Social Media Check
A fully automated, GDPR compliant social media background check of your shortlisted candidates’ online profiles.
Quick screening and comprehensive reporting
Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance recommends that “schools and colleges should consider carrying out an online search as part of their due diligence on the shortlisted candidates” to identify any red flags that may be available in the public domain. It’s quick and easy with Social Media Check.
Trusted by the education sector
Fully consensual, 100% reliable and far quicker than a manual search
Consensual social media background checks are performed against seven key categories to generate a comprehensive report of your applicant’s social media history. Harmful content is flagged within minutes to discuss at interview stage, safeguarding your pupils from risk and your school or trust from a damaged reputation.
It really is as easy as 1, 2, 3…
1. Online form and consent
Distribute a consent check to your shortlisted candidates to obtain their agreement and collect the details of their relevant social media accounts.
2. Quick report generation
A report is then delivered to your inbox within 30 minutes (often much quicker) detailing any potentially harmful content against seven key categories.
3. Decide the appropriate course of action
Discuss any red flags at interview stage – allow your shortlisted candidates to explain the situation and allow them to source and delete the post(s) in question, or terminate the recruitment process with them.
Why choose Social Media Check?
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Check your applicant’s social media history across six major platforms
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Identify risks to inform the best course of action for your school or trust
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Eliminate the unconscious bias that’s often applied during manual searches
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Evidence your background checks with a central portal for historical reports
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Protect your school or trust’s reputation and avoid costly employment law challenges
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Effectively safeguard your pupils from risk while freeing up staff time
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions ordered by popularity. Remember that if the visitor has not committed to the call to action, they may still have questions (doubts) that can be answered.
The applicant receives an email asking them to consent to a social media background check being conducted. The email details the company requesting the report so that this individual is aware of why this report has been requested and by whom.
The individual then must consent to share their social media account credentials with Social Media Check to grant access to each individual social media account.
Only when these consents for each platform have been received can a social media check report be conducted. If an individual doesn’t consent, the report cannot be conducted.
The Social Media Check platform distributes the report and the certificate to the person who requested it. The individual whose accounts have been checked can receive a copy of the report, but this would have to be done by the requestor manually.
The 6 main social media platforms that are checked include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Medium and Tumblr.
Each social media platform is checked against the seven key classifiers – Extremist Groups, Swearing and Profanity, Negative Statement, Hate Speech, Violent Images, Potential Nudity, Toxic language. Specific keywords relevant to the educational establishment can be added if required.
The final report shows findings against each of these classifiers.
Social Media Check will only check the channels that have been consented to by the individual.
The content that the system then analyses includes posts, tweets, retweets, titles, text within posts and images within posts.
Content that is not analysed include private messages, liked posts, comments made by user on other posts (except Twitter), personal profile information and the accounts the user is following.
Yes, the Social Media Check solution (including hosting services and software) complies with the most stringent data security legislation (ISO27001) to ensure that your data is safe. All data that is submitted, processed, controlled and reported is encrypted as standard and we do not use your data for anything except the report.
Reports that are agreed to be stored on UK-based data centres are kept for 90 days before being archived in an encrypted format. This storage option is available for business customers only.
Still have questions?
We’d be happy to discuss them with you.
Get in touch with our team below.
“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.”
Gail Murphy, Operations Manager,
Lumen Learning Trust
