Month: October 2021

General Data Protection Regulation  is a regulation on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. This regulation also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.

GDPR was brought about by the fact that malicious insiders compromise intellectual property, personal data, or sensitive financial records. 

The question though is if you are into staffing and hiring employees will GDPR cause conflict? It’s common practice that most companies go through the background screening process using the following: 

• Social network data collection
• Criminal background checks
• Verifying educational and professional credentials
• Character check

So how do you ensure compliance and how to prevent your organization from GDPR infractions that can result in costly fines? Always default to laws governing employment and data protection using the process outlined below:

1. Refer to the Local Laws

You must first determine a legal basis for data processing before conducting a background check (or any other sort of processing). Consent is not regarded as an appropriate legal basis due to the evident power imbalance between employee and employer. It’s debatable whether a prospective employee has the right to freely grant and retract consent.

2. Benchmark

In order to strike a balance between your company’s needs and people’ rights and freedoms, establish and document the commercial benefits of conducting the background checks by benchmarking with other companies and how they do it.

3. Keep data collection & processing to a minimum

Use the data reduction principle to limit your background checks and personal data collecting to what is relevant and essential.

4. Uphold Transparency

Background checks on candidates should be done legally, equitably, and transparently. Explain to the candidate why you are conducting the background check before you begin.

5. Specify data retention period

It is important that you only preserve data for as long as is necessary to achieve your goals. To determine which data must be kept and archived by law and which data can be erased, you must not only follow the storage limitation principle but also research local rules and employment laws. When a candidate declines your offer, you should erase their data.

6. Regulate 3rd parties

Regulate and monitor any other parties (such partners or vendors) who will be engaged in the process, and explain their role transparently in the process by asking for sign offs and approval from where you are collecting private information.

To ensure compliance with the GDPR, you must educate candidates about data processing before the recruitment process begins. Remember that to make your background checks compliant and legal, there is also a need to consider any applicable national laws and regulations. 

A recent survey by ResumeLab found that 36% of applicants admitted to lying on their resumes. People who falsified their resumes cited lack of experience or long-term jobs as the primary reasons for their dishonesty. According to TribePad research of employees and job seekers , 88 % of the more than 1 in 5 job applicants who understand application tracking systems (ATS) fabricate information on their resumes to avoid being rejected.

It’s been found out that aside from inaccurate employment dates, false academic credentials and certifications, vague skills and accomplishments–-the number 1 offender in terms of falsified information are copy/pasted resumes from the internet! 

This comes as no surprise, as Google has become the go-to resource in coming up with information, even plagiarised ones.

While the resume is not the sole representation of a person’s skills (assessments, interviews, and tests help you better screen a candidate), it’s actually the amount of time and resources spent in processing a candidate only to end up with an unfit endorsement to the next stage of the hiring process.

To better equip yourself here are some sites that you can check out for plagiarism.

1. Prepostseo – The plagiarism checker is the easiest to use for newbies. It’s simple to use and checks for plagiarism in your CV. You can study Prepostseo’s data at no risk as their intellectual property is safeguarded and does not maintain repository material. 
2. Check-plagiarism.com – This plagiarism scanner scans all of the billions of websites and media where your work can be plagiarized. 
3. Grammarly – It is a cost-effective online tool for detecting plagiarized content and enhancing one’s writing style and substance. The tool is a sophisticated writing feedback tool that identifies and corrects grammar issues while also providing comments on the tone, readability, and clarity of the content.
4. Quetext – With the use of this web tool, users can execute advanced DeepSearch methodologies including contextual analysis and intelligent algorithmic word placement. With this application, users can see how much of their material has been plagiarized and take action if necessary.
5. PlagTracker – Plagiarism detection, grammar correction, and proofreading are all possible with this online service. Before posting, publishers and site owners can check to see if the content is their own.

Plagiarism checking software has gained in popularity, especially in the recruiting industry. Employers can use such applications to determine whether the content in a resume is copied from another document. These apps function on a database theory of operation to avoid potential problems, generic resume templates and, more critically, copying material from other people’s resumes, which may result in legal implications.

According to Facebook’s statistics, 2.76 billion people around the world utilized at least one of their products every single day in June. According to estimates from the data firm Sensor Tower, WhatsApp is used to send over 100 billion messages a day and has been downloaded nearly 6 billion times since Facebook purchased it in 2014.

With Facebook and its apps down for over five hours on Monday due to configuration issues, it’s hard not to notice how much bad luck the company has gone through in as little as over a week.

It didn’t help that the outage occurred just as Antigone Davis, a spokesperson for the company, was on CNBC to defend it against allegations made by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Haugen testified before a Senate subcommittee that in pursuit of “astronomical revenues” and “breakneck growth,” Facebook harms children, sows divisiveness, and weakens democratic institutions. Rather than implementing safety on its platforms, Facebook, she claims, has repeatedly sought to maximize its growth while concealing internal research that revealed the dangers of Facebook’s products to the public and government officials alike.

It’s a bit ironic that the recent major outage gained so much massive concern from many users not because they depend on the social network for gossip or news, but because Facebook has evolved into a platform that is used to sign in to so many other apps and services, users lose access to shopping websites, smart TVs, thermostats, and other internet-connected devices. Corporations to small online businesses that rely on the platform were left hanging as they waited for it to be restored. 

The aftermath fueled concern on private information that’s linked to online public platforms such as Facebook, which is why we’ve written a few simple tips on how to protect yourself better in the online world regardless of the platform:

1. Protect your password – Never disclose or use your Facebook password on any other website. Avoid using obviously identifiable information like your name, phone number, birthdate, or mailing address as your invincible password.
2. Manage your privacy – Privacy Checkup can help you ensure that you are only sharing information and articles with the individuals you intend to share them with.
3. Keep your profile wholesome – With Facebook’s strict policies or community standards, it is best to keep your profile wholesome to not have it blocked or temporarily suspended. This also helps when your company plans on conducting social media background checks.
4. Use social media positively – Creating a healthy balance of what you consume and share online is a great way of keeping your physical and digital mindset positively realistic.
5. Don’t make Facebook a habit – With everything almost done online, it is difficult to not be dependent on social media. However, making Facebook as a distraction part of your routine is both an energy and time consuming habit that is hard to break through.

With today’s rise of technological advancements, people are finding and establishing ways on how to protect themselves from a platform that has in so many ways made a difference in their lives. It is best to remember though that companies are just companies and like any third party provider can make use of the private information that you hand over to them. Ever heard of Social media background checks being conducted to not just verify one’s identity but to look beyond interviews and resumes, and be an established venue of determining if the applicant is suited for the position and the company itself? It’s happening now and the only way to protect yourself is to always be careful of ANY information that you put out there—professionally and personally.