Social media snooping on job applicants. The effects of unprofessional social media information on recruiter perceptions
| Pages | 1261-1280 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-09-2017-0278 |
| Published date | 02 August 2019 |
| Date | 02 August 2019 |
| Author | John Bret Becton,H. Jack Walker,J. Bruce Gilstrap,Paul H. Schwager |
| Subject Matter | Hr & organizational behaviour,Global hrm |
Social media snooping on
job applicants
The effects of unprofessional social media
information on recruiter perceptions
John Bret Becton
Department of Management and International Business,
University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA
H. Jack Walker
Department of Management, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA
J. Bruce Gilstrap
nQativ, Lubbock, Texas, USA, and
Paul H. Schwager
Department of Management Information Systems,
East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate how HR professionalsuse social networking website
information to evalua te applicants’propens ity to engage in counterp roductive work behavi ors and
suitability for hire.
Design/methodology/approach –Using an experimental design, 354 HR professionals participated in a
two-part study. In part 1, participants viewed a fictitious resume and rated the applicant’s likelihood to
engage in counterproductive work behavior as well as likelihood of a hiring recommendation. In part 2,
participants viewed a fictitious social networking website profile for the applicant and repeated the ratings
from part 1. The authors analyzed their responses to determine the effect viewing a social network website
(SNW) profile had on ratings of the applicant.
Findings –Unprofessional SNW information negatively affected ratings of applicants regardless of
applicants’qualifications, while professional SNW profile information failed to improve evaluations
regardless of qualifications.
Originality/value –Anecdotal reports suggest that many employers use SNW information to eliminate job
applicants from consideration despite an absence of empirical research that has examined how SNW content
influences HR recruiters’evaluation of job applicants. This study represents one of the first attempts to
understand how HR professionals use such information in screening applicants. The findings suggest that
unprofessional SNW profiles negatively influence recruiter evaluations while professional SNW profile
content has little to no effect on evaluations.
Keywords Social media, Selection, Facebook, Recruiting, Counterproductive work behaviour,
Social networking websites
Paper type Research paper
While many people live their lives openly through social media or social network websites
(SNWs) –posting everything from thoughts about politics to photos of their meals, few
probably consider the career-related consequences of “over-sharing”on social media. Those
party pics from a wild night in college are harmless, right? Maybe not. There is extensive
evidence that more and more employers are using applicants’SNW content during the
employee selection process (Smith, 2012). For example, surveys report that between 35 and
63 percent of employersviewing SNWs during selection eliminated an applicant from further
consideration based on SNW content (e.g. Davis, 2006; Grasz, 2013). Additional research has
found that 43 percent of organizations use social media sites to research candidates and
Personnel Review
Vol. 48 No. 5, 2019
pp. 1261-1280
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-09-2017-0278
Received 18 September 2017
Revised 16 May 2018
26 November 2018
21 January 2019
Accepted 19 February 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
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Social media
snooping on
job applicants
approximately50 percent of employers reportrejecting job applicants becauseof social media
content (Gurchiek, 2014). Recently, Hoek et al. (2016) examined employers’use of social
networking websites during employee selection by conducting in-depth interviews with 15
organizations to understand how SNW information is accessed, observed and utilized in
selection procedures. Their findings revealed that SNW profiles are accessed both as part of
organizations’official selection processes in which candidate permission is gained and
through covert observation without candidate consent. Furthermore, the authors called into
question the extent to which SNWs were reflective of the person, whether a candidate’s
personal life reflected their work persona and how different types of SNWs are used for
different reasons (e.g. Facebook used to assess organization fit and soft skills, whereas
LinkedIn to assess professional attributes and job fit).
Clearly, more and more employers are making use of SNW in employee selection
processes, which makes it all the more important for researchers to address relevant
concerns about this practice. Indeed, there are substantive issues raised by the use of this
information (see Jeske and Shultz, 2016 for an extensive review). For example, there are legal
concerns surrounding this practice, largely because protected-class information is often
readily available through individuals’SNWs (Kluemper et al., 2012; Kowske and Southwell,
2006), creating the potential for claims of illegal discrimination. Applicant reactions to the
use of social media are an important consideration as well. Recent research into respect for
privacy and information privacy concerns indicates that applicants have strong reactions to
the use of social media in employment screening (Drake et al., 2016; Jeske and Shultz, 2019).
Another study examined how applicants react to social media content of their prospective
immediate supervisor and found that negative information such as alcohol abuse
information negatively affected attitudes toward the manager and their willingness to apply
for a position reporting to them (Ballweg et al., 2018). Additionally, because the use of social
media is a relatively new phenomenon, there are questions about the validity of these
practices (Brown and Vaughn, 2011; Davison et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2016) as much of the
information gleaned from social media is not job related (Gurchiek, 2014). To date, however,
only a handful of empirical studies have addressed this issue, and the evidence is mixed
(cf., Becton et al., 2017; Kluemper and Rosen, 2009; Park et al., 2015; Stoughton et al., 2013;
Van Iddekinge et al., 2016; Youyou et al., 2015). Furthermore, much of the recent research on
SNWs has focused on their use to find job candidates online but not on the use of SNW
information as a post-application tool (Ollington et al., 2013), so less is known about how this
information is used to screen applicants.
We seek to contribute to the nascent literature on the use of SNW content in employee
selection processes as a post-application tool. Specifically, we use an experimental design to
examine the possibility that employers’evaluations of candidates are strongly influenced by
unprofessional SNW content, suggesting that such information triggers negativity and
extremity biases (Skowronski and Carlston, 1989). Similarly, we consider the effects of
professional or positive SNW content on employers’evaluations of candidates. At last, we
explore the possibility that applicant sex influences how recruiters use SNW information
during selection processes. This study provides theoretical and practical understanding of
why SNWs are used during selection and the possible consequences of doing so.
Employee selection processes and social media information
Although resumes present mostly factual information such as educational achievement,
experience, etc., employers also use resumes to form impressions about dispositional
characteristics such as personality, intelligence, leadership and work ethic (e.g. Cable and
Gilovich, 1998; Cole et al., 2009), and in turn, use those impressions to assess employability
(Brown and Campion, 1994; Cole et al., 2003, 2007). More recently, employers have
begun using SNW content in a similar manner. Social media is a popular means of online
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