How to find trustworthy employees? Their online reputation, not their CV, is key.

It takes humans less than a tenth of a second to judge a person’s trustworthiness just by looking at their face. And yet, when assessing a potential candidate, first impressions may not be the most reliable predictor for how responsible and trustworthy a prospective candidate may be.

First impressions need not be in person.

In today’s hiring climate, most first impressions happen online. At least 70% of employers use social media to screen their prospective hires. Most of them rarely look beyond the first few links on the first results page.

But this setup does not work for all types of jobs and industries — especially those where people skills and client-facing responsibilities are crucial to the success of the business itself.

In the hospitality and tourism industries, for example, employees are the face of the hospitality businesses they work in. According to the Local Consumer Review Survey, 80% of consumers between 18–34 years old have written online reviews and 91% of the same age group trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

A run-in with an unprofessional host at a restaurant can ruin everyone’s night out. And more than ever those dissatisfied clients are making their grievances known in online reviews. Indeed, consumers are ten times more likely to share a negative experience and with many more people than when receiving good service.

According to Andrew Thomas of inc it takes 40 good reviews to undo the damage caused by a single negative one!

So, dealing with a kind and professional host can fantastically lift your clients’ spirits — and inspire guests to leave fantastic reviews. In other words, the competence and reliability of employees is key to a business’ own online reputation. Indeed, according to a 2018 study by Tripadvisor and Ipsos online reputation is the fundamental element of marketing for all tourism and hospitality businesses.

This means that the volume recruiters that fill these service industry vacancies must ensure that the employees they hire are worthy of their client’s reputation.

So how do employers find those trustworthy and competent employees who can elevate businesses and make customers feel truly at home?

The quick scanning of online social media profiles does not empower prospective employees to select the best candidates for a few reasons.

Firstly, not all information is available in one place and in one format. They would have to allocate significant time and effort to look up each prospective candidate, which is very time consuming.

And the chance of staff falling into the “social media black hole” and wasting significant time on social media is a real danger. The next best thing would be then to try and look up the most accessible online presence of future candidates, i.e. their social media pages.

However, while this may save employers time, it may not be efficient because almost everyone is aware of the public nature of their social media pages. In other words, most users curate their social media pages in such a way as to portray their desired personality.

Secondly, while all of us, consciously or not, curate our social media pages, most of us are not designers, marketers or psychologists. This means that our social media pages will under-represent our character and potential even if we devote time and effort into them.

Moreover, social media pages may not contain important and relevant information about our character which may be available elsewhere on the internet.

For example, we may have not invested in our social media profiles, but we have heavily invested in leaving trustworthy and thoughtful reviews of products or venues, giving advice on online forums, donating to charities or travelling the world via human to human transactions on Airbnb.

This type of peer verified, transaction information is crucial for potential employers in the hospitality industry, but it is probably unavailable to them as candidates fail to think of, or know how to, provide it.

And finally, prospective candidates have a right to their privacy

While half the world uses the internet mainly for personal connections and entertainment, they generate vast amounts of data about themselves and their place in their social networks, their relationships, interests and their families and friends.

However, with the growing concerns about online privacy and demands for accountability for analytics firms, many people may choose to make their online information private.

Therefore, hiring managers would miss the chance of hiring competent and responsible individuals because they would feel that, compared to other candidates, they are somewhat a mystery. This is known as the Contrast Effect Bias, where the evaluation of one candidate is based on the comparison with other candidates.

This effect has been observed in hiring practices, with a 2018 Career Builder survey finding that 47% of employers are less likely to invite candidates with no online presence to an interview!

The challenge is, therefore, to create technologies that allow employers to leverage the vast amount of personal data to assess crucial traits of prospective employers, while at the same time empowering individuals to keep control of their own privacy, all without diminishing their chances of being hired.

If you’re looking to learn more about your applicants, and what makes them unique and valuable Reputationaire gives organisations a one-click view of applicant’s verified intangible human characteristics based on insights from their peer reviewed, transactional ratings at websites they already use.

However, this isn’t like an episode of Black Mirror, or the Chinese ‘social credit’ score. Instead, Reputationaire prioritises individual privacy and autonomy, only granting employers one-time access to verified, relevant profiles that the applicant approves of.

Ready to get started looking beyond your candidates resume today? Visit our website to find out more!

Written by Borana Lushaj