Like it or not, about four in five businesses Google their prospective hires and look at public Facebook profiles. Santa Barbara-based Social Intelligence Corp. wants to take that task off their hands.

The reason is that unstructured online sleuthing can put an employer in a thorny position. One the one hand, businesses can be sued for negligent hiring practices if they don’t catch public evidence of sketchy behavior before hiring. That’s why criminal background checks have become a standard.

But perusing Facebook can turn up information about race, gender and religion that can’t legally be used in hiring decisions. It can be nearly impossible for a firm to prove it didn’t use that information if a hiring discrimination lawsuit breaks out.

Enter Social Intelligence. The company offers to scan all public information about an applicant: Facebook profiles, YouTube uploads, Twitter posts and the like. The results are vetted by human editors and packaged in a report that includes only the information relevant to whether the person is a fit for the job.

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