BY STUDYLIE - HR Profiling

But we know that in terms of the social networking site page the author of the changes made to an account is the person who being profiled. There are no random elements, there will always be that part of the personality that the person himself wanted to show, so you can work with social networking sites. Here we do not work with the accounts of public people whose accounts are managed by other people, for example, PR experts.

Let us look at some examples.

For instance, in the account a candidate posts a large number of photos in different contexts, with different people, while traveling, doing some extreme sports and everywhere he is smiling. This may indicate a kaleidoscopic nature of events in life, an «opportunity» world picture where the person is ready for a new experience, impressions and is open to the unknown.

This part of his profile will manifest itself not only on vacations, but also at work. This candidate should not be given tasks with strict operational functionality that must be performed «from start to finish» in fixed deadlines. Routine, repeated day after day, is also not his cup of tea. Such an employee will get bored and start creating chaos in the work of other employees. Depending on the mood he will try to bring changes to his work. He will disregard the deadline. So it is better to put such candidates in creative positions, for example, sales, where communication and change of contexts are expected: different people, different places, different conditions.

We came to this conclusion, assuming that besides differences, there are also similarities between forensic profiling and social networking profiling. In the first case profilers use the principle of behavioral consistency. The main essence of the theory of behavioral consistency is that offenders behave relatively equally from crime to crime, even if the focus of crimes is different. And the individual characteristics revealed at the crime scene are also manifested in personal everyday life. The same principle is obligatory in our case.

Let us take another example: a person puts out photoes with repetitive contexts, regularly maintains his page, posts information abouthis his interests with a certain sequence. There is a tendency to procedural actions, planning and desire for stability. The tasks that such people perform well are related to proven algorithms and mandatory operations.

If a person puts out a large amount of information about himself, but only from the point of view of the professional sphere, then most likely, the page has been specially created for this purpose. It is difficult to evaluate in this case, although a definite conclusion can still be made. It can be seen that a person is professionally targeted, clearly differentiates contexts and wants to demonstrate only this very part of his personality. Otherwise, such a profile says nothing.

There are psychological studies that say that the avatar is also «reporting» something about a person. For example, a person put a baby photo as his avatar. Behind this might stand infantilism or the desire to return to the time when you were cared for. In other words, a person has a difficult stressful period in life, he needs support and care. If parents post a photo of their child on an avatar, this may indicate an obsession with their child. Or given context of career it may speak about feeling of non-fulfillment. There is an opinion that avatars with photos of a couple (if not married) point to an attempt to prove that «they love me after all» or that a person is kind of losing himself in a partner.

And what if a person has no account in social networking sites? Of course, the reasons are few. For example, a person is in public services or so, where people are forbidden to create accounts under there own name (FSB, etc.). But it is possible that this is how suspicious, secretive, inquisitive, unsociable, distrustful, introverted and cautious nature is expressed. It is these traits cause people to reluctantly show off their lives, which is opposite from the motives of people who put out 2000 photos with their image. And of course profiles of these people are very different. We use this tool not only in the case of staff recruitment, but also when analyzing information about potential partners or people we need. And often there are situations when a person simply hides away because of debts and obligations, therefore he does not maintain any page or deletes all accounts.

Not so long ago at the personnel profiling training, we analyzed a profile of one of the participants with the consent of him. Avatars had not a single photo with his image. It turned out that he was the owner of a collection agency, and for security reasons he had to hide his external data. That is, professional activity assumed possibility threats against him and other troubles, if people knew what he looked like. In this case, the absence of an account is a necessary measure for security purposes.

Another reason is that people from the IT sphere are well aware of the «big brother» who is watching us, and realize that the more information you post, the more chances that someone collects it and uses for somebody’s purposes. Or the person simply does not have time to maintain the page. For example, entrepreneurs are too busy for this. If social networking sites are used to promote business, then there is no room for communication on personal issues, the same applies to personal information.

Analyzing photos, keep in mind that people will put out those photos that they consider to be their reflection. In one of the training seminars a participant asked to analyze the information about her former employee, who was fired for certain violations. There were few photos and contexts, and about 5—6 photographs contained pictures of this girl drinking alcohol, in one of the photographs she was dressed in quite a vulgar manner. On her «wall» hung a fixed message with free views of a vulgar character. Compiling a social networking sites profile, we take into account that there are no random photos there, a person deliberately demonstrates something and this information is significant. So it turned out that the employee had difficulties with alcohol and the course of her behavior. Juicy pages and groups that she was part of partially confirmed the guess. So sometimes, it is enough to look at the site and make the right decision whether it is worth hiring this person or not.

While looking through the social networking sites, besides the groups content, pay attention to the general trend of interests of these groups or the absence of the groups. For example, if there are 4—5 groups of the same or similar subjects, that may speak about certain interest. Thanks to the page, one can compare what a person writes about himself in the resume and what content he puts on the page. For example, we read in the resume: «I am a professional, responsible, purposeful, reliable», and in the photo we see a person who is always hanging out with his friends in clubs, at parties, with a bottle in his hand. He will probably fit a sales manager position if not to consider the risk factor for alcohol. But in terms of the position of the manager it might give pause for thought.

By the way, consider reading the comments and answers to them – there is also a lot of information useful for analysis.

It is also worth noting that the candidate may have several pages in different social networking sites. The information in them sometimes varies, and putting everything together, we can make a more complete profile.

Summarizing aforementioned, we shall highlight that social networking sites give lots of information about a person, but not all of it. People in social networking sites often present the desired image. Your task is to analyze the maximum of what it may tell, because there are clues to the question: whether to invite a person for an interview or immediately refuse his application.