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"Pre-Crime" Comes To the HR Dept.
storagedude writes "Like something out of the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, a startup called Social Intelligence is mining social media to weed out job applicants based on their potential for violence, drug abuse or just plain bad judgment. The startup also combs sites like Facebook and Twitter to monitor current employees, presumably to monitor compliance with company social media policy, but as the criteria are company-defined, anything's possible. Just one more reason to watch what you post, folks."
... but how do these "trawlers" get to see what's on, say, a Facebook page if viewing permission has been given only to a limited set of trusted people? Does Facebook permit trawlers access to such restricted information? Do they use subterfuge to get past the restrictions? How?
TFA makes a point that invalidates yours though - they specifically mention the fact that if you're tagged in an image your boss is contacted. At that point it doesnt matter if you're rational...every single person in your social network, no matter how extraneous, is having their discretion and rationality tested. Go to a party and have a couple of pictures taken and tagged of you messing around, harmlessly, and forwarded to a boss who perhaps disapproves of heavy drinking/smoking/you kissing guys/stupid pictures of people pretending the Eiffel tower is between their palms...pretty much anything really, and you run the risk of disciplinary action.
At that point the only rational choice is to not participate online at all, or allow pictures to be taken, comments to be made, anything that relates to you. What a sad life that seems.
I'm a former military officer - armored cav for much of my career, with stints in intelligence and signal slots and wartime service. I was once asked by an interviewer who was already aware of this from my resume "Have you ever had any life or death decision-making responsibilities?" A little discussion revealed he did not think literal life or death responsibility for the 30+ people in the unit under my command, in wartime, in actual combat, counted. He meant decisions or responsibilities that could have cost significant money, and nothing else. I could easily have answered that one to his satisfaction - signing for training equipment alone when I was the leader of an advance detachment meant there had been times when I was the person responsible for easily more than 100 times the value of his whole company (M1 tanks and Apache helicopters and such add up fast). Instead I walked out of that interview.
I mention this because that person is precisely the person that company will doubtless delegate to go through some potential employee's facebook pages.
Who is John Cabal?