Conducting Pre-Employment Background Checks Through Social Networking Sites: The New Role of HR Professionals

The paper aims at identifying the role of social networking information on pre-employment background check practices with the help of existing literature. As the HR professionals are central in hiring process, they need to be aware of the practices and policies regarding this issue. Using social media information in background checking process is a fairly new practice and there is not enough evidence on what to do and how to do. This paper is expected to fill that gap to some extent. At the end of the paper, some policy recommendations have been provided for HR professionals involved with pre-employment background checking process which will help the recruiters or HR professionals to avoid any unexpected consequences.