Social Media Background Checks are Real...and Prospective Employers are Looking - Meet Bianca Lager

Working closely with Fortune 500 companies and non-profits alike to create safe and discrimination-free workplaces, Bianca Lager is the President of Social Intelligence - a background screening company.  Social Intelligence produces a report that has been reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission, follows FCRA standards, and helps 1200 clients with their Hiring and Monitoring.  

Their mission says it all - Social Intelligence strives to create safer, more efficient, and less toxic workplaces by offering bias-free online background screening. We strive to help companies improve their bottom line by investing in a socially astute, harassment-free workplace where hostile behavior has been eliminated through an efficient and holistic hiring process.

FREE SAMPLE REPORT - Bianca is offering our podcast listeners a special offer - receive a free sample report along with lifetime discounted pricing offer. https://info.socialintel.com/podcast

I hope you enjoy this interesting and fascinating interview with Bianca. She can be reached via LinkedIn at - https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancacalhounlager/ or via Twitter at - https://twitter.com/BiancaLager

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Transcript

Chuck Simikian: 0:00

Social media background checks the future or happening right now? Are companies taking a deep dive into your social media to decide whether to hire you or not? legal, not legal. What do you think my guest today, Bill yonka lager is here to tell us all about it. Hey, Bianca, welcome to the HR and leadership spotlight Show. Hey, Chuck,

Bianca Lager: 0:38

thanks so much happy to be here.

Chuck Simikian: 0:39

Excellent. Excellent. I am excited to have you on today number one for for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's extremely relevant in what's going on in our country in our world today, in regards to the HR and the employment and the hiring space, and the political discussions and the social media stuff, I mean, it's just just, it's just out of control. And it's, it's crazy. It's very, very interesting. So in that way, it's relevant. And a number two, I've been an HR professional HR director recruiter for years and years and what you're doing in your company really hits home for me. So I guess for Well, actually, before we get started, and I'm just so excited, I'm going on and on. Tell me what you brought for us today. Our students, we have a little mug or Yeah, well, I'm

Bianca Lager: 1:33

on brand with my social intelligence mug here. But you know, we thought we'd also point out Old Al behind me. Albert Einstein is always watching over my shoulder, some cool street art I got in New Orleans on a on a conference trip once and, and I just like the interesting colors, and also the reminder to you know, aim for brilliance, if you can aim for intelligence, when you can love that. And

Chuck Simikian: 2:03

I can't really see what's on your whiteboard behind you. But it just looks like you are just to brainstorm what is going on there. Alright, so social intelligence, online background screenings, God tell us all about it.

Bianca Lager: 2:17

It's a lot. Hope you have a minute, it's a lot. And, you know,

Chuck Simikian: 2:23

I,

Bianca Lager: 2:23

I think To start off, I think most people might have a spike of anxiety when you're thinking about it or might think, you know, have an opinion. And, you know, what our company does is social media screening for employment purposes. So what we're trying to provide as a solution for employers and candidates alike, because at the end of the day, this company was founded on the belief that your boss shouldn't be looking at your Facebook page, they shouldn't be digging through your pictures and, you know, creating their own narrative about who you are. If they do have concerns or want to kind of have more of an insight, there are certain business related reasons that they might want to do that. So we try to level the playing field for everyone and say, Well, you know, yes, you know, you have concerns, you know, and there's some obvious stuff that employers are concerned about violence, hate speech, you know, racism, intolerance, sexism, sexually explicit stuff, criminal, potentially criminal activity, like theft, drugs, things like that. Things that matters thing that could disrupt the workplace, things that do disrupt the workplace, that and one of the quotes that I use all the time that client told me at a trade show once is it happened in the workplace and ended up online or it happened online and ended up in the workplace. So now today, everywhere, especially now, more than ever, after, you know, during the pandemic, and work from home stuff, HR is really involved with how relationships are playing out online, or how things like bullying and hostility and harassment, how social media plays a part in that and they are having to confront these things. And so the willy nilly idea of Well, I'm just going to go do my own investigation. that's problematic because now your boss, your HR person, your, you know, colleagues, your your co workers are taking a look at all sorts of things that you may or may not want them to see. Even if you have a public profile, and you're pretty open about stuff, they're still kind of creating potential biases, you know, at best, it's none of their business and at worst, you know, it's gonna might create some bias or discrimination against you. So the idea really is that hey, employers, do you have valid reasons why you might want to be concerned about what's going on in someone's social media. Yes, let's define those, let's get a legal formalized process in order, outsource that. And make sure that the candidate has transparency into what's going on is aware of what's happening, and has methodology to dispute it to make sure that the information is correct. And that you have solid documentation that if you do need to make an employment decision that you can, it's actionable. You have a report here that you can either document you can take action on however you see fit. But that's formalized. It isn't just Well, I also had a recruiter Tell me once, yeah, I look at their Instagram and see if they take too many selfies or pictures of food. And then I don't you know, I don't move on. I don't know if that was a qualifier for the job description there. So. So that's it in a nutshell, but there's a lot of questions

Chuck Simikian: 5:58

around it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So how does like what does that report I'm just trying to envision so alright, so I'm a recruiter. Right? And I'm hiring and I may not Google, everybody, just because yeah, I'm hiring a lot. But I Oh, geez, bandwidth. You can, we're hiring a CFO, we're hiring the CFO, we're hiring a senior accountant, let's say, or we're hiring an HR manager. Okay. And I might think I know them and and I, and that sort of thing. But I What does your report show I? Does it show? Like, like you said, How many drinks they've had? Does it show? Like, what are you uncovering? And then what are you revealing to the employer? Like? What? Yes. What's that dynamic?

Bianca Lager: 6:46

Sure. Yeah. And that's really important part part of it all. So, you know, importantly, that process of how it all what are we looking at, you know, we've talked about this a lot business related behaviors is something we need to focus on. And I think for the most part, employers have the mindset, and certainly we have the mindset, you're not trying to, like, catch someone in a lie, you know, necessarily, or, or be like this is they're totally different online, you know, than they are than who they see. A lot of stuff is, you know, potentially again, disruptive workplace stuff that people may not even realize is offensive or, or things that could be against a code of conduct against a policy, or that they are very blatant about that stuff. So it depends, but that's really why you have to have a really solid set of behaviors and definitions that you're looking for. And it's complicated. Okay. You know, when when, when an employer says, I'm worried about hate speech, well, what is hate speech, who says the social intelligence supposed to be the hate speech, King and decide what is hate speech or not. And so we go through a rigorous process of understanding social media behavior, understanding language, and how people use it in different contexts with sarcasm, innuendos, slang words, all sorts of things, we also we returned to experts, right, and resources. And what they help us do is define these things really, really carefully. And the four main categories main buckets of information that most employers are worried about, is intolerance, which is sort of a very large buckets hate speech, sexism, racism, and things like that. Violence, potentially criminal activity, and sexually explicit material. And there's variances within those and certainly some customizations. But those are, you know, categorically things that employers are like, yep, no, that's, that's it, you can really slice those up in lots of different ways. But in the broad context, like that's, those are the main things. And so what we do, again, is work really carefully to define what that means, you know, it won't have a criminal activity, what kind of criminal activity and against whose laws the US which state and you know, things like that. hate speech, we have something called the social intelligence intolerance database, we've called it and we, you know, turn to credible sources to help us define hate slurs, hate symbols, hate groups, different kinds of things that are involved in terrorist activity, like the FBI, like the NAACP, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, places that have have libraries and keep this information so that we can reference that and that's an important part of the process. So what the report does and to answer your question specifically, is take all of that intelligence, the social intelligence part of it and name it But that is literally what we do is is, you know, trying to interpret behavior in an intelligent way. And give employers very specific, we found this on Facebook, it happened in 2019. It was an original post by this person, they wrote it themselves. It was intolerant for this reason. This is the the reference point, the reads the source that we point to, to say why it's scattegories doesn't tolerant. And here's a screenshot of what that exact comment was. But what we are removing from the report is any protected class information that about the candidate. So for example, a candidate says, I belong to such and such church, and I just love the church, but I also I hate these types of people, or I use the N word and the same sentence or something, you know, extreme, more not extreme. What we're doing is is avoiding the employer from being exposed to the information about what church they go to, because that's not the relevant part of the poll. Right, right. And so the it isn't, it also was potentially like, Hey, you didn't fire me, because I use the word you fired me. Because we're church, I go to kind of a thing. So the idea is to really focus on the actionable and the business related content. And it's like a criminal report. So that if there's a crime, because because there's so a piece of negative flagged content, we call it flagged content that we find we alert the employer and let them know and show them give as much detail as possible. And if there's not, you get a report that says, hey, you know, we found their LinkedIn, and we found a Facebook friend or Twitter, nothing, nothing crazy over here, you know, all as well, essentially. And that's that. So most of the time, that's what comes back. Some folks, I mean, most of the time, that just like criminal reports, you know, there's no history of that. So when there is we try to be as detailed and defined as possible, and concise so that they're also not getting a command F of the F word 500,000 times that that is fairly innocuous to the job, too. So it's the product design and the concepts of how we have to report information. So do we really think deeply about really closely? I mean, I guess that's why Old Owl is over here for inspiration.

Chuck Simikian: 12:30

Yeah, I'm blown away. So what you're telling me, not a bunch of kids sitting in their parents basement, searching the internet, and coming up with all kinds of stuff? Not quite. Yeah, we've, we've, we've

Bianca Lager: 12:45

no, it's it's it's a lot more work than that. And in your own basement. Now, a lot more lawyers are involved.

Chuck Simikian: 12:53

I bet. And one thing I saw just as I did a little bit of research, and I want to pivot on some other, some other contemporary things happening in the news. One thing you though, is you're aligned with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Bianca Lager: 13:08

Yeah, we're consumer consumer reporting agency. So it's what happened is this company is founded in 2010, and 2011. The Federal Trade Commission, who was primarily tasked with consumer privacy situations at the time, caught wind of it. That's a whole story about how they caught wind of it. But anyway,

Chuck Simikian: 13:30

folks, I got

Bianca Lager: 13:31

ratted out but anyway, I'm fairly so to say, hey, what are these guys doing? You know, Is this fair? Is this right? Is this legal? What should we do here? And so the commission did an audit had had professionals come out, came to our offices, monitored and watched how we did things, took a review of the product design, the sales, everything. That is disclosure and authorization process that we have been, it had been advised to set up. And they came out and you if you Google, social Intel, FTC, you'll find their opinion letter came out and said, Yeah, okay, you know, your, what you're producing is a consumer report, your consumer reporting agency, so far, you're living up to the FCRA, we reserve the right to check back on you later. And so that's about as best as you can get. But it was a really important and pivotal really, you know, everybody who's come to market since has used that and leveraged that situation. That was obviously not very fun for us. But but the outcome really made it clear about what the rules were. And so just like a criminal report, and we partner with those kind of traditional background screening companies, so that what this is, is that it is a part of one of those packages generally and so it makes it really clear and that's that's where we are that's our lane that's in terms of you know, as you your extensive experience. knows there's a process for this as a timing thing, there's rules when you can do background checks and when you can't, what you need signed and all this kind of stuff, right? And so it fits right into that process. And so, you know, without just saying, oh, what's FCRA? compliant? I mean, there's a lot of very specific things that we have to live up to maximum possible identity is one, two, you know, making sure we get the right john smith in Los Angeles. Absolutely. So all those kinds of things have to live up to. And then importantly, like I mentioned, like criminal reports, or like any other background check, you get in an employment purpose setting, you have the right to dispute it, and you have the right to say, wait a minute, you know, I think you got that wrong.

Chuck Simikian: 15:39

So it follows the same thing pre adverse action letter? Yes. Wow. Okay. And so I guess the thing that sparked me just want to ask you is, do people even know they're getting their social media background check? Or do they sign a waiver? Like, if I was going to do the standard criminal background check, you know, on someone, I, they, the background check. Companies always want that, that waiver signed, and we put it in the application? Like, we cover ourselves they cover? Yep. Do people know they're getting their social media background checked?

Bianca Lager: 16:10

If they're reading the documents, they know, um, you know, not only that, but but when you are signing your relevant background check information, I think it's important for folks to know that this could be a part of it. And that when they're saying, Hey, we're gonna do all relevant some of the language, it depends on the client and the person, the really their lawyer to use what language they feel is necessary. So sometimes the relative the language is vague is to say, relevant background checks, right or necessary, or some language like that. So, you know, I think it's important for folks to know that this is a possibility. Generally speaking, you can also ask the HR people, what is included as well, so that, you know, specifically, I think, though, that, for the most part, do the effort is to inform people really carefully? Do folks read every line of that stuff? You know, you kind of click through it ready to put your information in and move on? I would say, though, and my experiences said that, if you are somebody who is like, Oh, my gosh, I need to think about this, I need to know, you'll probably be all right. You know, I if you're somebody who takes care, to show respect, or have respect for yourself, or have that even insight to know that, you know, oh, my goodness, you know, maybe I need to consider this, if you're thoughtful in that way. I would, I'm gonna bet that the odds are in your favor that your social media public profiles are not going to come back with with anything too, too extreme or too messy for you. So the first the number one thing to do, you know, check your own accounts, take a look, take a look at the stuff that you have. And I always say be kind.

Chuck Simikian: 18:08

I gotta tell you, it's I think it's brilliant. I and I think it's, you know, you've already asked the question, why can't you do your own reports? I think it's great to strip out the and what I heard, just from the text is you strip out the EEOC protected classes

Bianca Lager: 18:24

by federal and state, so not sure. But so okay. But But yeah, state level as well.

Chuck Simikian: 18:29

Sure. So. So that's, that's HR speak, folks. Yes. So, so let's just pivot real quickly. And I want to tell you a story. I love stories. Oh, yeah. So here's the story and HR story today. So I had someone that I know, calls me today. And he tells me, and this is in regards to free speech, social media, what are your rights, and every once and I teach class, so I'm a, you know, HR consultant, like a soldier and I teach a lot of employment law classes, HR law classes, and, you know, every time someone says, Well, can I fire someone for what they wrote on Facebook or something like that? And, you know, my answer is, well, probably, maybe, yes. But you know, it depends. You know, that's like the the answer I, I usually give them but I had a, someone call me today and he says to me, I lost my job. I said, Really? He said, Yeah, he said, last week, they called me in HR. And they said, we've told you once before, no talking politics, and berating people, making them feel badly about their political opinions or anything. And today's your last day. And he's shocked. He calls me says Chuck, no, you're an HR is I get this, you know, Hey, I know you're an HR Can I ask you a question? And I said, Short and he says, you know, I'm thinking I'm gonna sue them. He goes, they're offering him severance and all this stuff to sign off. Okay? Pretty good severance. But I said he's tells me the story. So I'm gonna sue them. He says, I think I could get him for half a million dollars. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, dude. I said, number one, you're in Florida. So it's, it's an employment at will state number two, right? Take the severance. But what do you think about that Tim? saying, I'm gonna sue, I got free speech. I have a right to free speech, my my rights are being violated.

Bianca Lager: 20:40

You certainly have a right to free speech and you are not going to jail for that. But you can't work here is the answer from for most employers. So you know, yeah. I mean, clearly, there's a direct tie in. And that's the thought when he talked about social media, I could say whatever, I want social media. Okay, well, if you're saying, I'm going to kill you on social media, there's consequences to that. Much like there's consequences of if you actually committed a crime outside of your work. It could, depending on what the crime was, be relevant to your job. And so free freedom of speech is a tool for the government and potential, you know, there's various legal cases. And I'm certainly no free speak judge expert in the broader sense. But in terms of, you know, what it means for the workplace? Well, workplaces are certainly legally able to have Code of Conduct policies, and policies that support productive workplaces that are there to ensure that there is no hostility, harassment, bullying, that that things are productive, and, you know, we're trying to create environments where people stay on the ball and respectful environments, I think, is most of the, the intention behind a lot of that. And most of the time, they're, they're very obvious, like, so much like the stuff that you know, we flag for, it's like, you know, don't harass people don't, you know, do you think then, so, when people's behavior in the workplace does start to cross the line into disruptive and offensive to folks, and it's starting to create disruptions at work, regardless of the content of the conversation? That's a problem for an employer. Right. And so, that is the situation as well, for social media. And, you know, you notice the categories of what I talked about what people care about, politics isn't one of them. Um, now, you know, whether an organization has a right to not hire and fire you, because of your political affiliation is one particular thing. But the the disruption of what that that conversation is, and of course, like you, it depends, it depends on what you're saying, it depends on how you're saying it, it depends on what the behavior is, and what the consequences. So that's why it's really important to have the context of when you're talking about social media screening, again, you know, this isn't just a key word, if he likes this particular candidate, or this that we want to know, and we're not going to hire him. That's the problem with doing it yourself. You have your own political leanings, right? And so you look at somebody here, like, oh, he voted for him, you know, like, No thanks. But in an employment setting, you know, it's, it's beyond that it's much more specific as to workplace related behavior and how that plays out. And so in social media screening to, you know, we advise and we help our clients, make sure that their code of conduct policies reflect social media policy or create a social media policy, we have a lot of templates and stuff and all sorts of things that we do to help our clients if they don't have that kind of worked out. But generally speaking, it's it's turning that basic code of conduct into this also matters for your public social media profiles, too. Because guess what, it's it's happening in the workplace. And also companies are getting heat for this stuff. So if you're spouting off on social media about not liking certain groups of people or wanting to do harm to others, well, it's a problem for your company. And it is it creates damage again, internally externally. So these things and much like your friend and you know, I have sympathy but it sounds like the gut. He was warned. It's like, hey, dial it down. You are, that is not, you know, workplace related conversations or appropriate. So Please, you know, maybe go post in a private chat group somewhere where that belongs and not. And it's interesting, actually, it's a really good example. There's somebody else said to me once, you know, we consider the social media problematic stuff, just like somebody standing up in their cubicle and saying it out loud. It's, it's now at the point where that it's the same level of concern for us. So we have to be careful about, you know, how that stuff is managed. And policy policy policy, I always say documentation, consistency and policy, you have to be consistent. So

Chuck Simikian: 25:36

it's, it's,

Bianca Lager: 25:37

it's not fun for HR to, to do.

Chuck Simikian: 25:41

But I what I heard you saying and I know we're getting close to our time, but one of the things I heard you say I liked is it sounds like you actually, and you have over 1000 clients, I believe, right? Oh, yeah. So you have a large number of clients, big name clients, ladies and gentlemen, big name clients. Yeah. And it's not like someone calls and said, hey, can do a social media profile on this? Or you're like, Sure, let's move forward. Sounds like you actually say, Well, tell me about the job. Tell me about your code of conduct. Tell me about the markers that you are, you know, that are really relevant to you, your job and your company. So it sounds like it's a customized thing. In a way, you know, we

Bianca Lager: 26:23

try to make it not a heavy lift for our clients, right? So so what we bring to the table is a lot of experience, and kind of like this is how other people do it. Right? And we say, look, here's the basic setup. Here's how other people do it. Here's what we know. And yeah, you know, what's your operational structure? Like, you know, what, where do you need support, and customers come to us in a variety of situations. A common one is, we have a major problem, there's a fire. And we have to do something about it now. So we'll help them scramble and get that social media policy and and operationally, make sure the disclosures and everything are all set, because the CEOs like do this yesterday. Right. So that happens. And then there are some clients who are very thoughtful, want to be proactive, already are ahead of the game in some ways, and they just haven't kind of closed the loop here. So. So yeah, so what we tried to do is provide best practice advice and provide templates adjudication supports another part of it, what do I do when I actually have the report? How bad is this? Do I need to fire every single person once I get it? And so, you know, we were you know, like, yeah, we have your back. We have training programs and benchmarking reports and things that we can help you do that. And so clients can be in a variety of settings. And I would say for the most part, people are still, it's still new to them. So most of our clients are adopting these for the first time. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of an adjustment and just how to work it out. But, again, I mean, I think I know a lot of clients appreciate just that. Oh, okay. This is this is the way you do it. This is how you formalize it, like, here's the process and we can make this work. We're very minded and and really unrivaled in terms of how we approach that client relationship. Because at the end of the day, the outcomes of their What matters is the outcomes in their workplace. Right. So is this going to make an impact? How does this make an impact? does it support your diversity and inclusion initiatives? Is this part of an effort to support other other types of initiatives that might be of importance or a priority right down? So we try to be really mindful and careful about exactly why somebody is doing it and operationally support them in the best way we can. Yeah.

Chuck Simikian: 28:57

Wow. I mean, there's just so much so I gotta ask you one last thing. Is there anything that I missed any message you want to get out to the people listening today, anything about you, about your company, anything about the whole social screening aspect? Overall?

Bianca Lager: 29:18

I think one thing that people think about is that there's a robot or some sort of again, like fancy Command F happening and to some degree, yes, I mean, there's obviously artificial intelligence machine learning, again that studying of the behavior study know the behavior to know we need to zero in on this content quick. Right. But we do employ people to review that no, their investigators are analyzing this stuff to make sure Alexa got it right. And so I think there's a technology conversation that's like a whole other podcast to to consider siddur but I think that when you are thinking about this stuff that, you know, one of the the right approaches, and certainly our approach is to make sure it's accurate, right. And so if you're concerned about the accuracy or sort of things being taken out of context, that's fair. And you certainly have the right to look at your own report, as a candidate as an employer. If you're looking for a vendor, ask those questions about, you know, how they, how they weed through that stuff, and how they work with different platforms in a compliant way, because that matters, too. But, you know, we'll just leave that little breadcrumb there. And certainly feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about it. That's excellent.

Chuck Simikian: 30:44

And I'm gonna have some contact information in the show notes below. And I understand you have a special offer for our listeners. We do.

Bianca Lager: 30:52

Yes. So for podcast listeners, we went ahead and just said, You know what, let's give them discounted pricing for life. Well set up continual pricing. We think that the Hey, try it for a certain standpoint is not as impactful, as you know, here is your lowest possible cost. And that's going to make it operationally as easy for you as possible. So if you just go to social Intel comm backslash podcast, and we'll include the link, hopefully, over to you, then just let us know that you heard us on the podcast and, and we'll hook you

Chuck Simikian: 31:28

up. Yeah, the HR and leadership spotlight show, podcast and videocast. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, Bianca lager, thank you for being on the show. social intelligence online background screening. Just a really cool and fascinating field. Just a very cool and fascinating person. You yourself. Thank

Bianca Lager: 31:51

you. So

Chuck Simikian: 31:52

I'm excited to have you and have a great day. Thanks for listening, folks.