Job Seeker Shares The Hilariously Embarrassing Social Media Activity Uncovered In Her Background Check—'It's Not Just What You Post, It's Also What You Like'
If this news has you in a cold panic, you are definitely not alone.
dimaberlinphotos | oatawa | Anja W. | Getty Images | Canva Pro By now, we all know that our social media activity can make or break our job search, and locking down all your accounts — or even going on a post-deleting spree — are now pretty standard opening acts to any job-hunting.
But one worker recently discovered that's not nearly enough to solve the problem of having a not-quite-work-appropriate sense of humor online, after her new job's digging into her online life revealed some equal parts hilarious and embarrassing results.
The job seeker's social media background check included not just her posts but her likes as well.
"This is a reminder to clean up your social media if you're applying for jobs," Riri said in a TikTok video about her own job search. That's advice that most people likely no longer need to hear nowadays, right? We all know our socials are fair game for employers.
But Riri discovered that there's a whole other side of our social profiles being scrutinized by employers that has probably flown under all our radar. "It's not even just what you post," she said, "it's also what you like."
If you're anything like me, this has sent you into a cold panic — my sense of humor is absolutely not appropriate for the workplace, and liking and bookmarking unhinged tweets on X is basically all I do on that app.
To think a potential employer could be scrolling through the utterly unhinged hot takes and thirst tweets I constantly click on is terrifyingly hilarious. Riri herself was no exception.
Her social media background check showed some hilariously embarrassing and irreverent tweets she'd liked.
"I'm gonna show you an example of something hilarious that came up during my background check for a job that I was applying to," she said. "I literally wish I was making this up."
She then showed tweets that were included in her background check because she liked them, such as ones with pictures of seafood. Innocuous, right? Except the caption was, "I'm a whore for seafood." Oops.
Another featured a joke about infidelity that read, "If a man driving to cheat on you, he for real hates you cause gas is $5.50 now." Honestly, these are downright tame compared to the messy stuff I am constantly liking on X, so I guess I'm unemployable!
Everything ended up being fine for Riri because she "didn't have anything actually problematic on my social media." But it definitely had others online feeling rather wary of this whole thing. After all, this really feels like a violation of privacy — not to mention the fact that such tame tweets were clearly enough to raise concern.
Riri explained in follow-up videos that she assumes certain words in the tweets were "trigger words" for the background check company's search terms — words like "cheat" and "whore," for example. Still, it's pretty hard not to feel unnerved by this, right? Thankfully, the laws are mostly on our side — so long as we keep things private.
Due to privacy laws, content in private accounts will not show up in social media background checks, but there are some exceptions.
Many people (myself included, frankly) have assumed that even if your social media profiles are locked down, an employer, and certainly a background check provider, can still see them. But it turns out that, due to privacy laws, that's not actually true.
Your accounts will still come up in the search, but the content is not viewable. There are ways around this, of course. Employers have been known to implement phishing schemes to harvest passwords, for example, or to ask any employees who know or follow an applicant to show them their social profiles.
None of this is legal under multiple federal employment and privacy laws. Several states, including California, Illinois and Michigan, have even stricter state-level laws about it, too.
There's one other thing to consider: Even when your profiles are private, posts will sometimes still show up in Google Images results. So, it's still good to exercise caution.
And, of course, if you're in a field, as Riri is, where your social media accounts are something like a work portfolio that HAS to remain public, you're kind of out of luck. So keep your nose clean if you're job-hunting — and maybe think twice before hitting like on that thirst trap!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.