Carole Elefant at Legal Blog Watch discusses the legality of the increasing use by prospective employers of Facebook "background checks" in their employee recruitment:
...[F]or those employers who can't resist peeking at social networking sites, Jennifer M. Bombard, an attorney with Morgan, Brown & Joy, recommends that they document a "legitimate business rationale for rejecting applicants" and make sure that hiring decisions are not motivated by information found on an applicant's social networking site. Yet even with these prophylactic measures, a discrimination case will be "more problematic to defend" where an employer admits to having looked at a social networking site, says Gerald L. Maatman Jr., an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw.
...If employers want to review social networking profiles to get a sense of what a potential employee is like, I say let them (so long as they don't use the information to unlawfully discriminate against protected groups). But first, require them to disclose the practice to job applicants and employees. Just as the information that we post on Facebook says something about us, employers' use of Facebook to ferret out personal information about prospective or current employees conveys a lot about them.
According to the article, "44% of employers use social networking sites to examine the profiles of job candidates, and 39% have looked up the profile of a current employee."
As far as I am aware, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any correlation between the salaciousness of an individual's Facebook content and that individual's prospective employment performance.
This recruitment practice is simply snoopy and gossipy and prurient and irrelevent.
It sheds no light at all on job-worthiness or skill sets. It leaves employers highly vulnerable to accusations and inferences of discriminatory hiring practices. It is unlikely to yield any measurable improvement in workplace productivity.
Beyond that, this form of online corporate stalking probably favours only those candidates who are smart (or sneaky) enough to cover their tracks by deleting all the "interesting" stuff, while also being reckless enough that they don't bother to adjust their Facebook privacy levels to restrict uninvited access while they are job-hunting.
Is that really who you want to be hiring?
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
4 comments:
You say that this practice may be simply snoopy and gossipy and prurient and irrelevent, and it sheds no light at all on job-worthiness or skill sets. But, employers are using social networking sites to network with potential job candidates and do background checks.
So be careful what you place on those sites. Think before you post--would you really want a potential employer to know a certain trait about you?
That is just sad to think any employer would stoop and snoop so low.
I wouldn't even want to work for a company or anyone for that matter who would go to such lengths to delve into ones on line social life.
That is just weird. Thanks for the information. I actually didn't know they do that. I never imagined anyone could be so bazaar. Probably a good thing I am just Thinking.
You know...it's funny that employers would do these so-called "background checks" on people's Facebook and MySpace accounts. They look for new employees and they put up "Help Wanted" ads on these websites, but, they don't expect you to have one. The whole purpose of owning a Facebook or MySpace account is to express yourself freely as well as networking. You should be able to post what ever you want in what ever ways you want to, but, employers don't even give you that courtesy. The photos and comments you set to private or for only certain groups to see, the employers see them because they have ways around them. It doesn't matter to them that you didn't want them or other certain groups of people to see those things, but they do see them. Employers are so bad with it that many people I know have literally deleted their Facebooks and MySpaces when it's time for them to go job hunting. I think that's ridiculous. If we shouldn't have Facebooks and MySpaces, then the employers shouldn't be able to use their services, either.
It really makes sense to look over someone's facebook before hiring. It's really common to run full background checks, and I think it's a great idea. You can tell a lot about a person by what they put up on Facebook.
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