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Social Networking Sites Getting Risky For Recruiting
onehitwonder writes "While many recruiters and HR managers are taking advantage of the Web and online social networks to screen candidates for positions inside their organizations, a bank in Texas has decided that using social networking websites in its recruiting process is too risky legally. Amegy Bank of Texas now prohibits internal HR staff and external recruiters from using social networking sites in its hiring process. Amegy's decision to ban the use of social networking sites in its hiring process demonstrates its respect for prospective employees' privacy. It also sends a message to the employers and recruiters using social networks to snoop into job seekers' personal lives that their actions border on discrimination and could get them in a lot of legal trouble."
Some people put a lot of info on their social networking sites. Some of it is information that is protected under discrimination laws. Now even if your HR people are squeaky clean about it and ignore all that, the problem could be proving it. You check up on someone's page and find out that they do something you don't like, and that you can discriminate on. However also on that page it lets you know they are Mormon. You don't hire them, they sue you for religious discrimination because your organization has a bunch of Catholics at the top.
Well the lawsuit is now a problem. They'll claim you found out they were Mormon and that's the reason you won't hire them. You claim it is for another reason, maybe something they've now removed from their page. Well it's now "He said, she said." Maybe the jury doesn't buy that the other thing was what you cared about and all of a sudden you owe a bunch of money.
by Texas law unless I am mistaken, is a single branch and an entire company.
Maybe they have changed the laws since I was last there, but "a bank in Texas" might be roughly analogous, capital-wise, to a manufacturing plant in my local area. So one bank in Texas setting a policy is hardly big news.
It is REALLY hard to prove discrimination as it is. When it is discovered, it should then be actionable in some way. As it stands, there is probably nothing in the law books that would stand against it, but social networking sites could potentially show damages because of their use being discouraged.
Personally? I don't appear on any social networking sites... other than this one. If you really want to know who I am, you gotta know who I am and then read all my comments. But there are no pictures and so to confirm my identity would not be a simple matter for most.
(Please, this is not a challenge...)
But just like discrimination against age, disability, religion and race they just have to pay lip service and any employer can discriminate all they like.
The reality is that I am a high school drop-out, and I am a Chief Technology Officer. I didn't get there by starting a company, I was recruited by the company itself. I have 15+ years of experience (my first "contract" position was when I was 15). Oh, and I'm 32 years old now.
I once was given a job offer and then they rescinded it because I did not have a high school diploma. Were they wrong? You decide. I am where I am because I have the skills, experience and am damn good at my job.
Doesn't mean they won't. I know a couple managers, and frankly you are sticking your neck out if you make a couple of bad hires. What is to stop someone from snooping on your myspace/facebook (other than privacy settings) from their own home.
It all comes down to what has been said before, if you don't want the world to know, don't put it on the internet. Its the reason why I discontinued facebook, because quite frankly, I find it rather advantageous to be mysterious ( especially with women ;) ).
Anyone who has ever hired someone has googled him/her. It's almost inevitable not to land on a person's social networking page, if this person uses her own name online. It will be very hard to totally ignore the information you found there. Even if you don't intend to you will unconciously or conciously use it during the job interview.
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Well, clearly, not the rules of spelling. :)
http://transformativeworks.org/
A lot of companies have not given out references, for many years now. For exactly that reason. You are WAY behind the curve...
Though personally, I think that is selfish and self-righteous bullshit.
...the most ridiculously amazing profile ever:
Hobbies and Interests:
- working hard every day
- always obeying superiors
- working overtime for standard pay
Favorite Movies:
Favorite Books:
Favorite Music:
- none I'm always working
- - -
Things NOT to include:
Hobbies and Interests:
- feeding my cocaine addiction
- leather and bondage fetish
- reading slashdot
- - -
My Facebook profile makes me look extremely plain. It is the bare essentials. A personal email contact, my high school and undergraduate information, and a list of some very safe hobbies like 'sports' or 'cooking'. It took me forever to untag all those pictures of me naked on acid.
Social networking does not run "contrary to U.S. constitutional rights to privacy." If you post something on a billboard, you waive your right to privacy regarding that material. You can't have it both ways.
Now, LinkedIn is a different matter. I leave that public, as I use that for work networking.
Honestly, this reminds me of the days when we were starting to realize we couldn't actually just throw our email addresses out there willy-nilly.
It doesn't matter in the least how you look at it or how it is "perceived by the masses". The ONLY thing that matters, legally, is how public it is.
My point was that anybody can look at a billboard. You could paint something on a billboard and consider it somewhat private, but the reality is that it isn't private... it is publicly visible. Your "looking at it" as private is nothing but a delusion on your part... a belief or feeling that runs contrary to reality.
On many social networking sites, you can control who can see what information. And if you made that information visible to the public, then the law is very clear that you are just plain SOL. And that is reasonable! Your really can't have it both ways! If you post something in a place that is visible to the public, it is completely unreasonable to blame the public for looking at it!
And it is also unreasonable to look at it as though someone were "following you around", because they are probably looking at it from their own livingroom! How is that "following you"?
I agree that an employer should not be concerned with what you do on your own time... as long as you are not bad-mouthing them in public, or otherwise harming their public reputation. Then they might have a legitimate concern.
"... that does not mean you should (or should legally be able to) make decisions on hiring/firing people based on it without prior consent (such as someone saying check Facebook for a list of projects I worked on)."
The problem there is that you quite literally cannot have that both ways! Public information is public information. It is not permissible in the United States to tell someone "this information is public, but you, and you, and most especially you cannot look at it or think about it or use it." That's just not the way Freedom of Speech works, man!
First, I am not a lawyer. That said, I could see instances where it could hurt a company NOT to check social networking sites. If a prospective employee's profile indicates a tendency toward racial or sexual discrimination, for instance, and the person was hired in a supervisory position, then acted in a discriminatory manner, those discriminated against may be able to argue in court that the company was lax in its hiring practices, which would make it responsible for the discrimination due to its lack of research.
I believe that a company shouldn't be using non-job-related items for its hiring decisions. On the other hand, if information that disqualifies a candidate for that job is public, I believe that it is the company's duty to use that information.
I could be legally wrong, and I welcome corrections from those more acquainted with the law.
On facebook you can limit your information to only be accessible to friends, friends of friends or your network. It's quite granular, if your information is accessible by people you don't want it to be then that's your fault for not using the privacy settings that facebook provides.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
For some people, there is just as damaging information on Google. Anyone else remember Charles Booher? http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.26.05/booher-0504.html
I guess the point is that the candidate who interviewed and didn't get the job will just receive a stock answer like "Thanks for your time, but we've filled the position." That candidate has absolutely no way of knowing whether he didn't get the job because his Facebook profile said something the employer didn't like, or if the employer really did find a better person for the position, or what.
He can rant and rave all he likes about how it must be because he's Mormon, or gay, or likes dogs when the HR person likes cats, or whatever, but he has no way of proving that. Even if he somehow managed to get it to court, the employer just has to say "We found someone else, that's all," and that's the end of it.
You say it's easy to convince a courtroom that you were the subject of discrimination, but I disagree. I think it'd be nearly impossible to prove, because the employer can come up with any number of reasons you didn't get the job. Honestly, they can say something like "Well, I didn't like the color of the shirt he was wearing in the interview." They'd look like loonies, but there'd be nothing illegal about it, and I can't see a legal way to argue against it.
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Sometimes social network sites are the most honest form of references you can find on an prospective candidate. And while some people express preferences or display aspects of their lives that put them in a protected class, one we're legal bound not to ask about, it is information that they choose to display in association with the name they use to seek employment. Personally, I try to ignore that stuff while I look for aspects of their life that may relate to their capability as an employee. If you are concerned that you might be denied employment because you <whatever>, use an alias.
On the flip side, some candidates reveal things that make it very easy to weed them from the process for reasons that, legal or not, are in the best interest of the company and staff. The most recent in our case was a candidate that wrote us a particularly angry letter about our interview process. A quick google revealed him to be a stalker who kept a record of threats he made and threats he received through chronicle of his life. We also found a separate site devoted to his lawsuit against a former employer over some other stalking/harassment type issue. Rather than apologize and try to correct our process, we bid him farewell.
Should we avoid learning all we can that is relevant to the job about someone we might consider hiring? Google provides levels of information previously only available through the use of a private eye and with the good comes the bad and unnecessary. So we have to ignore religion, age, race, gender, preferences, et cetera. But hiring managers have been doing that for years, this information often comes up or can be inferred during an interview.
This policy seems like a Luddite decision. It would probably be better for HR to do the research and then filter out the protected information so the hiring manager doesn't get tainted. Then the hiring can be done irrespective of protected class status and yet with full awareness of the relevant data.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Our HR department is the opposite. We were recently given a list of questions we must ask everyone whenthey return from sick leave.
Imagine how stupid I felt asking someone who returned after having a broken leg in a car accident which was the other driver's fault: "Do you think that this is likely to recur?", and with his leg in plaster "Have you any written evidence, such a s a medical certificate, showing that this was a genuine illness?".
More to the point with the possibility of a flu pandemic people have to make every reasonable effort to come into work, and must declare that they did so on returning
.
There is an escalation process for repeat absences, whatever the reason and a bonus for not being sick in a year, so I am sure some people will think "hey this could be swine flu but if I don't try to get in I could end up in disciplinary. On the bright side if it is swine flu maybe someone in HR will catch it".
One of my friends at Stanford told me to 'take care' of my social networking sites like orkut and facebook. According to him, many universities now google the graduate applicants and scan their social networking profiles. I don't like this one bit.