CERs Social Media & Digital Recruiting 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A recruiter wants to source passive candidates on LinkedIn. Which action best aligns with ethical recruiting standards?
- Send personalized InMails that clearly state the recruiter's identity and purpose (Correct answer)
- Create a fake persona to connect with candidates without revealing recruiting intent
- Mass-message all connections with a generic job posting
- Access candidate profiles through a colleague's account to avoid InMail limits
Correct answer: Send personalized InMails that clearly state the recruiter's identity and purpose
Ethical recruiting requires transparency, so messages must clearly identify the recruiter and the purpose of outreach.
Question 2: A candidate's Twitter profile reveals personal political opinions unrelated to the job. Under ethical recruiting principles, how should this information be handled?
- Document it in the candidate file for future reference
- Share it with the hiring manager as context
- Disregard it entirely as it is irrelevant to job qualifications (Correct answer)
- Use it to assess cultural fit
Correct answer: Disregard it entirely as it is irrelevant to job qualifications
Ethical recruiters ignore personal opinions and non-job-related information found on social media to avoid bias.
Question 3: Which digital recruiting practice is most consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?
- Requiring video applications that may disadvantage candidates with certain disabilities
- Ensuring job postings on digital platforms are accessible to screen readers (Correct answer)
- Screening out applicants whose profiles show disability-related organizations
- Avoiding all digital platforms because they may not be accessible
Correct answer: Ensuring job postings on digital platforms are accessible to screen readers
ADA compliance in digital recruiting includes ensuring that job postings and application processes are accessible to candidates with disabilities.
Question 4: An employer asks a recruiter to find candidates on social media and check whether they appear to be over 40. This request is:
- Acceptable if the employer believes age affects performance
- A violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) (Correct answer)
- Permitted if the recruiter does not share the information directly
- Standard practice in competitive industries
Correct answer: A violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
Using social media to identify and screen out candidates based on age violates the ADEA, which protects workers 40 and older.
Question 5: What is the primary risk of using automated AI tools to screen social media profiles for recruiting purposes?
- They may contact too many candidates simultaneously
- They can inadvertently screen out candidates based on protected characteristics (Correct answer)
- They require too much manual oversight to be useful
- They are prohibited by all major social media platforms
Correct answer: They can inadvertently screen out candidates based on protected characteristics
AI screening tools can encode biases that result in disparate impact against protected groups, creating legal and ethical violations.
Question 6: A recruiter discovers a candidate's Facebook post showing them attending a religious ceremony. What is the ethical course of action?
- Note it as a potential cultural fit indicator
- Use it to predict schedule conflicts with religious holidays
- Ignore the information and evaluate the candidate solely on qualifications (Correct answer)
- Inform the hiring manager in case the team is non-religious
Correct answer: Ignore the information and evaluate the candidate solely on qualifications
Religion is a protected class under Title VII, and any information about religious affiliation must be excluded from hiring considerations.
Question 7: Which practice best supports candidate privacy when conducting digital sourcing on professional networks?
- Screenshot and store candidate profiles in a shared drive
- Collect only publicly available information relevant to job qualifications (Correct answer)
- Cross-reference profiles with personal data from non-professional sites
- Subscribe to third-party services that aggregate candidates' browsing history
Correct answer: Collect only publicly available information relevant to job qualifications
Ethical digital sourcing limits data collection to publicly available, job-relevant information and avoids invasive data aggregation.
CERs Social Media & Digital Recruiting 2
A recruiter wants to source passive candidates on LinkedIn.
Which action best aligns with ethical recruiting standards?