Checking a job applicant’s digital footprint

Checking a job applicant’s online footprint is an increasingly common practice, and its impact can be severe. In its guidance, Facing up to Facebook, the TUC warns employers against using social media to screen candidates. It creates a high risk of unlawful discrimination (see Chapter 7), unlawful trade union-related victimisation or blacklisting (see Chapter 5), by revealing irrelevant information about ethnicity, sexuality, trade union links, family circumstances or other personal matters relating to the applicant, and wholly undermines the application process. It also unfairly distorts the selection pool in favour of candidates with a carefully curated social media profile or an affinity for digital media, even when this is not relevant to the role.

If a person’s social media profile is publicly accessible, their human right to privacy is probably unlikely to be infringed by a prospective employer who searches it without consent. Nevertheless, employers who do this risk infringing data protection rights (see Chapter 15).