Before Extending an Offer You MUST Do These Three Things

You have conducted all of your interviews, including reference checks for your final candidate, and are ready to extend an offer.

But before you actually extend that offer, you must make sure you’ve completed these three checks…

1. Check the candidate’s LinkedIn profile, and make sure it matches up with their resume.  I have checked a candidate’s LinkedIn profile before, and found jobs listed that are not included on their resume (or the reverse). Sometimes, the dates a candidate says they’ve worked in previous roles are completely different, which can be  misleading. If any of the data does not match up, discuss these inconsistencies with the candidate.

2. Google them. You never know what you’ll find! I once Googled a candidate, who had transferred colleges after his sophomore year, and found that the transfer occurred because he had been charged with assault at his first school. While most information you find is unlikely to be a deal-breaker to your pending offer, it is worth doing this quick check to make sure you don’t find something that needs to be addressed before delivering an offer to a potential employee.

3. Look at their Facebook page, Twitter, and any other social networks that come up in your search. Again, no red flags = great! But in case you do find something inappropriate, it’s good to know about it and to address it now. Be careful not to let certain information — including a candidate’s political orientation, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, etc. —  acquired through social networks affect your hiring decision for better or worse. In order to make sure that such information does not cloud your decision making process in any way, you may want to ask a colleague not involved in the hiring decision to look at the final candidate’s profiles, but only to report back on that information that is not considered “protected”. Check out my previous blog for more advice on using social media sites when making hiring decisions.

Happy Hiring!