Background checks are a fairly common part of the hiring process, and cybervetting serves as an extension of that assessment, stretching the evaluation to a prospective employee’s digital footprint. Opinions remain divided on whether employers should consider a potential hire’s online life when it might have no correlation to their skills and capabilities on the job, but while we continue to debate the pros and cons of social media screening, it’s undeniable that employers are actively cybervetting employees as we speak.
The practice of cybervetting isn’t exclusive to hiring. It can be employed in other situations, but when employed by HR teams, it is a practice that contributes to the assessment of eligibility. There are many benefits to cybervetting, primarily offering insight into an individual’s conduct and general attitude towards a previous employer, but employers who do screen social media before hiring run the risk of intruding too far into a candidate’s personal life and making a biased decision on their application. Choosing to conduct such digital reviews requires a careful balance to be struck.
Cybervetting in hiring helps recruiters assess a job seeker more comprehensively, but the practice isn’t without its downsides. (Image: Freepik)
Do Modern Hiring Practices Make Room for Cybervetting in Hiring? An HR Guide
Cybervetting refers to the process of accessing all data available in reference to an individual’s online activity, across social media, blogs, posts, portfolios, interviews, etc. While the conversation most often centers around an individual’s personal social media accounts, it can also include mentions of them across other platforms and their interactions online. Cybervetting offers recruiters supplementary information that candidates may not willingly reveal, enhancing the organization’s understanding of who they are hiring. In other cases, it verifies what the candidate has willingly revealed, such as the impact of their social media presence or their writing careers for previous institutions.
Organizations that are very particular about a good cultural fit can benefit from cybervetting, which helps ensure that the candidate’s opinions and behavior don’t conflict with the work they are expected to do. A job seeker applying for a post that requires them to deal with a range of clients and customers has to be able to treat each one equally with respect, but if their online presence reveals discriminatory, derogatory attitudes towards various communities, they may not be an ideal hire.
An employee does represent the company brand to the outside world to a degree, but some lines must be drawn between taking into account their personal and professional lives. It’s important to have a firm standard on what behavior is irrelevant to the organization and what acts the company is willing to take an unshakable stand on.
Cybervetting Practices in Hiring Can Backfire If Recruiters Aren’t Careful
Investigating a candidate’s social media presence before hiring can be a very sensitive process, as it doesn’t just stop at evaluating the candidate’s eligibility for the role but also takes the assessment to a more personal level that can lean towards bias. Cybervetting may lead employers to make decisions that are ultimately discriminatory, which means that organizations that do turn to such checks must have fixed selection criteria and a legitimate explanation for why they are choosing to reject a candidate for a specific role.
Cybervetting isn’t always an informative process, as many individuals can keep a large section of their online presence private. Expending a significant amount of time and resources to dig deeper can be a futile process, not to mention an invasive one as well. How a candidate presents themselves online may have little to do with their ability to perform the job, and conflating the two could be a violation on many grounds. There are many legal limitations to look out for, as the use of cybervetting tools and processes in HR can vary between states and countries.
Some Considerations to Keep in Mind When Turning to Cybervetting in the Hiring Process:
- Refer to any laws that might be relevant to the cybervetting or hiring process
- Identify a clear objective for the cybervetting process and create guidelines on what to look out for
- Record what information is being taken into consideration in the hiring process
- Stick to assessing factors that are directly related to the job or verifying the data provided by the candidate
- Inform candidates about any background checks or cybervetting processes so there is complete transparency in the process
- Reserve cybervetting for the final stages of hiring to ensure the candidate is solely evaluated on their skill sets and accolades directly related to the job
- Set limits on the cybervetting process, such as evaluating only public or professional profiles like LinkedIn
- Understand that employees are individuals with an entire life of their own and that their personal lifestyle and habits are not within the purview of the employer for the most part
Organizations that do invest in cybervetting practices or in background checks overall must ensure that they consult a legal team first and set guidelines on how and when to conduct these processes. It’s important to train recruiters, HR teams, and managers on how to navigate these tools and ensure they keep their own biases out of the way, documenting every finding and decision for audits to ensure their decisions are free of discrimination.
Putting too much stock in the cybervetting process over a job seeker’s actual skills and credentials can be a counterproductive process, as an employee’s life outside of the workplace doesn’t necessarily have to coincide with the preferences of the worK
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