The act of “cybervetting” the online presence of candidates has been commonplace for at least as long as social media encouraged so many of us to plaster our lives online. The act has numerous risks, however, not least of which involve the discrimination that such acts can support.

A recent study from the University of Central Florida suggests that firms need to do a better job of regulating their internal use of cybervetting to ensure that biases aren’t introduced into their hiring processes.

“Companies seem to assume that cybervetting offers some sort of advantage to their hiring process,” the researchers explain. “But our analysis of the research on cybervetting finds that these presumed benefits are unclear—and it is increasingly apparent that cybervetting creates opportunities for biases to influence the hiring process.”

Harmful practice

The research examines how hiring agents, and their organizations, act to try and limit the risks associated with cybervetting. The researchers trawled through previous research on the topic and looked at it through a sociological lens. In other words, they looked at how the hiring process works and how cybervetting influences it.

The authors highlight a number of consequences of the practice. Firstly, it can impact the diversity of the workforce by heightening our ability to discriminate and make bias more pronounced.

This can have a profound impact on the diversity of our organizations, especially when hiring focuses on “cultural fit”. This lack of diversity then hurts the financial performance of firms, especially due to its impact on innovation.

“And cybervetting also promotes privacy invasion, which is deeply problematic,” the authors explain. “I think we’ve already reached a point where we are accepting far more invasion of our personal privacy than we should be comfortable with.

“While job seekers have no control over whether prospective employers engage in cybervetting, or how potential employers use that information, there are a couple of things that job seekers can do to reduce potential risks related to cybervetting.”

Tackling the problem

To tackle the problem, the researchers advocate taking control of the situation and making sure that we personally remove anything online that may be viewed negatively by potential employers. This could even include things like religious and political affiliation, but also obviously any negative comments about work.

We should also ensure that the privacy settings are set on our social media accounts to limit the access potential employers have to our information.

Employers themselves should also take steps to regulate the use of cybervetting during the recruitment process so that it doesn’t harm the talent they have available to them.

“Research tells us that, many times, cybervetting is done without any clear idea of how it relates to the job or the nature of the work,” the authors explain. “We urge hiring agents to consider how their cybervetting relates to specific work tasks or competencies.”

“If organizations are going to use cybervetting, they need to develop guidance to reduce the risk of cybervetting being used in a way that introduces bias to the hiring process. There needs to be a systematic, rigorous, informed process in place, with clearly defined goals. And what we’ve found is that few organizations have this sort of guidance in place.”