Googling oneself or others has become commonplace, and despite the potential for mistaken identities, fairly common among job recruiters as well. More recently, college admissions officers began scanning Facebook for signs of unwanted life, and it seems likely government hiring agents will follow suit.
A recent report by the National Association for College Admission
Counseling revealed that about 25 percent of U.S. colleges were snooping via Facebook or search engines on applicants. The study did not state which schools acknowledged the practice or
how often they used it, but as Facebook's popularity continues to attract 30, 40, and 50-somethings, it's likely to increase, not decrease.
In government hiring, Facebooking or Googling someone applying for a job is just as easy. After hiring a state employee fired for fraud, DHS create an agency policy mandating hiring managers to Google all potential employees. Given that the likelihood of mistaking a candidate with a criminal, pornographer, or
other unsavory character is lower using Facebook than Google, it's not hard to imagine future employers waking up to the platform's potential for screening out the bad apples from the bunch.
But Facebook users have become more familiar
with the privacy controls, and most of those (usually younger) people
who have potentially embarrassing content on their pages do not make
it accessible to anyone but friends. Anyone can alter their privacy settings so that their page
will never come up in a search (Settings>Privacy Settings>Search)
or so that it only comes up when a certain group. If
you choose to have “Everyone” able to search you, you have the option
to not have your page come up in a public search (so your page doesn’t
appear if someone searches your name on Google).
Likewise, for each individual
part of your page, you can restrict who can access the information. An important privacy feature that is less used is the “Friends Lists”
(Friends tab on top left>Create a list), which allows you to lump
together a group of your Facebook friends and limit what they can see. This is very valuable whn buckling to the social pressures of accepting that friend request from a work colleague you'd rather not share your bikini photos with. For instance, you could make a “Coworkers” group whose members can
see your basic information and interests but not your pictures or your
wall posts. If you do leave your pictures visible to the public,
you can set email updates that tell you when you’ve been tagged in
a photo of a night you'd forgotten about by someone else so that you can quickly take it down if need be.
The reality is, even if a person is careless enough to leave illicit pictures accessible and have their
name come up in a general search might deserve what they get, but even after
finding and weeding out those dim-wits or technochallenged, a hiring manager will find little reason from your drinking photos in Cancun to stake a decision on. However, information from a Facebook profile could instead bring about
some decidedly negative results: rather than just making a decision
based on the resume/references/interview, a hiring
manager could subconsciously (or consciously) be affected by a person's race, attractiveness, weight, dress, or perceived personality. Once a snooping hirer sees personal
information (including info that cannot legally be asked for in an interview) ,
“You can’t un-ring the bell” as employment lawyer Jeanine DeBacker
put it.
Most people maintain a different demeanor around friends than they do at work. Even if a personal Facebook page shows nothing incriminating, bits of evidence that show the potential employee
to be any different than the hungry, hard-working, motivated team player sought might be damaging—both to
the employee that doesn’t get a job, and the employer that is potentially
missing out on some great talent.
Facebook has already been at
the center of court cases wherein improper conduct by employees has
surfaced on the site and resulted in firings, but there has yet to be
a case disputing a discriminatory non-hiring as a result of Facebook
content. In the coming years, it is likely that the rules of
the social media game, whether official or unofficial, will be ironed
out. Hiring managers will go from being on the outside of the
phenomenon of internet exhibitionism to being themselves veterans of
it. Until then, prospective employees—keep tabs on your tabs.
And hiring managers—don’t put too much stock in Facebook stalking. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, when taken out of context, those words are just gibberish.
Also Interesting: