CAREERS NOW 01-23-11

New: Background Checks Go Social

DEAR JOYCE: I get some interviews but no job offers. I'm told I interview well. I don't have anage problem - I'm 31. What's sinking me, other than a sluggish job market? - P.B.

Once an interview has taken place, the most common knockout punches are subpar interviewing skills or bad references. But if so-so interviewing performances and cranky ex-bosses aren't enough to worry about, today's job seekers are discovering there's a growing threat on the hiring scene: offer-killers from Internet sources.

During the past five years or so, hiring professionals have been checking out candidates on social media as though their decisions depend on it. Earlier warnings to social media users to avoid unflattering or scary online behavior are coming home to roost.

Digital fishbowl. When employers Google candidates (most do) as the last reference check before extending a job offer, impediments appear shockingly often. A Google search may suggest or reveal a fatal factor - from references to drugs and alcohol, compromising photos and raunchy tweets, to racist rants, animal abuse videos and job seekers holding guns in a threatening pose.

But getting the goods through browser searching also puts employers at risk of incurring costly law suits if it causes them to run afoul of discrimination laws. Legal hiring choices can be based on negative behavior but not on race, color, gender, national origin, age or disability. Proving a negative -that a rejected candidate in a legally protected class wasn't discriminated against - is complicated.

Innovative solution. To the rescue: A new kind of screening and monitoring service is here. The Social Intelligence Corporation comprehensively rakes the Internet for pertinent information on prospective employees. By widening the traditional background check into the online space, SIC (socialintelligencehr.com) goes way beyond the typical social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

SIC digs deeper than ever before into a candidate's background. In addition to reviewing the usual social suspects, SIC's exclusive software searches billions of pages of the "deep Web," the part of the Internet that's inaccessible to conventional search engines. The deep Web technology can reach into private databases that were not created for general public access -such as those closely held by some universities, government agencies and private organizations.

As one recruiting publication has noted, the virtual vault is now open for business.

Upside for job seekers. Privacy hawks understandably complain that SIC's all-out search technology strips personal privacy bare.

OK, but critics fail to give the service credit for insisting that its clients play by legal fairness rules (not discriminating against candidates on the basis of poor credit, sexual orientation, or other protected information). Clients never see the stuff they shouldn't.

A single example: A job-seeking woman blogged about suffering from fibromyalgia, a painful medical disorder. The SIC search picked up on that admission, but didn't include the illegal information in its report.

By omitting the candidate's radioactive revelation, the client employer was protected against possible legal action; if the employer never saw the fibromyalgia admission, how could the employer have made a biased decision? Moreover, the woman got a fair shake because she was evaluated solely on the value she could bring to the employer.

The moderation of online background checks -digging deeper but hiring fairer - is an idea whose time has come.

What's yours is mined. The Social Intelligence Corporation is the first stand-alone company to collect and cull reporting of candidate's online behavior, but this significant development is expected to spawn competitors.

For readers, the take-away is a 21st century twist on a Shakespearian idiom: Online discretion is the better part of employment valor.

And, by the way, Social Intelligence Corporation also offers clients a monitoring service that keeps track of the online activities of current employees. So if you're blabbing proprietary information on a message board, remember that your online activities are no longer hidden in a sealed virtual vault.

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