Checking publicly available information, such as a prospective candidate’s social media page, might be technically lawful but may not be best practice, said Adrian Marlowe, managing director of Lawspeed.

Speaking at a Recruitment Society event earlier this month, Marlowe said that pre-employment ‘processing’ of applicants is covered under the Data Protection Act. This means that looking up information about a potential candidate on a social networking site is classed as processing. And processing would need consent from the applicant. However, the fact that it has been posted on a public site could lead you to conclude that consent has been impliantly given.

Marlowe warned that if employers base their decisions on information gleaned from a social networking site, they could be in line for potential claims of discrimination, should the unsuccessful applicant discover this is the case. Yet he admitted that in the real world, this scenario [where the candidate realised their profile was hacked into] would be rare.