Company Performs Social Media Background Checks For Potential Employees

A new trend in background checks for potential employees is to have all their social media posts scrutinized, including everything they've liked, commented on and shared.

Employers said they are trying to uncover any issues, before they take the time and money to hire someone.

"We can detect every single social media site someone is on, and all of their activity," said Darcy Swift.

Darcy Swift is the CEO of Superior Screening Solutions.

She said it's become a passion of hers to make sure that companies know how important it is to monitor what potential hires have done online.

"It's looking for violence, it's looking for lifestyle, it's looking for drug activity, alcohol activity, and verbiage," she said.

She said background checks are common, but in today's world, there's so much people do online. She said it needs to be researched too, because it can often pick up something a regular background check might have missed.

"When we don't have something on our background, that might be missed, but we can look into social media, and more times than not you will pick it up," she said.

"Any type of industry that you're in where you are dealing with children there is a fear, a there's a hesitancy by parents, can I trust them with my kid, and is my child safe," said Cassie Barnett.

Cassie Barnett with Hillspring Church uses Swift's company and said for any organization hiring new employees, or using volunteers, this kind of check is necessary.

"We have to keep each other safe, and we have to keep our kids safe, and keep our church safe, so backgrounds really come in handy with anyone who is going to have anything to do with our student ministry, our kids ministry," she said.

Swift said every employee of a company represents the values of that company, and screening people's social media helps protect your business.

"People live on their social media sites, people live online, and they are expressing everything and they feel the freedom to do that, and when you do a social media screening you are going to be able to detect activity that might throw up a red flag," she said.

Swift said if you are applying for a job, it's important to remember everything you post or like, whether your profile is public or private, can be traced back to you.