Why social media screening is becoming a necessary safeguard in hiring
Most organisations today conduct some form of background check. But many still overlook a candidate’s public online activity, even though it can surface risks that traditional checks don’t cover.
Social media posts, comments, and interactions are often public, persistent, and easily searchable. If a serious issue emerges after someone is hired, the reputational fallout can extend far beyond the individual. Clients, employees, and external stakeholders will likely question how the person was hired in the first place.
Public content has consequences
Over the past decade, employers have had to respond to increasing numbers of social media-related incidents. These include:
- A NASCAR driver suspended after liking an offensive meme, even though it was posted years earlier
- Nurses at a US hospital dismissed after mocking patients in a viral TikTok
- A UK delivery rider fired for publicly sharing a customer’s prescription on social medi
These are high-profile examples, but many others don’t make the news. In a global survey, 67% of employers said they had rejected a candidate based on information found online.
Most hiring processes still miss this
Traditional background checks are designed to validate identity, employment history, or criminal records. But they don’t account for how a candidate engages in public digital spaces. In many organisations, this step is left to hiring managers who may conduct informal searches or skip it entirely.
That creates two risks: inconsistency in how candidates are assessed, and potential exposure to protected characteristics such as age, religion, or gender. Both can lead to unfair decision-making or even legal challenges.
Structured social media screening helps address these issues. It flags content related to specific behavioural risk areas such as hate speech, harassment, or breaches of confidentiality, while excluding irrelevant or protected personal data.
The point is not to judge. It’s to understand patterns
A single poorly worded comment may not be cause for concern. But repeated examples of hostility, discriminatory views, or harmful behaviour can indicate deeper issues that may affect the workplace.
Publicly available social content is often the clearest indicator of how someone communicates and behaves when they believe no one is watching. This can be especially important in roles that involve sensitive information, client contact, or high levels of responsibility.
According to a 2023 report by the Harris Poll, 70% of employers believe every company should screen candidates’ social media before hiring, especially in client-facing roles.
A small step with disproportionate value
Social media checks are now faster and easier to implement than ever. With clear candidate consent and defined behavioural categories, they provide early visibility into risks that are otherwise easy to miss.
For companies hiring across regions, cultures, or compliance regimes, they also offer a consistent process to support fair and informed decision-making.
A small step that adds meaningful protection
Social media screening is not about disqualifying candidates for minor mistakes. It's about gaining early visibility into serious risks — the kind that can impact trust, culture, or reputation if left unchecked.
With clearer processes and more structured tools now available, it’s becoming easier for HR and compliance teams to add this layer to their hiring workflows without adding complexity.
Veremark’s approach focuses on identifying behavioural red flags such as hate speech, harassment, and breaches of confidentiality, while redacting protected characteristics. Reports are generated using AI-powered profile matching and returned within a few days, offering a clear summary of relevant findings without unnecessary detail.
If you'd like to explore how this could work in your organisation, you can book a short consultation with our team to learn more.
For a more detailed look at what social media checks actually include, how they’re used, and how employers manage them in practice, we’ve also put together a practical guide.
Download the guide
A Practical Guide to Social Media Checks for Employers
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.
%20(1).webp)
.webp)
.webp)
FAQs
FAQs
This depends on the industry and type of role you are recruiting for. To determine whether you need reference checks, identity checks, bankruptcy checks, civil background checks, credit checks for employment or any of the other background checks we offer, chat to our team of dedicated account managers.
Many industries have compliance-related employment check requirements. And even if your industry doesn’t, remember that your staff have access to assets and data that must be protected. When you employ a new staff member you need to be certain that they have the best interests of your business at heart. Carrying out comprehensive background checking helps mitigate risk and ensures a safer hiring decision.
Again, this depends on the type of checks you need. Simple identity checks can be carried out in as little as a few hours but a worldwide criminal background check for instance might take several weeks. A simple pre-employment check package takes around a week. Our account managers are specialists and can provide detailed information into which checks you need and how long they will take.
All Veremark checks are carried out online and digitally. This eliminates the need to collect, store and manage paper documents and information making the process faster, more efficient and ensures complete safety of candidate data and documents.
In a competitive marketplace, making the right hiring decisions is key to the success of your company. Employment background checks enables you to understand more about your candidates before making crucial decisions which can have either beneficial or catastrophic effects on your business.
Background checks not only provide useful insights into a candidate’s work history, skills and education, but they can also offer richer detail into someone’s personality and character traits. This gives you a huge advantage when considering who to hire. Background checking also ensures that candidates are legally allowed to carry out certain roles, failed criminal and credit checks could prevent them from working with vulnerable people or in a financial function.
Trusted by the world's best workplaces
APPROVED BY INDUSTRY EXPERTS
.png)
.png)
and Loved by reviewers
Transform your hiring process
Request a discovery session with one of our background screening experts today.
