What takes years to earn but seconds to destroy?
Whether we like it or not, the world we live in is increasingly digital, driven by continued innovation in technology. It impacts just about everything we do and has transformed the way we engage both in business and socially.
Reputations can be made and lost by your online presence. Building a good reputation can take years, maintaining it requires continuous effort but losing it can take just a few seconds.
Clearly, what is posted online and specifically on social media defines how you are perceived and can have a real impact on your brand – both business and personal. The internet has the power to define your reputation, what you say and how you say it often shapes how you are judged. Over time, you’ve accumulated a digital footprint which is there for everyone to see. What’s more, the internet never forgets. Moreover, it has a nasty habit of remembering something embarrassing that you’ve completely forgotten about and isn’t representative of your values today.
Of course, an individual’s reputation can be the difference between getting hired or gaining a promotion whilst just one damaging incident coming to light can have a profound effect on an organisation, resulting in at best embarrassment, and at worse, loss of business or trust. Repairing reputations can be a costly and time-consuming business.
Often, these scenarios occur in employment situations whether that’s in the hiring process or during employment. Brand reputation management is equally important for both a business and an individual. Nobody wants to see damaging headlines in the media.
Increasingly, organisations are looking at social media as part of the vetting process but unless this is carried out in a compliant and robust manner, a manual search without the consent of the individual can be fraught with dangers. However, with Social Media Check (SMC), this can be carried out in a collaborative way that ensures, where appropriate, reputation can be protected on all sides.
SMC is a fully automated solution that can check both public and private posts against a number of risk categories, returning an auditable report within the hour. It searches all posts across the major social media platforms using machine learning and algorithms, eliminating the need for manual searching or the possibility of unconscious bias. Social media checks can only be made with the consent of an individual, making it GDPR compliant.
How SMC has helped the education market
With multiple schools in our Trust, we needed a quick, cost-effective and compliant procedure to conduct on-line checks of candidates. Social Media Check’s automated solution has been very effective. It is quicker and more comprehensive than a manual check, with results often delivered in under an hour.
With the changes to the KCSIE guidelines, we needed an efficient, cost effective and compliant way to conduct online checks. Manually checking is time consuming and can find characteristics irrelevant to a hire. Social Media Check’s automated solution reduces the risk of subjectivity and unconscious bias and its ease of use and comprehensive reporting has enabled us to realise operational efficiencies in our recruitment process.