Slashdot Mirror
Should Job Seekers Tell Employers To Quit Snooping?
onehitwonder writes in with a CIO opinion piece arguing that potential employees need to stand up to employers who snoop the Web for insights into their after-work activities, often disqualifying them as a result. "Employers are increasingly trolling the web for information about prospective employees that they can use in their hiring decisions. Consequently, career experts advise job seekers to not post any photos, opinions or information on blogs and social networking websites (like Slashdot) that a potential employer might find remotely off-putting. Instead of cautioning job seekers to censor their activity online, we job seekers and defenders of our civil liberties should tell employers to stop snooping and to stop judging our behavior outside of work, writes CIO.com Senior Online Editor Meridith Levinson. By basing professional hiring decisions on candidates' personal lives and beliefs, employers are effectively legislating people's behavior, and they're creating an online environment where people can't express their true beliefs, state their unvarnished opinions, be themselves, and that runs contrary to the free, communal ethos of the Web. Employers that exploit the Web to snoop into and judge people's personal lives infringe on everyone's privacy, and their actions verge on discrimination."
"Because it's really, really hard to compartmentalize your life that way."
No, it's not.
Did you read my post or not? "... unless I suspected it had a significant effect on their performance at work"!!! Is there anything unclear about that?
The difference between you and me is, I prefer to use the "innocent until demonstrated guilty" approach.
To be fair, however, I must say that I work in an industry in which very heavy pot users, or just about any users of hard drugs, would seldom if ever get that far in the first place.
I have worked for companies that test employees for drugs. For the most part it is an unethical practice, but that is a can of worms I do not care to open at the moment.
And no, arresting an employee for possession of pot outside of work, or for smoking pot at home, is NOT, in any way, probably cause to search their workplace. Jeez... if you are so concerned about the law, why don't you learn a little about it? And if you say "yes" to the cops when they don't have probable cause, then you are a shitty manager... you are opening your company to a lot more liability than if you say "no".
Further, a request without probable cause is NOT "reasonable"!! Do you realize what kind of liability you could open your company up to if you show the contents of an employee's desk to the cops without their permission? I assure you, this is not a cut-and-dried situation. Again, you are better off saying "no" unless they have a warrant.
And no, they can't legally arrest you for obstruction of justice for refusing a search without a warrant. If they did, you would have a very clear case of false arrest.
You may be speaking from the point of view of a manager, but if so you are speaking from the point of view of a manager who is clueless about the law. I suggest you get a few books and read up. Or make some inquiries at, say, eff.org.
But how will you know if a firm passed you over because of something you said online? It'd be impossible to enforce.
Well, it's be impossible until one of the employees involved with hiring process brags about that on Facebook, like the first poster just did on slashdot. If not, a modest monetary reward from my lawyers would probably motivate someone to leak an internal e-mail. Facebook/MySpace logs can be subpoenaed to check for access from the company's network block to my personal profile.
But most of all, who would want to risk time in federal penn or at very least the popularity of the octuplet mom? You could also google for photos and reject all the black guys, but why would you want to literally risk your ass for your company? Proving discrimination may be hard, but there will be hell to pay once its confirmed.