Job-seeking, social networking and the law: It’s a lot like Facebook stalking
As I’ve mentioned before, companies are increasingly looking at potential employees profiles on social networking sites. Just like online dating, all this extra information can have both advantages and disadvantages, for the eh, client and um, service provider.
I realise this after reading this post: Is It Legal To Use Social Network Data When Hiring? While much of the press about recruitment and Facebook has focussed on the risk to jobseekers of companies screening them out of contention because of, shall we say, inappropriate behaviour recorded in photographs and so on, this post took the opposite tack.
What Howard Greenstein explains is by using social media recruitment purposes employees may discover information about candidates that they cannot legally use in the selection process. He gives this example:
Take the case of a start-up owner who needs new assistant. He asks his network or his HR person to get candidates. He interviews an outstanding woman candidate and practically offers her the position during the interview. Then he finds out via her Facebook status after the interview that she’s 3 months pregnant. The owner knows that 6 months from now when she’s out giving birth, it will be the busy season, when he can’t afford to be without help. Legally he can’t act on this information.
I’m going to go right ahead and assume that the law is pretty much the same all over most of the developed world about this type of thing. However, what’s not the same is how informed, or ethically minded, the employer – this varies quite a lot. I mean, while the article suggests that businesses “separate the information gathering, so the person who does the online search isn’t part of the hiring chain” so that information isn’t disclosed inappropriately, like above, I can’t see this happening in practice for a while yet.
This is where the similarity with Facebook stalking comes in, and this is where jobseekers have to keep their wits about them, and know their rights.
You know what it’s like – boy meets girl*, boy and girl have a few chats, boy and girl go out on a date. This being the 21st century, boy and girl Facebook stalk each other relentlessly. Boy and girl have another date, boy and girl can’t remember where they got information they know about each other. Did they tell them, or did they get it from Facebook stalking?
Of course, in that situation it’s entirely up to yourself what to do. If you caught the other person, mentioning something you ‘said’, how would you react? Would you query it? or would you simply let it slide, because if you pull them up on it, you mightn’t get lucky …
But in a job interview, if you get asked a question that doesn’t seem quite right, cast your mind back and try to remember if it refers to something which was on your CV or the material you submitted. By all means, if your suspicions are aroused, ask your panel if they have been googling you.
The point is simply this, as a jobseeker, you’re supposed to research the company you want to work for – this is expected of you, and you probably should mention this in the interview. However, while companies are increasingly using social media during recruitment (more recent article here), and Greenstein’s post recommends that they do, they are unlikely to be totally open about this, especially in the interview process. (I could be wrong about this – has a panel ever complemented you on your holiday photos?)
Bottom line: know your rights, and be aware that being passed over because of information revealed on the social networking sites may not be legal. Plus, it’s an interview, not a date. I daresay a potential employers prefer savvy recruit over a meek one and either way, if you don’t ask, it’s you who could get screwed, and not in a good way.
* Apologies for the inherent heteronormative/mongamous bias: this is simply easier to write than ‘a certain number of people meet each other …’ etc.
Image from How to not fail the crap out of a job interview