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. The TUC warns in guidance, Facing up to Facebook, that employers should not use social media to screen candidates. It creates a high risk of unlawful discrimination (see Chapter 7), or unlawful trade union-related victimisation or blacklisting (see Chapter 5). Irrelevant information about ethnicity, sexuality, trade union links or other personal matters can easily be revealed online, wholly undermining the application process. It also unfairly distorts the selection pool in relation to those with a strong public profile or affinity for digital media, even when not relevant to the role. 





If your social media profile is publicly accessible, your human right to privacy is unlikely to be infringed by a prospective employer who searches it without your consent. Nevertheless, data protection laws may be broken. According to the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy set up in connection with the GDPR, “the vetting of job applicants’ social media profiles in order to consider their suitability for the role in question will be unlawful unless the information is relevant to the role in question and applicants have clearly been warned that their accounts will be reviewed”. The committee’s views are not legally binding, but they are influential.