4 things we’ve learned from reviewing 10,000+ candidate social profiles

Social media screening has become an important step for employers who want greater visibility into behavioural risks before making a hiring decision. After running more than 10,000 checks globally, we’ve seen clear patterns emerge — not just in what gets flagged, but in how teams interpret and act on that information.

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Here are five key lessons we’ve learned that can help HR and compliance teams screen more effectively.

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Lesson 1 - Most flags fall into a few consistent categories

Veremark’s social media checks are designed to screen for 14 behavioural risk categories. These include:

• Hate speech
• Harassment or bullying
• Threats of violence
• Toxic or obscene language
• Discriminatory or racist remarks
• Sexual impropriety or explicit content
• Illegal activity (e.g. drug use or promotion)
• Self-harm
• Terrorism or extremist content
• Political speech (contextual)
• Insults or targeted attacks
• Narcotics
• Violent imagery
• Racy/explicit imagery

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Out of all the checks we’ve run, roughly one in four have included at least one flagged post. The most frequent behavioural risks fall into five categories:

• Toxic or inflammatory language
  This includes public posts containing slurs, threats, or hostility toward individuals or groups. In most cases, the content is old — but tone and frequency matter more than date.
• Hate speech and discrimination
  Posts targeting race, religion, gender, or nationality continue to be a significant trigger for concern, especially in client-facing or leadership roles.
• Sexual or explicit content
  While often less malicious, this content tends to raise red flags in education, healthcare, or high-trust environments.
• Illegal activity references
  Public posts referring to drug use or criminal behaviour — even jokingly — can be seen as risky, particularly in regulated sectors.
• Harassment or targeted attacks
  These often appear as comment threads, replies, or quote-posts. They’re harder to surface manually, which is why structured checks often catch what informal vetting misses.

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These flags appear across platforms — including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn — and are assessed through both text and image analysis.

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If you're curious about what goes into a social media screening report, we've broken it down in a separate article here: What a good social media check looks like – and what it doesn’t.

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Lesson 2 - Frequency matters more than age

A common question we get is: “How far back do you go?”

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The simple answer is that our standard checks review content across a five-year window, but what really matters is not how old a post is — it’s how often similar behaviour appears.

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We’ve seen hiring teams pass on candidates not because of one bad post from a decade ago, but because of a pattern of inflammatory content spread over several years. In contrast, one isolated post — especially if liked or reshared, not authored — is often seen as context-dependent. For example:

• A single inappropriate tweet from 2014 might be discussed and overlooked
• A consistent tone of hostility or discriminatory comments across platforms often leads to deeper concern

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Our reports flag each instance with date, platform, and context — allowing hiring teams to assess severity, frequency, and relevance.

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Lesson 3 - Screening is most useful when targeted by role

We’ve found that social media checks are most valuable when applied selectively — to roles where trust, communication, or public exposure matter. These typically include:

• Senior or executive hiring
• Client-facing roles (especially in finance, legal, or communications)
• Public sector or high-trust positions
• Industries where reputation is critical (e.g. education, healthcare, consulting)

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When reports flag content, the hiring decision usually weighs:

• The risk of public association
• Whether the behaviour conflicts with company values or the role’s responsibilities
• How the candidate might handle the content if confronted

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In other words, most employers aren’t looking to disqualify. They’re looking to understand fit. Many clients start by screening a small set of roles, review the insights and comfort level internally, and then scale based on impact.

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Lesson 4 - Consistency and context matter more than volume

One of the biggest benefits of a structured report is consistency. Hiring teams receive a standardised output that excludes protected characteristics, flags only what’s relevant, and provides screenshots and timestamps for every item.

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That makes it easier to:

• Compare candidates fairly
• Involve the right decision-makers
• Document the rationale behind hiring outcomes

Without that structure, teams often rely on ad hoc Googling — which introduces bias, inconsistency, and exposure to irrelevant personal information.

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Veremark’s checks are:

• Structured: based on defined behavioural risk categories
• Filtered: redacting protected characteristics like age, gender, religion
• Compliant: aligned with global data protection frameworks
• Contextual: showing screenshots, timestamps, and whether a post was authored, liked, or reshared

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This helps teams focus on job-relevant risk, not personal information.

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Visibility drives better decisions

People change. Social media evolves. What matters is whether a candidate’s public behaviour shows a pattern that’s inconsistent with the expectations of the role or organisation.

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Screening helps surface that information early, before it affects colleagues, clients, or reputation.

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Want to see what a structured social media report looks like? Book a short consultation with our team

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Download the guide

A Practical Guide to Social Media Checks for Employers

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This resource offers practical clarity:

• What social media checks can legally and ethically include
• What actually shows up in a structured report — and how to interpret it
• How to screen without bias or exposure to protected characteristics
• The implementation steps many companies overlook
• Real-world examples of incidents that could have been avoided
  
  

Built for HR, compliance, and hiring teams that want to get this right — every time.

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