CHAPTER 5
PRELIMINARY STAGE – COLLECTING INFORMATION ANOUT A CANDIDATE FROM AVAILABLE SOURCES OF INFORMATION

The next stage of work is collecting information about the candidate / employee from available sources with subsequent analysis.

Working with social networking sites

The first source that we turn to – a personal page in social networking sites (Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, Instagram, MoiMir, etc.). Social networking sites are a storehouse of all sorts of information about a person, but analyzing pages and accounts of a person is a creative task, because there is no clear algorithm here.

Do not forget that filling the page, a person creates his own refined image. Actually, this is how a person would like to present himself to society. Of course, the ideal image is different from reality, and, nevertheless, we are interested in everything that a person tells about himself. What photos does he show, which one does he have as an avatar, what posts does he write, what reposts does he make, what groups he is subscribed for, what he «likes», how detailed is information about him, his statuses, the number of friends and subscribers, etc. Everything that is laid out by a person is connected with his perception of the world, his experience, system of values and beliefs.

Note the important difference between profiling pages in social networking sites and forensic profiling. How profilers come to conclusions when analyzing a crime, a crime scene, behavioral traces cannot be reduced to a formula or structure. The fact is that a person is a rather complex organism. He has a wide range of characteristics, peculiarities, experiences, capabilities and abilities that affect his behavior and decision-making process. There is no simple correlation, when one particular event characterizes one particular trait of a person. And yet, the set of actions that he used to do allows to come to a conclusion regarding his personal characteristics.

Profiler is well aware that when he works on the case of a criminal, he must always have doubts about the correctness of the decision. It is these doubts in the preparation of the profile that force him once again to double-check some things and make sure of other things. If the assumption made does not fit into the overall profile, then it is better to put aside this assumption. It happens that having processed the crime scene, we get data that contradict each other. It means that something went wrong, there is a mistake somewhere. If such a contradiction has arisen, it is better to stop and return to the beginning, to review everything again. So it is easier to understand at what point the mistake occurred.

For example, processing the trace picture and the crime scene, profilers see that the criminal picked the lock in the house, leaving no traces, did not wake anyone up, did everything quietly and carefully. No witnesses. The culprit wiped his fingerprints out or was in gloves, brought the crime instrument with him and then brought it away. The victims were wounded in the bedroom with no signs of a struggle. Most likely, he has experience in this matter and according to the FBI classification he is an organized criminal. But profilers found a broken flower pot in the corridor. Impulsiveness and negligence do not fit into the compiled profile. And since this footprint contradicts the general picture, it was not included into the profile. Besides, profilers do not know who was the author of this change. What if the cat broke the pot?

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.

Working with open information resources

Try and write your phone number, email address and name in Google or Yandex. Sometimes search engines find interesting and useful information, starting with where the candidates left their contacts, and ending with the fact that they had to do with a scandal or trial with the company they had worked for before.

We had a case when we ran a search on the email address of a candidate applying for a leadership position. The name of the email address was quite interesting: a set of letters in a special order with numbers. We found in free access information that a person with such a nickname (the name of the mail) plays online games for money, making large bets. The site had information on how often does the person with such a nickname play, how much does he lose and win. Thus, we received information about the risk factor, which, by the way, was confirmed. This candidate periodically got into gaming debts.

It is worth noting that Google or Yandex do not always give information about the phone numbers and mails. In this case, use other search engines, for example, duckduckgo.com and so on.

Open information sources also include the federal website of bailiffs (fssprus.ru). There is information about execution writs and debts of the candidate, about the arrested property and unpaid fines written by the traffic police patrol service. By the way, talking about the girl who had problems with alcohol (example above): on the website of the bailiffs we found that her property was seized, and she had enforcement proceedings worth up to 80,000 rubles.

Regarding debts, including the payment of alimony, there is data if the court has already passed, the decision was made and there is a writ of execution. This gives a certain characteristic of the candidate, especially if there are large debts. This testifies both to the attitude towards one’s obligations, and to a possible risk factor. A person burdened with debts will try to find ways to pay them off, including secret use of company resources. On the whole, a person who does not systematically fulfill his financial obligations is unlikely to behave differently in your company.

In short, with the help of such services you may protect yourself from risks when choosing a candidate. Of course, these issues are handled by the security service, the are not your responsibility. But if you have tools that make it easier for you to settle on a candidate and save time – why not using them?

In addition to search engines and the website of bailiffs, look for information on decisions of general courts, Magistrates courts and arbitration courts of the Russian Federation with the participation of a candidate as the plaintiff or the defendant. To do this, use a reference and legal system RosPravosudiye (rospravosudie.com), the site of the federal arbitration courts of the Russian Federation (arbitr.ru) and other similar sites. Thus you will know the candidate’s past and present court decisions, how often did he sue an employer, or how often was he sued.

Once again, search of information about a candidate with the use of open resources requires a creative approach. Sometimes useful information comes from unexpected sources. Therefore, the mentioned sites search list can be extended.

Working with information databases

If you have access to databases – counterparty checking services, such as SPARK, Kontur Focus, Prima Inform, you can find out if the candidate was (or is) the founder or CEO of any organization. Suppose we select a person for the post of top manager. He positions himself as an excellent manager, he was the owner of various businesses and projects, but liquidated them or resold them, because there were more interesting and profitable niches. So we look for information through the counterparty checking services and see an interesting picture: all the companies, where the candidate was the founder or CEO, turned bankrupt or were liquidated. In addition there were trials with other organizations, where he and his companies acted as a defendant for non-performance of duties, non-payment, etc. It is clear that the larger the organization is, the more court decisions it will face and the more it is able to pay. But if the organization is small and there are 100 court decisions against it, then this can hardly be a positive indicator. Besides, you may also draw certain conclusions about the management style of the person who headed the organization.

Useful resources include databases on offenses and convictions. Many security services use these databases. This allows to immediately identify malicious violators of the law. And you save time by not inviting potentially unreliable candidates. It is clear that not everyone has these databases (especially relevant ones). But if you have access to them, it is better to use them.

Of course, we did not mention all the databases and services that we work with. The main idea of the chapter is that in order to solve your problems, you should not neglect the existing possibilities.

So, we have considered the sources that should be used in your work, if you want to save time and increase the efficiency of recruiting.

So, you have compiled a position profile, selected CVs, found and analyzed information, and you already have a general idea of the candidate you need – about 60% of the full picture. Note that you have collected all these data at a preliminary stage, before meeting with a potential employee. A direct meeting with the candidate lies ahead.