(CNN) Hiring the wrong person can be costly.

Interviews are often the only way employers have to get to know a candidate personally before they offer them a job. While background and reference checks are standard for most new hires, they don't always catch behaviors that can clash with a company's culture and values and create a toxic work environment.

California-based Fama Technologies is offering another layer of screening to help identify risky applicants before they get hired. It uses artificial intelligence to analyze a person's public digital footprint to find problematic behaviors like sexual harassment, bigotry and bullying.

"If you make a hire and it turns out they were posting, sexist, racist and other lunacy online...that is not only a liability for an employer, it also calls into question your ability of making a hiring decision," said Alex Granovsky, an employment lawyer in New York City.

Fama, which was launched in 2015, creates risk profiles for job applicants or even current employees by scouring publicly-available content online, including social media, message boards, blogs, news articles and comment sections that can be tied to a current or prospective employee.

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