It's so tempting and easy: screening job applicants on Facebookor other social media. Everyone does it, right?

If not everyone, then certainly a growing number of hiringmanagers and HR professionals certainly do. CareerBuilder a coupleof years ago found that 37 percent of respondents to one of itssurveys reported they review applicants' social media sites, while29 percent indicated that they had not hired applicants due to whatthey learned.

But is this a valid way to vet candidates, and, more to thepoint, does it really work? A Florida StateUniversity study raises serious doubts on thepractice.

Employers cite all sorts of reasons for using social media inthis way. It allows them to gauge a candidate's judgment, they say,and gives them insights into personality. Doing so, they say, givesthem a clearer idea of whether the applicant is a good fit fortheir organization.

Researchers have supported these notions, suggesting that socialmedia could be used to assess personality, that the number of“friends” in an applicant's social network is an indication oftheir agreeableness and extraversion.

The creativity with which applicants' arrange their Facebookprofile, and the types of activities and quotes they post, mayreflect their openness to experience, researchers have said, whileyet others have suggested that applicants who post inappropriateinformation online may have related problems at work, such as lowconscientiousness or lack of integrity.

The bottom line is that employers have been left to feel that ifthey don't check publicly available social media sites, they may benegligent in terms of failing to fully vet applicants.

Read more: Zero correlation between social mediaprofiles and job performance …

The Florida State study focused on Facebook, the most visitedwebsite in the world and the most widely used social mediaplatform. The researchers captured Facebook profiles of graduatingcollege students who were applying for jobs. Recruiters viewed thesame applicants' profiles and made judgments concerning applicants'suitability and their knowledge, skills, abilities and othercharacteristics. The researchers then correlated the recruiterratings with applicants' subsequent job performance andturnover.

Their primary conclusion?

“(The) results suggest that recruiter ratings generally areunrelated to graduates' subsequent job performance, turnoverintentions, and turnover,” the researchers' paper said. At anotherpoint, they went so far as to say there was “zero” correlationbetween what hiring managers might see on a candidate's socialmedia sites and how well they might work out as an employee.

In their work, researchers Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Stephen E.Lanivich, Philip L. Roth and Elliott Junco also discoveredsomething somewhat unexpected: a streak of bias, as evidenced inFacebook ratings that tended to favor female and white jobapplicants.

They noted that other researchers have found that females areless likely than males to post problematic content, such assubstance abuse and sexual exploits, and that females tend to havehigher verbal ability and writing ability than males and, finally,that female Facebook profile pictures were more likely to show themwith friends or smiling and appearing happy, lending an air ofagreeableness that employers typically find attractive.

The Florida State team also noted that other researchers havefound that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to post quotesrelated to their ethnic heritage and are more likely to participatein social and political causes via social media. That generatesperceptions of “dissimilarity” among recruiters, they said.

As a result, “recruiters may tend to give higher ratings toapplicants they perceive to be more similar to them and lowerratings to participants who may appear less similar,” they wrote.

Their overall recommendation?

“(These) findings cast serious doubts concerning theappropriateness of considering applicants' SM information … duringthe selection process,” the researchers wrote.

“We strongly encourage organizations to refrain from using SM(e.g., Facebook) and other Internet information (e.g., Googlesearches) until methods for collecting and evaluating suchinformation are shown to be reliable and valid.”

Will this lead to fewer Google searches by prospectiveemployers? Probably not, though this study could prompt HR managersto rethink how they use social media and how much weight to givewhat they find on Facebook, Twitter and all of the rest.