Thursday, December 01, 2011
Big Brother is watching... and might not hire you!
I've submitted to drug tests, background checks, reference checks, etc for jobs before but so far I haven't been subjected to a social media check (that I know about). Now companies like Reppify, Identified, Social Intelligence and others are creating reports for hiring managers about your online persona. While background typically verify information you have provided and verify any past criminal activity, these services are investgating less objective areas of your background. Web applications will judge candidates based on any available information they can gather from social profiles. You can prevent this by ensuring your privacy settings are set properly, but then hiring managers will have one less piece of information for you compared that they have for others in the pool. The companies that provide these services argue that it is only one piece of a decision that hiring managers should use to vet candidates and that they will present a more comprehensive profile of the candidate than occurs when a recruiter googles someone and makes a decision based on the first few pieces of information that are discovered. They are right, we're all more accessible and less private than we ever were before and that genie isn't going back in the bottle and with the current state of the job market, candidates are likely willing to subject themselves to something like this rather than potentially missing out on an oppurtunity. Verifying your credentials and resume is one thing, but a tool that discovers I'm a Mets/Giants fan, like certain bands, and culls through photos of myself, family and friends to determine if I am an appropriate fit as a candidate seems to go well beyond the purview of the hiring process.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/reppify-identified-facebook-linkedin/
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Its really a toss up as to how this is going to affect hiring in general and our personal careers. I don't think its fair someone can see if you're a Giants fan. While people know they shouldn't hire based on those types of things, we all know people hire candidates that went to their alma mater, is a friend of a friend or grew up in their hometown. That being said, hiring leaders find this information out about you in the interview anyway (if they engage in small talk), so the question is, is it okay for them to know this personal info about you without your permission? In an interview you can decide what to disclose. But if you do make your personal interests public, at that point its fair game.
From a general hiring perspective, companies are going to need to instill controls and trainings to ensure that hiring leaders are hiring fairly and without bias. Being a Giants fan isn't too controversial (depending on who you ask!) but if a hiring leader is biased in his decision because a candidate is a member of a religious group or ethnic community organization, things start to get gray and potentially discriminatory.
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