In the headline of the article, it is stated that “One in Five employers have turned down a candidate because of social media”. The report surveyed different sized organisations, small, medium and large in order to collect their results. The data suggests that 19% of employers have turned down a candidate because of their online activity. Therefore, this statistic has been rounded up to 20% which shows their headline is correct as this equals one in five people. The article further states that large organisations were the most likely to have turned a candidate down with 28% of them doing so. This is compared those who would not check prospective employee’s social media accounts; 20% at large organisations, 27% at medium organisations and 40% at small organisations. These claims correlate with the YouGov Survey Results conducted on a sample of 2058 business decision makers as the statistics presented in the article have not been altered from the survey.
However, the data could be criticised as it fails to state what makes an institution small, medium, or large. Therefore, this leads the reader to determine this information for themselves which could lead to inconsistences when interpreting the article. This is because, for example what one person deems to be a medium organisation may be different from another.
In conclusion, however, the statement made in the headline is correct. Therefore, the headline is not misleading as the statement made is accurate in correlation to the data they have collected in their survey.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/10/disgracebook-one-five-employers-have-turned-down-c/