More Companies Looking At Social Media Histories Before Hiring People

More companies are looking carefully at job candidates’ social media histories for racist or other problematic comments. A survey of hiring managers and human-resources executives by jobs website CareerBuilder last year found that 70% of them screen job candidates’ social-media histories, up from 60% the year before. Additionally, one-third said they’d found discriminatory comments that caused them not to hire someone. To avoid this, employment lawyer Kate Bischoff recommends that job seekers delete comments that could be a problem. However, things can often be found online even after they’ve been deleted, so if that’s a possibility for some job seekers, it might be better to be upfront about what they’ve done in the past on social media.