Can a candidate's online presence reveal a lot about their authenticity, values, and potential red flags? In person at the HR Tech conference we get the down-low on social media background screening from FAMA CEO Ben Mones.
- Big year so far with FAMA - they are the leading platform for screening for workplace misconduct.
- FAMA acquires Social Intelligence, better friends than foes.
- The Hunova partnership offers a comprehensive talent intelligence, it feels like the first time you downloaded Waze - life just got easier.
- The most common type of workplace issue is harassment.
- Business impact of hiring bad apples will spoil the whole barrel.
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelley. I'm Serge.
[00:00:09] And I'm Shelley. And we talk all things recruitment starting right now.
[00:00:17] Bonjour and welcome to the Recruitment Flex. We're recording from the Plum Boot at HR Tech the background of how a transaction like this happens. Totally. The screening industry is a small one, right? So Social Intel had actually started their company about five years prior to Fama. They laid a lot of the groundwork, if you will, for normalizing social media screening. I would say they also worked with the government, the FTC specifically, on organizing the right legal frameworks, folding it under the FCRA,
[00:01:41] and actually got the memorandum from
[00:01:43] the FTC that made
[00:01:45] social media screening legal and pre-employment screening.
[00:01:47] So they were trailblaz give us a scoop? Yeah, sure. Part of my personal fascination with Fava and I think a lot of what our team has seen since the beginning are investors too is that there is just an immense power in social media data and who we are online. Being level scope and depth of insight that is available, I think we
[00:03:01] often gloss over the fact that companies like Meta, text alone, meaning that we can extract from a person's publicly and completely rethink the way that you source and assess talent. It's a pretty big step for us, honestly. It's a pretty major move. That sounds huge. Even as I'm listening to you, Ben, I'm honestly, my mind is just like going a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out how could you possibly do that
[00:05:41] without violating somebody's privacy.
[00:05:43] If you're evaluating everything that they have ever written.
[00:06:44] and professional comp insights from written text alone. Well, we're going to run this on search.
[00:06:45] Okay.
[00:06:46] Yeah, we're going to try.
[00:06:47] You've got much more presence online because I don't.
[00:06:50] I really don't like other than-
[00:06:52] Does it track only fans or does it not in there?
[00:06:55] Only written right.
[00:06:56] That's just for you.
[00:06:57] From this conversation we're having right now,
[00:07:01] if it was transcribed in writing,
[00:07:03] we could do the same thing.
[00:07:04] That's wild. Oh my gosh. and intolerance. Let's dig in a little bit deeper how social background screening can help us avoid these issues. And do you have any cases that these types of situations have been measured and have gone down leveraging FAMA on the onset? Sure. A lot of the ROI with FAMA has historically been the accident that never happened,
[00:08:21] the harassment that never occurred in a lot of ways
[00:08:24] with like a seatbelt or insurance policy.
[00:08:27] But this year alone, we stopped a workplace intolerant towards others. The perspective again with Faba is that who we are online is, in many ways, more indicative of who we are than almost anything else. Because it's that moment when the camera isn't on, when no one's looking, when you're just being you. And so it's that kind of codification or normalization of what I would just call
[00:09:40] the sorts of things that nobody wants in the workplace.
[00:09:42] So that's what we help companies do and
[00:09:44] the workplace misconduct about the multiplier effect. about a person's behavior. They seem to think at times this is just a cost of doing business. This just happens. It's out of our control. But the reality is that we have to connect who we're screening and who's coming in to how they will affect the folks that are already inside of the company. So it's a paradigm shift. And most people think about screening as like, all right, do it.
[00:11:00] And it's just I hire them or I don't.
[00:11:01] And then they're in.
[00:11:02] Then we throw them in the bucket and then they, whatever happens.
[00:11:04] But the reality is every person that comes into your organization evolves. That does not surprise me, and that's probably one of the hardest things, because you're not going to see it in an interview. No one's going to say they're racist, yeah. Nobody. And nobody's going to say that they can't keep their hands off other people. They're not. You're not going to find that out in an interview. And I know that this stuff is like, can be uncomfortable to talk about, right?
[00:12:21] I know that sometimes when you rake manure, it doesn't always smell great.
[00:12:25] That's the sort of world that I live is, is in these more regulated industries that you actually see a lot less risk, which is interesting because on one hand, it shows that these are companies that really care about that stuff and are developing talent pipelines from the very beginning,
[00:13:40] organizing their hiring teams, interview structure, etc.
[00:13:44] as a way to identify this Yeah, sure. I'm really active on LinkedIn, so I would just say, shoot me a follow or connect with me. Ben Monis is my name. I'm on ES. And Fama, check us out on our website, Fama.io. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben. Thanks, guys. Bye. Au revoir.