Slashdot Mirror
You're Only As Hirable As Your Google+ Circles
theodp writes "A pending Google patent for Identifying Prospective Employee Candidates via Employee Connections lays out plans for data mining employees' social graphs to find top job candidates. According to the patent application, the system would consider factors including the performance of the employees at the company whose circles you are in — under the assumption that the friends of top performers are more likely to be top performers themselves. It's the invention of three Googlers, including an HR VP who was quoted recently in an article that questioned the wisdom of certain Google hiring practices said to encourage 'echo chamber' hiring."
Give them a yardstick and they think they can measure anything. Lines of code, number of published papers, gene sequence. The clearest result of risk management is that you stop taking risks: You're getting old, Google.
Sounds like technological quasi-nepotism to me.
Infinite computing power to apply analytics to hiring practices, and they end up with nepotism. Truly garbage in, garbage out. I bet the friends of the HR VP are all top candidates...
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I don't really use social networks at all and I definitely don't have my family or any (current or former) colleagues in my circles or "friends" lists. I don't understand people who do that. I don't need or want to know every second of every day of their entire lives, whether they're the guy I used to work with at the office or my own mom (I don't even know who in my family has social network accounts and I don't care). They don't want or need to know any of that about me, either.
The only place this would be remotely relevant would be at LinkedIN . . . where all of this pretty much already occurs, anyway.
Google considers Google Apps a viable replacement for Microsoft Office, so I can see where they would think Googe+ circles are a replacement for real interviewing and hiring skills.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
A week ago, I was logged into Gmail and looking at Youtube when this window popped up asking which name I wanted to use. I didn't look that closely at it, as I was busy. Just quickly clicked on what I thought would maintain the status quo. Now my Youtube handle has replaced my name in Gmail. I didn't want my Youtube and Gmail accounts linked. It seems the actions that one time popup started can't be undone. Attempting to delete the Google+ profile that was automatically created somehow isn't working.
How did you delete Google+ without losing Gmail? Or did you delete everything?
Google made a mess, and I'm not happy about it. Keep hearing all these stories about Google doing questionable things, even slightly evil things, but until this happened to me, I didn't pay much attention. And now they're rolling out this tool that could unfairly affect employment prospects. What are they thinking these days?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It just wants a piece of linkedin's pie.