Statistics indicate that there are roughly 2.6 billion individuals that operate a minimum of one social media accounts. Worldwide, less than half of planet Earth's residents are active on one or more social media accounts. However, in the world's most developed countries, up to 90 percent of their residents use social media regularly, such as in the United States of America. Heard the saying, "Where there's smoke, there's fire?"
In today's society, "Where there's widely available technology and Internet connection, there are tons of social media users."
The latter, self-made saying might not be as smooth as the classic, former adage, but it couldn't hold more truth.
Most social media accounts are operated by individuals. After people and before governments and other nonprofit entities - in terms of the second-most popular class of social media users - are businesses; businesses small, large, global, local are far more likely to have at least one active account on a social media platform than they were, say, just a year or two ago.
Considering the fact that social media is so popular in today's world, it's true that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and every other social platform is used for multiple purposes.
Individuals? Mostly recreation, although networking is also prevalent, even outside of "professional" sites like LinkedIn.
Governments? To listen to their people or spread official decrees and news.
Businesses? Act as always-open customer service departments. Oh, and screening applicants' social media profiles, something that's both more effective and cost-efficient than outdated background checks, certifying references, and comparing resumes.
Social Media Screening Must Be Easy, Right? Yes, and no. The practice is considerably easy when it's not done correctly, unless there are only - let's do some number-crunching - zero people to screen. Job's done, boss.
What's next? Hereafter, I'll dig into why social media screening isn't as easy or simple as you might think. Don't take the following tips as purely opinionated and based in untruth - you'll find these same types of tips, and maybe even a few more, all over the World Wide Web.
Here's What You Look For
This sounds overly simple, though it's important to keep in mind; there are three things broad types of social media content employers should look for:
Deterrents - Attitudes, behaviors, and content that doesn't represent operators well.
Encouragers - Things that make employers say, "This candidate appears to be a strong hire. I would enjoy working with this person. The applicant seems professional, mature, and throws no red flags."
Neutrals - Everything not fitting the above two categories.
Imagine that every instance of a deterrent makes a candidate lose 100 points. Every encourager gains 1 point. Neutrals don't have any effect on points. Bad at games, or math, either one? Trust a social media screening firm like Fama to take care of this mess for you.
Don't Actually Keep Score...... of applicants' tallies. This just goes to say that encouragers could be deliberately shared by candidates to make employers, new friends, and girlfriends or boyfriends think more highly by those people. 1,000,000 "encouragers" doesn't make a candidate a solid hire. Just 1 - one, numero uno - deterrent should spur you to rethink that candidate's suitability within your organisation.
*This is a guest post*