When you hire new people, you are trusting them with a piece of your business. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring a cleaner or a receptionist, or even if you are hiring your new VP of Finance. You need to think about how you vet your hire. Many different business leaders choose to go down a little avenue called Google when they are hiring someone, but is this really the avenue which you want to go down, too?
Vetting is one of the most serious parts of the hiring process. You have to make sure that you’re not wasting your time and money on a new person who is not going to fit your business. The thing is, you can choose drug testing and any number of ways to vet people, but you need to think twice about choosing to Google. Why? Well, for a range of reasons and we have put them together for you below to help you to understand why it’s a bad idea.
- You Could Get The Wrong Person
You could search the name of the person you interviewed and find fifty thousand different people of the same name. Are you really going to waste time searching through each face on profile pictures? What about if you find someone who has been in prison with the same name? You’re automatically going to assume it’s the person you interviewed, and then you’ll be in trouble because you will lose a great hire because of the wrong identity.
- Some Information Is Classified
If your interviewee didn’t tell you they were pregnant or what their real age is, you would hire them on merit. But if you went onto Instagram and found out that they were older, or pregnant, or a Jehovah’s Witness, any number of things could make you change your mind about them. Of course, it shouldn’t come down to that as it’s illegal for a start, but the information that they choose not to share about their personal lives shouldn’t impact their job, and yet for some employers it will.
- It’s Icky
Okay, this doesn’t sound like a professional reason not to do it, but spying on someone? It’s got the ick factor. You can’t prejudge someone based on their social media content as you don’t know them yet. People often have a professional personality and a completely different one around their friends and family, and you will be judging harshly based on the wrong things!
- It’s Not The Right Way To Assess Their “Fit”
You’re hiring people for your business, and your impression of them in the interview should be enough to convince you either way if they are good for the company or not. Googling won’t help you here, and you need to be proactive. If you want to know things, ask them and don’t be lazy by Googling.
The bottom line is that there are many ways to vet your candidates and Googling is just not the way to go for a firm assessment of their ability!