As a condition of providing our services, clients are required to obtain consent from candidates or provide notice to them, in accordance with applicable Canadian Privacy Laws, before a social media check is performed on such persons.  To ease this process for our clients, we provide a standard notice or consent form, as applicable, that can be used for this purpose.

Also, since Hire Performance filters the information provided to clients, using our services reduces the chance that clients will collect information about third parties who have not provided consent to a social media check (e.g., information about the candidate’s social media “friends”, “followers” and other contacts).

Hire Performance's social media background screening service involves scanning of information that is accessible to the public on, for example, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and the Internet in general.  Hire Performance does not use any unfair, misleading or unlawful means to obtain information about individuals.  Hire Performance will never attempt to circumvent passwords and does not obtain information by “friending” the candidate or connecting with their social media contacts.

One of the concerns that privacy regulators in Canada have expressed about social media checks that information posted online can be inaccurate. For example, the search results can include information about persons with the same or a similar name to the relevant individual, as well as mislabeled and out-of-date information.

Hire Performance has invested significant time and resources into developing human-supervised algorithms that find a person's set of public social media profiles with pinpoint accuracy. In addition, Hire Performance has a Quality Control team that checks the accuracy of screening results before they are provided to our clients. Therefore, using Hire Performance’s services reduces the risk that social media background screening will result in collection of information about the wrong person, as compared to a manual social media check. 

Another concern expressed by privacy regulators in Canada is that social media searches can result in collection of irrelevant information and/or too much information.

Clients that use Hire Performance’s services define the content that is relevant to their hiring decisions. The results of the social media search that are returned to our clients only include content that is relevant to the pre-selected criteria.  This means that clients only receive information that is relevant to their workplaces and the positions for which they are hiring. 

Therefore, using Hire Performance’s services reduces the risk that social medial background screening will result in collection of more information than is reasonable and appropriate in the circumstances.

A significant risk related to manual social media background screening is that it can reveal information about candidates that relates to protected characteristics under applicable human rights legislation, including race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, nationality, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, criminal convictions, social condition, source of income, political beliefs, marital status, family status and mental or physical disability.  For example, such searches could reveal pictures of pregnant individuals or affiliations with religious or ethnic groups. Hire Performance has reduced this risk by designing our software to eliminate information about such protected characteristics. In fact, by pointing hiring managers to content that is relevant to job performance, our services promote hiring decisions that are based upon data, not opinions, which reduces the potential that biases (whether intentional or unintentional) will influence decision-making.