Social Media Background Checks: Ethics of Hiring Decisions

Introduction: The Hiring Dilemma

Miranda Shaw is a manager at a high-ranking consulting company who needs to fill a senior analyst position. She has narrowed her pool of applicants down to two finalists — Deborah Jones and Rick Parsons — and is expected to make a recommendation to the head of human resources without delay. Both candidates attended the same prestigious business school.

Both candidates performed impressively during interviews and brought strong work experience. However, Parsons' leadership skills made him stand out as the stronger candidate. Additional qualities favoring his candidacy included a track record of resilience and excellent communication skills. Before making her final decision, Shaw decided to research both candidates online.

She visited Facebook and found pictures of Parsons smoking and drinking with members of a college fraternity. The photos were not on Parsons' own page — they appeared on a friend's page whose privacy settings had not been enabled. Shaw then searched for Jones online and found multiple sites describing her as a reliable and efficient project manager. The online photos depicting Parsons as a heavy drinker and smoker gave Shaw pause. In pursuing this line of investigation, she chose to walk the slippery boundary between a candidate's private and public life (Parmar, 1–3).

Shaw decided to gather more background information on both candidates than had been offered during the interview process, partly because she needed to report to her seniors quickly. Although she was undoubtedly acting in the company's best interests, she may have erred in allowing personal character — inferred from a friend's social media page — to override professional qualifications. The decision was based on content that Parsons himself had not chosen to make public. As a conscientious employee, Shaw concluded that Parsons' behavior made him unfit for her team.

Shaw's Actions Through Ethical Frameworks

The central tension here is twofold. First, did Shaw make the right call given that both candidates appeared equally qualified during the interview process? Second, Parsons had taken deliberate steps to separate his professional image from his personal life — a discretion that could be argued deserves respect.

From a deontological ethics standpoint (Halbert and Ingulli, 17), the photographs Shaw discovered suggest that Parsons may lack the integrity and character required for the professional environment she maintains. The album showing Parsons drinking and smoking with fraternity members did not reflect well on him. Yet deontology — rooted in Kantian ethics — also asks whether Shaw herself would accept being treated the same way. Morality, as explained by Kant, emphasizes the universality of principles: the same moral standards must be applied consistently across all cases.

Deontology further requires that individuals be treated with respect for their intrinsic worth, not used merely as means to serve someone else's ends. Shaw's action can be examined through this lens to evaluate whether her rejection of Parsons was ethically justified. According to Kant, each person has the right to make their own decisions free from manipulation. Parsons exercised deliberate discretion by managing his own privacy settings, and Shaw arguably failed to respect that boundary. That said, Shaw was acting in her company's best interests within real time constraints. This is a genuine conflict in which both parties had reasonable grounds for their positions. A second framework is needed to balance the analysis.

The virtue ethics tradition, tracing back to Aristotle and Plato, holds that ethical judgment requires more than a set of rules — it requires the cultivation of virtues and dispositions that enable a person to make the right choices consistently (Halbert and Ingulli, 17). Rather than establishing a checklist of conditions for evaluating decisions, virtue theory focuses on the inner character of the individuals involved and the quality of the relationships built on that character. The goal is always to do the right thing, in the right way, at the right time and place.

Applied to Shaw's situation, virtue theory supports her concern about hiring someone whose character may not be compatible with the professional environment. She has a responsibility to the company and cannot afford to waste resources on a poor hire. At the same time, it was not Parsons' intention to make those photographs public — he had enabled his own privacy settings — and his exposure was the result of a friend's oversight rather than his own negligence (Halbert and Ingulli, 17).

Shaw has demonstrated responsibility by conducting thorough research beyond the official interview process. Parsons was professionally equal to Jones, and therefore had an equal claim to the position. However, acting in the company's best interests may require going beyond professional credentials alone. Shaw might not appreciate being "snooped on" in the same way had the roles been reversed — which means she did not apply Kant's standard of moral universality consistently. Nevertheless, virtue principles may still render Parsons' indulgences professionally undesirable.

Shaw may also have been too hasty. The Facebook photos may not have told the full story. There could have been entirely personal reasons for those pictures that had no bearing on Parsons' professional judgment or performance. A follow-up phone interview could have addressed her concerns while saving time. Alternatively, both candidates could have been offered a probationary period, during which HR could evaluate performance before making a final decision. Such steps would have been more consistent with Kant's equal opportunity principle.

Social Implications of Parsons' Behavior

The photographs showed Parsons drinking and, potentially, smoking marijuana with friends. Marijuana carries significant social and health implications. Despite widespread belief among young people that it is a harmless substance, medical professionals consistently challenge this view. According to Dr. Sharon Levy, marijuana's addictiveness is not in question (Pew Research Center, 3). The biochemical effects of the drug can carry serious pathological consequences. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) binds to brain receptors and subtly disrupts systems involved in healthy behaviors including learning, eating, and forming relationships (Pew Research Center, 4).

Each exposure to THC rewires cognitive pathways: early animal studies have shown that continuous THC exposure causes the disappearance of certain receptors, blunting the brain's natural response to rewarding behaviors and requiring progressively higher doses to achieve the same effects. Marijuana exploits essential pathways involved in memory retrieval, metabolic regulation, and everyday emotional well-being (Jangi, 3–8).

Generational attitudes toward marijuana have shifted considerably. In a 1977 survey, 76% of members of the Greatest Generation — born before 1928 — agreed that marijuana use leads to the use of harder drugs. By contrast, only 36% of Generation X and 31% of Millennials share that view. Baby Boomers have remained relatively consistent: approximately 37% currently believe marijuana leads to harder drug use, compared to 39% in 1977. Among the Silent Generation, around 60% currently hold this view, nearly identical to 1977 figures (62%). Over more than four decades of polling on the issue, support for marijuana legalization has grown: a recent national survey showed that approximately 52% of Americans believe marijuana should be legal, while 45% oppose legalization, with younger adults being the most supportive demographic (Pew Research Center, 3–5).

From a workplace perspective, Shaw needed someone with strong character and discipline for a senior analyst role that involves managing complex business processes. A person struggling with addiction could face difficulty meeting the demands of such a position. Additionally, Parsons did not release the photographs voluntarily and had enabled his own privacy settings — the exposure resulted from his friend's failure to do the same (Parmar, 6).

Parsons had deliberately separated his professional public persona from his private social life. The lapse in security was his friend's, not his own. Any person accessing another's information without authorization — or through a third party without consent — infringes on reasonable privacy expectations and violates normative social etiquette. The company is legitimately concerned with professional competency and a clean legal record. It is reasonable to expect that Parsons would have maintained appropriate conduct in a professional setting, given the clear care he demonstrated in managing his own online presence.