Shocked by your candidate’s on-line image?

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When you’re presented with a resume, (regardless of whether it comes from an internal HR pro, a 3rd-party recruiter, a network contact, or off an advertisement), do you go on-line and check them out. What type of rants are your candidates posting on Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter? What pictures are they posting on Flickr – friendly shots of their family re-union, or something that could lead to a lawsuit once you hire them?

Validation and Verification of candidate information is one of the five core steps in our five-step Success Factor Methodology. Candidates think they can get away with inappropriate on-line images/activities, lying about their history, and mis-representing their accomplishments because they know that very few companies will actually check.

It’s so important to validate and verify information that we’ve dedicated an entire chapter in our book, You’re NOT the Person I Hired, to this subject. With the explosion of social media and the transparency it provides in seeing a variety of views of your potential hire, there is no excuse not to leverage these tools to save time and heart-ache.

Are they presenting themselves in a professional manner, or coming off like they’ve just emerged from a drunken stupor?

The resources on-line are astounding to verify, validate, and vet the claims of candidates. Here a few ideas:

Does the resume history match the LinkedIn Profile?

Are there significant recommendations on LinkedIn from customers, vendors, suppliers, former subordinates, and former bosses?

Are the claims made about achievements and accomplishments consistent with the resume?

This is just a very basic, first level screen of validation. Yet, many candidates would not be able to pass the first level. The next step would be personality profiling, homework assignments, deep and intrusive reference checks, background checks, skill testing, and multiple interviews with multiple interviewers. More about these other forms of validation in a future post.

Here’s one small example – I can see a candidate’s avatar/profile picture on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, I cringe at the completely unprofessional image candidates seeking a job convey – and we’ve not even glanced at their photo streams on these sites. If that’s their best foot forward in a job search, what on earth are they going to be like when they arrive on our doorstep for the first day of work?

Validate, Verify, Vet every single claim a candidate makes. You can’t afford to let your guard down when it comes to hiring. BE Nervous – BE Paranoid. What’s the old saying — Forewarned is fore-armed?

Barry

photo credit dbarefoot