Scrub Rate
The process of applying for a job can be difficult, and many tech-savvy potential employees know that in today’s workplace, it’s common for possible employers to take a look back through their social media profiles and see what type of person they are. If they don’t like the type of public persona that an individual puts out, it’s possible for them to decide not to hire that person.
However, when someone knows that, it’s also possible for them to do whatever they can to make sure employers don’t see anything the potential employee doesn’t want them to see. If they decide to avoid potential employers looking into their social media history, they may choose to scrub those social media profiles rather than having a possible employer look at them.
What Is a Scrub Rate?
A scrub rate refers to the rate of individuals who have scrubbed their social media history clean, so any potential employer can’t dig up dirt on them. For example, if a hiring manager interviews 10 people, and two of them have scrubbed their social media history, the manager may refer to having a 20% scrub rate for their interviews. This rate may vary, and as more people learn about social media scrubbing, it could get even higher than it is right now on average.
What Are Some Ways an Individual Can Scrub Their Social Media Presences?
There are many different ways someone may be able to scrub their social media presence. If an individual wants to make sure a hiring manager can’t learn very much about them through social media, they may use any of these methods:
- Delete profiles
- Make profiles private
- Change profiles’ usernames
- Delete individual posts
- Create personal and professional presences
- Mass-delete posts from a specific time period
It’s also completely possible that someone won’t use their real name at all online. They may choose to go by a completely different alias, making it very difficult to find that person’s information if you only have their legal name to go from.
What Can a Company Do After Meeting a Scrubbed Social Media Presence?
When you run into a scrubbed social media presence, there are a few things you might be able to do. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you just can’t get any information from that social media presence. Here are a few ways to get even more information after you meet a scrubbed social media presence:
- Ask questions of the proposed employee
- Move on without personal information
- Look deeper into potential other profile names
- Gather general online information
After all, even looking through a professional online presence can still give you some information about your potential employee’s demeanor, even if it’s not as much information as you’re hoping.
How Can Enformion Help With Your Scrub Rate?
When you perform a people search through Enformion, you can get all sorts of information, and that includes information about social media presence, which is often available through email records rather than through just a name search. When you use Enformion to gather more information about people, it’s more likely that you’ll find hidden and non-public social media handles rather than the social media profiles the individual in question gave you directly.