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."
"... and their actions verge on discrimination."
No, legal terms have legislated meanings, ad you don't get to make them up as you go along. Googling someone to see if they're a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list is perfectly legal, and as a hiring manager, you can bet I'm going to keep doing it.
Am I going to sacrifice my own career for this cause? No.
While they shouldn't snoop, It isn't going to stop. Don't you snoop out your potential employers?
Just don't let any non-friends see your Facebook.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
... in the hiring decisions. It's a good thing I checked on Slashdot before we ended up hiring Anonymous Coward.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The subject line says it all - if it's public, it isn't snooping.
First, I'm an employer. Welcome to well-rounded individuals. Try writing good things around the web, and perhaps your potential employers will prefer you because of your life. Write crap, and don't be surprised.
But really, are you going to turn down a job offer because the potential employer searched for you? You can "tell" potential employers that you don't want them snooping, but that doesn't give them any negative for doing so -- you'll still accept the job offer.
But you do have boat-loads of control over your own personal freedom and civil liberties. If you don't want others to judge you, you get to be the judge. Start your own business, and run it any way you choose.
But if you're looking to benefit from someone else's proven model, someone else's money, and someone else's risk, then yeah your liberties are going to go unrespected because you're the one throwing them away.
You want liberty, take a look at what it's like to have complete freedom over a business of your own. You'll find that it ain't liberating in the ways that you were hoping.
By the way, it's excellent, and it's amazing, and I love every minute of it -- now I own and operate two and a half businesses because it's so great.
As always, take the risk, stake your life, then you can have it your way. You want to be an employee, and have your employer tell you what to do and even pay your taxes for you (well, most of them anyway), then you'd better believe that employer is going to look into you.
Besides, what's this liberty on the web crap? Public domain is the name of the game.
We all benefit in many ways from the fact that our society is becomingly increasingly interconnected. However, that comes at a price. While I appreciate your opinion on the matter, I can assure you this trend is only going to accelerate.
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online. I absolutely defend an individual's right to express his views as he sees fit; similarly, I absolutely defend an employer's right to base his hiring decision on all publicly available information.
For some, increased transparency is a good thing. For others, it may prove more a hindrance. It's up to the individual to be conscious of how public actions may impact future opportunities.
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1. Set your facebook/irc/whatever status to reflect your positive attitude towards your corporate masters.
2. Blog and upload photos on your various social accounts showing how dedicated you are to working over time and how you're doing it for the team dispite not getting paid!
3. ??
4. Profit!
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online.
Absolutely. If you're comfortable voicing the opinions you put online anywhere else, then you're probably going to be miserable working for a company that refuses to hire you based on those opinions. If you're an asshat who likes to piss people off, then you're not likely to be working for anyone too long, anyway.
I'm not a big fan of the trend towards using online personas against people, but I see it as a reverse filtering effect. "You don't like me. I don't like you. Glad we know this now."
But how will you know if a firm passed you over because of something you said online? It'd be impossible to enforce.
Unfortunately, that's not true. It seems to make sense that there is no way that one could know why an employer did something. But certain legislators don't think that way.
For a number of classes of people ( genders, ethnic groups, etc ) the mere act of not having the right number of people of a certain class can be construed as proof that there was discrimination.
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.
Lets all change our names to John Smith. Yeah, Google that biches.
If an employer doesn't like what they find, I don't want to work for them.
I even have a "best way to google my name" section on my resume:
"Greg Barton" java -indonesia -kayak -mozart -football
i.e. I'm the Greg Barton who's a java programmer, but not the Indonesia expert, olympic kayaker, football coach, or Mozart scholar.
That actually helped me get in the door on my current job. :)
by law to give prospective employees an honest reason why they were rejected. I know they don't like to do this because of potential repercussions, but that is really not as big of an issue as they try to make it.
The explanation can be as simple as "others were more qualified". There is nothing wrong with this explanation. But if the real reason is different ("I liked the look of Potential Secretary X's legs better", then they should not lie about it... although they will anyway. The point is that they should not, and there should be a rule saying that they should not. It distorts the employment market, which is detrimental to commerce and to society in general.
This would solve a lot of problems. It would help prospective employees actually find out what their weak spots are as far as the job market is concerned (rather than just being told "we picked somebody else"), and thus it would help match up companies with the employees they are actually looking for. Note that someone who is job hunting cannot improve their skills to get a good job if they are misled about what skills are in demand.
Also, if there were actually a law about it, if someone felt that they were rejected for unfair reasons ("the other candidate gave me oral sex"), they would actually have some recourse. Hard to prove? Sure. But if they CAN prove it, then at least they could get some compensation... as they should be able to, because by being rejected under false pretenses, they not only lose a potential job but they are not given the information they need to improve themselves so that they can get another.
I am not talking about discrimination here. I am talking about honesty in hiring. Two very different things. Discrimination laws might (in some cases) make it illegal to hire the person who gave you oral sex, if others were more qualified. My proposed law is not about discrimination at all. As long as you told the rejects honestly why they were rejected, then you would have nothing to worry about... except those discrimination laws of course, which you would have to worry about anyway.
http://www.xkcd.com/137/
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Really, unless you are a public figure then why do you have to put your real name out there along with whatever it is that you say? Use a pseudonym and say what you want, but be careful to never connect it or allow it to be connected to your real name ever. First rule of the web: never provide your real identity when a fake will do.
Because it's really, really hard to compartmentalize your life that way. There's a reason the government runs into a million miles of red tape when they do. For example, it's pretty hard not to talk so much about yourself that you could verify whether a suspected person is or is not the one hiding under this nick. That makes it quite dangerous even if they can do nothing more than to hook your pseudonyms up with the pseudonyms of your friends. Let me try to make an example:
Say you're part of a small WoW clan with your real life friends. Obviously your friends know your real identity but they won't reveal it and you don't need the WoW world at large to know so you use a pseudonym and since it's a gaming forum you never really tell much about yourself. And you post on slashdot under the same pseudonym. Then in some post you mention in a comment to a gaming article that you played in a WoW guild with friends.
Now comes an asshat, searches your slashdot history, finds that reference and the nicks of the others in the clan. No biggie, nothing much interesting there. But then he digs on their nicks, and they've been a bit careless and sloppy, finding their real names hooked to those nicks. Using that it's not so hard to find real world connections, and among them there's you. So far it's really all speculation on using the same nick and whatever but then he starts matching the real life with your slashdot posts and if it's a match he posts it up. Game over, everything you ever said on slashdot is now linked to your real world identity even though you've been really careful. And any other pseudonym you ever linked to your slashdot identity again and so on.
I don't think what I've described here is so unusual - you have your real life persona, you have your pure online identities but then you have all these places where you meet somewhere in the middle like a pseudonymous blog about real life and online communities with real life friends. Unless you're really, really careful they will link all of this together and these are like dams that can only be broken, never rebuilt. And most people don't realize until the tidal wave is coming.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online. I absolutely defend an individual's right to express his views as he sees fit; similarly, I absolutely defend an employer's right to base his hiring decision on all publicly available information.
Shouldn't they be looking at, say, your ability to do the job and stay the fuck away from your personal life?
How so?
Well, the people posting silly stuff about themselves tend to do so while thinking of a certain context and/or being in a particular state of mind (at home, relaxed, with friends, feeling in the mood for some snarkiness). So ... more often than not, context is half the message (if not more). But all and any context is lost in transmission via the Internet, thus loosing about half the message.
Suppose on the other hand that someone *really* has something to hide. They would take exceptionally good care not to leave tracks that are easily available for a hiring manager with some time on his hands and itchy keyboard fingers. They would even change their name if necessary.
Therefore Internet presence is likely to give false positives while false negatives are all but guaranteed. Whilst there might be some justification for Googling to see if people are "a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list", it's really unlikely that you'll find any such clear-cut evidence and for anything less what you find is hearsay evidence at best. It's not illegal, but neither is Tarot reading to screen applicants. But who cares, right?
Hypocrisy, double standards, and CYA ("Cover Your Backside") tactics are as American as apple pie. And the impact on people trying to land a job is simply not the issue for the ones responsible for hiring someone.
Why not?
Well, how would you like to be the manager responsible for hiring someone who subsequently has an industrial accident (while cold sober), and whose web presence shows him/her writing something snarky about getting soused on the job? Or who is subsequently investigated for having one single marijuana plant at home and who has blogged about the virtues of said weed for relaxation? Or someone who creates racial tensions after being hired while his (somewhat racist) blog is there for the world to see? Or (if you work in catering or manufacture baby food) someone who turns out to be sloppy with hygiene when his Facebook page shows him in a messy kitchen?
Would you feel comfortable when the word "due dilligence" is used around you afterwards? Would you like to hear your ambitious rival mouthing hypocritical guff about "putting the company first", "exercising commonsense when hiring people", or "being net-savvy" afterwards?
No?
Then you'd better use *all* online information you can Google your hands on in 5 minutes, right?
I don't think that managers hiring people really believe that an unfortunate scrap of Facebook material makes someone unsuitable. It's just that they've got a choice to make (if they're hiring at all) and they can't waste all morning on it. Any reason to weed someone out that doesn't reflect poorly on them (better yet, which makes them look "savvy") in the eyes the only audience that counts (other executives) is a help.
Fear of being unreasonably second-guessed is a major justification for a whole host of useless security boondoggles, and I firmly believe that it's also why we see employers Googling for people that send in their resume.
Strangely enough, i think this can work both ways.
I have worked as a software contractor for a few years, and I have seen some disfunctional companies. I have to agree with your practices, captain HR sqeakyclean, because I do the same to you.
The boss I work for, the CIO, even you, get the same treatment you give me. So, if you are having problems with talent passing on your critical positions, well...you gave us the idea. Cat's out of the bag, good luck.
To Slashdot: Yeah, I am sort of being ironic and cute turning the parent poster's idea around. But, really, do this. I have been called in for contracts where half the company is suing the other half, I have worked with religious right wing bigots, and I almost went to an interview with Infinnium labs before I found out about their craziness. As embarrassing as some photos of a drunken kegger might be for you, your employers probably have a whole lot more to hide than you do.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
One thing you should keep in mind is that although we our government is democratic in America, our workplace is not. And frankly it's at work that we spend the majority of our hours, the majority of our days. You might even say that our workplaces are ruled by a king, or at least a junta, whose powers are very much in the medieval mold.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
My opinion is that if a place won't hire me over petty personal stuff, I don't need to work for them that badly. I spent my childhood and so far most of my youth studying so I'd be worth hiring, you can be sure I'm going to enjoy the benefits now.
For my current job I rolled up to the interview in a beat up old track car (I've heard it's a common practice in North America to rent a shiny new car just to drive to an interview) with shaggy hair. I was shaved, dressed nicely and otherwise well-groomed though. I gave straight honest answers to everything. I sent my resume from my personal email address - my slashdot username at gmail. That alone is enough for some people to scoff at, one previous place that interviewed me commented on it (although the work environment there seemed far too uptight for my liking). A search for my username would have turned up my Slashdot posts, me shootin' the shit in various forums, right down to the lolcats and dirty humor, my hobbies, along with a few positive things like me giving tech advice etc. Searching for my real name would turn up little or nothing. I don't have a Facebook page or anything like that, I value my privacy more than that.
So I let them have that, and they hired me. It's been a pretty good fit so far. Let's say I got a job at the place that scoffed at my username - would I want to work at a place so uptight if I had a choice?
So on the topic, I don't think employers should disqualify a potentially good worker on personal grounds - while totally within their rights, it's just wrong.
"Well Mr. Smith looks perfect on paper, he's got a clean criminal record and good references, but I've found photos of him "cosplaying" here - my informal research indicates this is a common pasttime for sexual deviants - and you can see he enjoys violent videogames here, he shows interest in a hacker forum here, and he jokingly doctors this photo of a fat woman on the back of a motorcycle here. I don't think we want this type in our company."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel