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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."
It's better than the "IQ" test if it predicts behavior.
It's better than the "drug" testing because not every drug user is a drug addict.
It's highly focused on what actually matters.
If you are rational you won't go online saying and doing stupid things in a way in which it's linked to your workplace persona. If you are irrational and completely lack self control then you might, but then you might be like that Barksdale Google engineer and I'd rather people like that guy be filtered out than to continue with hiring irrational but brilliant.
That being said nobody is rational 100% of the time, but those people who are at work using their work computer to search for pornography -1, those people who are spouting idiocy under their real name -1, those people who don't protect their name, their reputation, as they would protect their company -1.
... 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?
Create a persona that is unbelievably wonderful. Give that persons a handle and its own email account. Then if you are asked if you go online give them that persona's handle and email address. Your live in uncle must own all those other handles and he uses your PC a lot. But you are the one who constantly emails about rescuing orphans and stray dogs and cats and attends all patriotic functions ad nauseum.
In a bad economy, sticking it to the individual worker through HR seems to always creep up.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Guess what? You are advertising yourself.
You agreed to it when you signed up.
You agreed to it when you decided posting your life on line was a good idea.
Not only to future employers but to the marketers who are sold your data from Facebook, Twitter, et al.
You already sold your right to privacy by:
a) agreeing to the terms of service.
b) thinking there are no consequences for permanent and historical archiving your stupidity.
Companies already have the option to fire you for most any reason they see fit. You've just now made it easier.
I am in favour if they are testing for spelling and grammar.
Otherwise, not so much.
My name is shared with a very famous (dead) person so I'm hard to google. But of course he had my email address. From that he found my geocaching account, liked that I made puzzles (he was looking for a game developer) from that found my /. postings, liked what he saw.
Yeah, I got the job and it was fun, but it creeped me out. I hardly ever post anywhere anymore.
Except, of course, for this...
They do, however there are limitations on what they can do. They can require a drug screening and back ground check, references, but something like this is questionable at best.
Basically sounds to me like their trying to find a legal way of going back to pre-affirmative action times and hire people based upon things other than fit and qualification. Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but this looks like a convenient way to not hire minorities.
Just one more reason to watch what you post, folks
Or one more reason to make ethical career choices, such as not working for a company that doesn't respect your right to a private life.
The hardest thing about being in HR is justifying your existence. The HR department where I work spits out a constant stream of useless projects, purely so they can claim to be doing something. For example we have a program to encourage employees to find people to apply for jobs at our company, but there are no positions open to apply for. The list goes on.
Snake oil products like this are ideal for HR. They take maybe a fifth of an HR person to administer, so it looks great on the HR managers resume (always looking for that next job, go home and update your resume). They use money (administered a budget of $DOLLARS, also great on the resume). They sound like a good idea. Its sounds really web 2.0 and hip to be involved. Really, it can't fail.
It just won't work.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Hah! For that to happen, they would have to notify the people they defame.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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.
The thing is, more people get caught in the crossfire for no reason. For example your boss might object to your political stance, or he might not like you being a atheist, or he might think you're a drunk when there's only one picture of you at your birthday. Maybe he sees you dressed as a woman at a halloween party and fires you because he's homophobic. If your name is John Smith, good luck cleaning up your online identity.
Sure, some of those things are technically illegal reasons for firing, but really, in the US it isn't that hard to fire you for any reason (sometimes even no reason). Until the position descriptions have "24hr company representative and diplomat" in them (with appropriate pay), what you do on your own time and dime is your business. This just smacks of companies trying to squeeze people by the balls even harder.
And best of all, you can find out things through Facebook that you are prohibited by law from asking your employees. Want to discriminate against employees on the basis of religious or political beliefs? Gotcha covered!
It's highly focused on what actually matters.
What actually matters is job performance, period.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
sorry there are a small number of jobs that require any background checks and a much smaller number of ones that require serious background checks - sounds like a lot of HR dept's in the states have a vastly overinflated sense of their importance.
sucks if your dyslexic though
Shouldn't we be giving credit to Phillip K. Dick for authoring this story idea instead of Spielberg who, undoubtedly, has enough credits to his name and merely directed this film?
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
That is all.
(Goddamn filters for caps.)
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
Yeah. It would be just like life before 1995.
they specifically mention the fact that if you're tagged in an image your boss is contacted
What a great way to get rid of workplace rivals! This will enable a whole new level of viciousness in company politics!
Seriously, it would take very little work and very little risk to completely ruin someone's career.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
That's my point, we don't live pre-'95 anymore and the richness of the online experience has become integral to our modern lives.
Or contraction challenged for that matter.
Support SETI@home
Your phrase people who selectively adhere to the law as they see fit sounds to me like a euphemism for "people who think". I know that's not how you intend it, and I'm not sure if the opinions in your post are yours, or your view of how employers operate, but it bears noting that laws are sometimes ridiculous, sometimes capricious, sometimes arbitrary. Frankly, I wouldn't *want* to hire someone who blindly follows all laws, without regard to how sensible they are -- not least because such a person would very likely be bad company. I'd much prefer hiring someone who thinks.
Granted, that can be difficult to ascertain from an online profile. But online evidence of lawbreaking wouldn't automatically rule someone out for me -- depending on the law(s) in question. Being discriminating is not in and of itself a bad thing; it's all in how one goes about it.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The assault on workers happening in the U.S. is going to continue unabated until those well-fed people you see on TV marching around dressed as Sam Adams figure out that there are bigger villains out there than the black guy in the White House.
I'm continually surprised how many /.ers are really right wing, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-tax freeloaders. 40 years of "government is bad" has become a lifestyle for a lot of people here.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Most likely they'll provide a series of risk factors with a score for each on a scale of 0 to 100.
Drugs: 30 Violence: 6 Judgment: 45 ------------- Overall: 27 (risk: moderate)
Huge difference between that and "this person is a druggie with lousy judgment".
Why not? They already have the general public by the balls based on FICO scores. And just how is a FICO Score calculated?
"Your FICO score is calculated each time it is requested according to a proprietary formula by Fair Isaac Corporation, based on information reported by the three credit reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Each time it's calculated, it uses the most recent information held by these credit bureaus."
The exact factors use to calculate FICO score depend on the person."
You can't dispute a FICO score because the exact process is proprietary.
They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
You really haven't been paying attention for the last forty years if you think that bad practices will be competed out of the market. I mean, really?
40 years of bad government has a way of doing that
Parent is 100% correct. The score is completely dependent on your financial transactional activities
There is no "magic" key or bias
Disclaimer: I work for FICO.
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?
No, it's our own fault for constantly reelecting the same douchebags into office, or voting based on the color of one's skin (see: Duval Patrick, Barack Hussein Obama), or how handsome someone is (William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton), or how "texan" someone is (both Bushes). The truth is there isn't much of anything I like about the last four presidents as they have all seemed to be against growth of the American economy, and pro-offshoring.
And, oddly enough, that "evil" Democrat Bill Clinton's administration probably had the best economic policies out of the last four Presidents' (inclusive of the current one) administrations.
The truth is, we need good sound business management mentalities in the Oval Office and Congress now - people who are truly old-school thinkers who value long-term growth over the quick buck.
We need people with patriotic interests at heart, somewhat like H. Ross Perot and Ron Paul in office, but tempered with better communication and diplomatic skills. We need to vote for the best candidate for every regardless of faith color or creed, and regardless of whether or not the guy is "popular" in a celebrity sense. I don't care whether a candidate looks like Fabio or Steve Buscemi. I care whether or not that candidate recognizes that the making of an excellent leader is someone who is looking to serve rather than to be served.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's these low end "background checks" and "clearances" that suck. I used to be in the aerospace business, working for a company that did business with the 3-letter agencies. I've been through the clearance process for the higher level clearances. At that level, there are real background checks, where Government investigators go out and quiz your neighbors, friends, previous employers, and creditors in person. Fingerprints are taken and checked. Police records are checked. Birth certificates are checked; not only do you have to show yours, they check it against the hospital birth records. There are interrogations, lie detector tests, and an interview with a shrink. The whole process takes about a year.
But because the high level clearance process is reasonably thorough, it's not as random as the low-end stuff. It's not "competitive", in the hiring sense. There's a limited list of things the security people worry about, and they're the items that, historically, have caused people to sell or give secrets to the enemy - relatives in an enemy country, vulnerability to blackmail, financial problems, gambling or drug or alcohol abuse history. They don't care if your Facebook page makes you look like a jerk.
They're pro-corporate in that they vote for pro-corporate candidates. They may believe they aren't "pro-corporate", but their actions betray them.
However, it isn't just the right-wingers; the left-wingers are pro-corporate too. With Democrats in power since '07 in Congress and '09 in the White House, we've seen the auto industry get taxpayer money, we've seen the health insurance companies (that do nothing to improve people's health) get a giant giveaway from Obamacare, we've seen more favorable legislation for the copyright mafia, we've seen the banking industry and AIG get a giant bailout for the mortgage meltdown, etc. The left-wing liberals are just as pro-corporate as the right-wingers.
Oh, you mean the same Europe where they are trying to pay of the same financial abuses of the their Financial system by sticking to the little people rather than accumulating debt and then sticking it to little people like the US. Yep, in Europe those cheeky Europeans are refusing to be stuck with the debt and burden of the rich and greedy and are forcing those governments to rethink their choices and basically stick it to the rich and greedy for screwing up the financial system.
Sure looks like the rich and greedy in Europe aren't going to get the "we take all the profits and you take all the risks" free ride, whilst in the US it is all "please sir may I have another" from the bottom while the top whine they still don't have enough. The free ride for the rich in Europe is certainly coming to an end and no amount of mass media bullshit will stop the free exchange of thought going on between the majority via the internet and then taking it to the street as a public show of determination.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I match two of your three criteria. I suppose pretty much all three since I brewed beer a couple times. Thanks for calling me a racist narcissist. That's really awesome of you.
I'm assuming that you are simply uninformed or confusing people that believe in small government with today's Republican party. They are not the same thing.
Democrats and Republicans disagree on many things but there are some fundamental issues where they are in lockstep.
They agree that the First Amendment is not as important as the needs of the federal government.
They agree that there is no problem that cannot be solved with enough tax revenue (even though they disagree about where to get it).
They agree that it's totally fair for government employees to retire a full decade before the rest of us, and they agree that only an idiot would rely on Social Security when you can vote yourselves nice pensions funded by the taxpayers.
If you look at your 1040 and are happy with what you see, good for you. As for me, the value I receive for the money I spend really pisses me off.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
And, oddly enough, that "evil" Democrat Bill Clinton's administration probably had the best economic policies out of the last four Presidents' (inclusive of the current one) administrations.
Yeah, but he had sex. Little things like a balanced budget, reducing the deficit, a strong relationship with our allies and the lowest unemployment in decades .... don't get fooled into believing those are good things.
That's my point, we don't live pre-'95 anymore and the richness of the online experience has become integral to our modern lives.
And if I don't have a rich online experience that can be publicly related to me (using pseudonyms and such), does it make me a freak, a suspect or both?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
And you get +1 funny instead of insightful. This is how reliable the "online experience" is. Good luck explaining to your boss why "someone on the Internet" called you a rapist.
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
-- Margaret Thatcher
Both Europe AND the US needs leaders like that now more than ever.
I hope you're kidding. People like Maggie Thatcher are what got us into this mess.
If you worked with the idiot crybabies I worked with in the steelworker's union, you'd hate unions too.
I've never met a group of losers quite like that. The fact that they kept their jobs because of the union is enough to turn me against unions for life. I got singled out in the shop I was in because my starting wage in 1989 was higher than theirs was in 1960. It drove them CRAZY. It's all they ever talked about. Several of them tried to knock me into mills I was running and cause me to get maimed.
I didn't set the fucking wage, the damned union did. Yet they acted like I did something to fuck them over.
Unions need to go. Their time has come and gone. I was 19 at the time. That experience made me decide to go back to college. That's what unions are good for, so you join one and realize you need to do anything you can to not have to work in a union job.
Thank god there are no IT unions. I'd clean bathrooms before I worked in an IT union. Unions are nothing but worker communism put in place so people that suck can't get fired.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.