidates might not be familiar with social media screening or the regulations in place regarding these processes. This can lead to concerns or misunderstandings about how social media background checks work.   Our goal is to clear up any misconceptions and provide helpful insights into the details of social media screening. 

Misconception #1: HR and Talent Acquisition departments should do all social media screening in house.

This is incredibly risky. But the good news is you don’t have to do this on your own, and frankly you shouldn’t. One quick look at an applicant's Instagram account or any other profile can reveal all kinds of personal information, such as their sexual orientation or religion. This can open your company up to discrimination lawsuits if the candidate does not end up getting the job. On the other hand, a third-party screener, like Fama, will protect your company from seeing protected class information.

Misconception #2: Companies can force candidates to give up their account passwords.

Allow us to be explicitly clear: this is not true and likely illegal! In many states, it’s illegal for an employer to ask an applicant for their social media passwords. There are also many states with laws against requiring employees to provide their usernames. Asking for passwords can also be a violation of federal laws.

To screen a candidate, it is important to verify their accounts. It is important to make certain that the correct social profiles are connected to the correct candidate especially in the case of common names. That’s why Fama’s patent-pending Profile Confirmation process uses a minimum of 3 identifiers to ensure our reports provide maximum possible accuracy. And, this ensures our processes are compliant. 

Misconception #3: Social media reports are an invasion of the candidate's privacy.

The reality of social media screening is that these processes only consider publicly available content, avoiding an invasion of privacy. This is no different than considering something published in a newspaper. Ultimately, the content found should be leveraged to make informed hiring decisions based on prior instances of misconduct that would deem a candidate unfit for the role. That includes content showing patterns of violence, threats, unlawful activity, bigotry, and other important, job-relevant behaviors, all of which are available on public profiles.

Employers must also get consent from their job candidates before conducting a social media background check. This way, all applicants are aware of the screening and businesses are able to conduct screenings that are compliant with FCRA guidelines.

Misconception #4: Social media screening companies hack into people's accounts.

Let us be clear: Compliant social media screening companies do not hack into anyone's profiles or accounts. Compliant companies like Fama only review publicly available online and social media content, including content on several popular social media sites such as Instagram and X. Private accounts or deleted content are not reviewed, in compliance with FCRA and other privacy regulations. As a result, only public accounts and content can be screened as part of a social media background check. If a company claims to report on the private content of a candidate, their solution is not compliant.

Misconception #5: Social media screening can replace resumes and interviews.

Social media screening does a great job of adding context to a candidate’s application, but it shouldn’t replace other hiring processes like resume reviews and interviews. While some might think that social media can verify the information on a resume, the goal of online screenings is to gather behavior intelligence and learn more about candidates beyond what’s on their resume. So, hiring teams should use social media screenings as a supplementary tool within their processes. 

For instance, depending on the severity of the material found in social media posts, employers can use this information to help them decide which candidates would be good fits for the team. While there’s a variety of behaviors or content that may be concerning, behaviors like promoting violence or spewing antisemitic or xenophobic comments are just two examples of online content that led to employee termination. 

Misconception #6: Social media checks only scan popular social media platforms.

We can only speak for our product specifically on this one. Our proprietary software searches popular and emerging social media sites as well as over 10,000 online sources. Therefore, when you conduct one of our searches on your applicant you’re getting a comprehensive view of your candidate's online presence.

Misconception #7: A candidate can't be hired if negative material is found on their accounts.

Social media screening aims to provide employers with valuable data about candidates, and this is beneficial for uncovering signs of misconduct. However, we are here to provide data in order to help organizations make informed decisions and bring the best people onto their teams, people who will not only be successful in their roles but also people who align with their corporate culture and abide by the Code of Conduct. 

Whether an organization chooses to move forward with the hiring process for any given applicant is entirely up to them. So, if any negative material is uncovered, it’s up to the organization to decide on any potential adverse action. It’s also an opportunity to have a discussion with the candidate about the instance or instances during the interview process.

Conduct Compliant Candidate Screening with Fama

Compliance is key in candidate screenings, and that includes the use of social media content. In addition to clear and consistent guidelines for social media screenings, the right technology can not only keep hiring teams compliant with current regulations, but they can also uncover valuable and relevant information to help inform hiring decisions.

We understand that misconceptions regarding social media background checks can raise concerns among candidates. But, the right technology can put all of these fears at ease, and that technology is Fama’s social media screening solutions. 

Our technology screens publicly available content to find signs of misconduct that help hiring teams make the right decisions about who they bring on board. Not only are our solutions compliant, but they also reduce the time to hire and improve quality of hire so teams can quickly separate the quality candidates from those better left behind. Our goal is simple- to make hiring great people easy! 

To book a demo of our products, get in touch with the Fama team to