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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?
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.
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.
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
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.
Notthepainter, could you come see me in my office? I want to talk about your public discussions of my web stalking activities.
-the boss
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.
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
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
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.
40 years of bad government has a way of doing that
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?