By: Shari Dalton
I was reading an article the other day about social media and hiring. It stated that 71% of employers screened their applicant’s social media profiles. This number seems low. With free access at your fingertips, why wouldn’t you want to learn more about the candidate you may hire? Anyone can look good on paper or tell you want you want to hear.
It certainly made me think about travel nurses and travel nurse recruiters. I have spent my fair share of time on social media sites-primarily the book of faces and LinkedIn, and man oh man, have some of the posts and subsequent comments been cringe-worthy. Which begs the question, how are some of these people still employed? I mean, are you really shocked when a traveler who encourages others to hold out for the highest paying position suddenly goes rogue or takes another position after signing with you?
And good lord almighty, agencies…you’re shocked when a recruiter doesn’t live up to their expectations but you’re the 7th agency they’ve worked at in the last 5 years per their LinkedIn profile. At what point should we be thinking, “it’s not the agency, it’s you?”
You can tell a lot about a person by their social media pages. You can certainly pull a lot of great information-what are their hobbies and interests? Do they have families, or pets or children? Would they be a good fit for you or your agency? Now a good social media creep isn’t the end all, be all, but if it keeps you from making one less bad decision, don’t you think it would be worth it?
It costs nothing, just a few minutes of your time. In this same article, 55% of the respondents stated that after searching a profile, they decided not to hire that candidate. Now that’s impressive-that’s respecting your time-that’s working from abundance. Take the time, do the things, save yourself a little sanity in the long run. Plus, we all love a good social creep session every now and then!
