For years now, we’ve all been made aware of horror stories related to social media presence and work. A drunk photo, a Facebook status from 2013 – there are plenty of instances where people have been declined from roles that they were otherwise qualified for due to their presence on social media.
However, what’s slightly less clear is how these posts actually make their way onto the desks of hiring managers.
Here, we explore the relationship between social media screening and the Standard DBS check, showing that it’s a little more complicated than it might at first seem.
What shows up on DBS checks
To understand how social media-related content might appear in a standard DBS check, we first need to understand what actually shows up on DBS checks.
Basic Check
The Basic check is the least in-depth check, and only shows unspent criminal convictions, warnings and reprimands. As a result, only social media activity that had resulted in a conviction, warning, or reprimand would be shown up in these kinds of checks.
Standard Check
Standard checks processed by services like Personnel Checks show both spent and unspent criminal convictions, warnings and reprimands. As a result, they would only show up social media activity if it had resulted in the applicant receiving a conviction, warning or reprimand for their activities.
Enhanced Check
In addition to the information shown in a Standard check, Enhanced checks also include any information that the police hold on the applicant that they consider relevant to the role in question. If this included social media activity, then it’s possible that this could also be brought up.
When social media history may be relevant
As you can see, all DBS checks only show criminal activity or activity that is suspected to be criminal in nature. As a result, the only social media history that would be relevant would be that which was brought to the attention of the police, or resulted in a criminal conviction, warning or reprimand.
This is, of course, a possibility – especially in hate crimes, fraud, or due to threats or harassment. However, the DBS won’t actively go through your social media to find these, they would only come up if they had been relevant to a preexisting investigation.
Other kinds of social media screenings
Of course, it’s possible that employers will conduct other types of social media screenings on candidates. These kinds of screenings occupy somewhat of a legal grey area, but employers generally don’t have to inform candidates that they’re doing them.
Employers do have to pay close attention to how they store any data that they get from these searches, and can only base their decision on certain kinds of information, so as to avoid discriminatory behaviour.
Social media screening is a complex area, and some information related to social media can be uncovered in Standard checks. However, it wouldn’t be a surprise – a Standard check would only show social media-related activity if you had received a formal criminal conviction, warning or reprimand.
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