July 31, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Social Profiling
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August 1, 2008 at 12:39 am
I think in this modern world, we can't expect much privacy, so we should get over it. Anyway I don't think we can do much about it if prospective employers go snooping around for our personal websites to know our beliefs, unless we make as law blind something where employers don't know who they are hiring until they are hired, where the name etc of prospective employee is masked until hired. What is that called?
August 1, 2008 at 12:52 am
If information about you exists on the web it is in the public domain. While I may not WANT my employer or prospective employer or even my mum to know everything about me, if it's in the public domain then I have no control over it. So you know what, if I don't want my mum or my employer to know what I got up to a on Saturday night, I make sure that the web doesn't know about it either! It's that simple. Everyone has a right to privacy and you waive that right the moment you publish it on the web because clearly, by placing it on the web, you intend that information to be public.
As to employers googling you, well... that's just human nature! Don't tell me you've never googled a friend... or a date... like I said, the web is in the public domain.
Kristen Hodges
b. http://bi-tch.blogspot.com
August 1, 2008 at 1:13 am
Hi there,
kristen is totally right. If you don't want the world and his dog to see the photo of you passed out drunk at the stag night of your best friend, don't post it on your facebook account.
I fellow the path of only entering the minimum of personal information on the web as absolutely necessary. My professional profile is another thing, but I want people to see that!
regards
GermanDBA
Regards,
WilliamD
August 1, 2008 at 1:51 am
This issue is something that has concerned me for years. I participate in two major online forums, and both of them are controversial. If someone really actively googled me, they could easily find them out.
Personal life is moving online. Employers should stop after googling an employee's email address. If an employee has an online life, and takes care to separate the personal from the professional, that should be the employee's business.
August 1, 2008 at 2:26 am
Given that HR people have no way to be certain that any information they find is genuine, I don't think they should take any action based upon what they find on sites like Facebook. HR cannot even know if the information was posted by the person concerned, or it if is maliciously posted by someone else (An example of this was in the UK news recently).
In my own case there are lots of people with the same name as me, so it would be easy for an HR person armed only with the info on my job application form to mistakenly look at the wrong profile.
For any individual to have their job application turned down or not shortlisted based upon uncertain info on Facebook etc. would be very wrong, unless HR take reasonable steps to validate any information they use to make that decision.
August 1, 2008 at 2:53 am
There are 38 men with my first and last names in Texas alone. Like you said, surely HR has more important things to do than google me.
August 1, 2008 at 3:52 am
Agree with the above - if you don't want it to be public don't advertise it.
But then I'm not sad enough to have time for these social networking sites anyway. I stick to the discussion forums on my favourite websites!
August 1, 2008 at 4:25 am
Steve,
If it's out there in the public domain people will find it. If you don't want anyone to know, then don't put it out there.
I've been working in IT as a consultant for a long time and have worked in different place. Social networking sites (especially linkedin) have been somewhat valuable to me for catching up with people I've worked with years ago and lost touch with.
I would think the next time I'm looking for a gig it might be somewhat helpful, although It's been a while since I've been looking for work.
Mark
August 1, 2008 at 5:37 am
I'm honestly mixed on this one. On the one hand, it's none of HR's or the company's business what I do in my off time. On the other hand, participating in a leadership capacity in various civic and volunteer organizations can reflect well on you as a person and help in the hiring decision. Speaking just for myself, if I knew someone was a volunteer with the Scouts, I'd be more likely to hire them. But leadership in other organizations might push me the other way. The fact is, with the internet being such a major communication mechanism for every organization and interest, unless you never, ever, use your own name, you're going to appear in searches in a non-professional capacity somewhere.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
August 1, 2008 at 6:05 am
Damn! I skydive, scuba dive and own lots of guns. I'm screwed. 🙂
Call me paranoid, but with my (fairly unique) surname I changed my nickname and email address before posting this. There's my answer.
August 1, 2008 at 6:12 am
Very interesting topic.
It seems life can be a long line of 'should be' vs 'is'. It would be great if we could take advantage of all the free stuff out there on the internet without people snooping into it. Unfortunately, 'free' often means 'public'. And 'public' means that sooner or later your fun will be viewed by someone whom you don't like very much.
The U.S. Supreme court years ago took up one of many cases in personal privacy over phone lines. One of the justices likened the situation to a personal phone in your home vs a public pay phone in a crowded bar. On your personal phone, you have (or should have) an absolute expectation of privacy. If you're yelling into a phone in a crowded bar, you're likely to be overheard and at that point you lose any expectation of protection. The internet is like the phone in the bar. Another illustration would be renting a billboard in a major city and putting the words "don't read this unless you're someone I like" in the top third and putting sensitive personal information in the bottom two thirds. Your information will be read, sorry. 🙁
___________________________________________________
“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”
August 1, 2008 at 6:20 am
There is a consideration in this subject matter that came as a surprise to me and you may not have considered...
Just a few years ago my High School class celebrated our 30th reunion. I was asked if I would mind putting up a web site where class members submitted a profile page. We had a class of 185 people, and 121 submitted pages.
A few months after the reunion I heard from three class members asking that I pull their pages. Two were in the financial industry and one in healthcare - but all three said they were asking to have pages pulled because "compliance officers" at their jobs required it.
Naturally I pulled their pages, but being curious I spoke to one of them (financial industry) and asked why they had been asked by compliance departments to pull the pages?
I was somewhat surprised to find that this is becoming the norm in the financial industry for mid and upper level managers. Their employers see a number of problems with not only sites like our reunion site, but LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking sites.
First, security: anyone in the financial industry exposing personal information puts the company "at risk" (so I was told). Second, competition: companies do not want headhunters and recruiters phishing social sites for details on people that might be used to lure them away from their current jobs. Third, risk management: companies do not want employees posting even the slightest hint of what they might be doing at work - you know, as though someone might say they just finished this big project or something.
Indeed, I learned that at this particular large financial services company in question, compliance officers troll the web regularly to check on any links to mid and upper level managers. If found, the employee is notified to remove whatever is posted - as policy!
I know that when I worked for a large international services company, our email was regularly snooped and a couple employees were diciplined for mentioning ill opinions of some company execs. Now learning that some companies have people whose job it is to regularly phish for any posts anywhere by managers... Phew, kind of creepy, but I guess not totally shocking.
So I guess we should all be somewhat cautious about what we post, and where. But I would almost bet you that soon we will hear some news about a lawsuit (or two) where people resist this dictum. After all, if you worked in one of these financial or healthcare industries, even at the upper levels, and you had (for example) a quilting or fishing, or whatever (hobby) web site of your own - does a company have a right really, to dicipline your personal life?
George Orwell must be shaking his head in his grave!
August 1, 2008 at 6:34 am
I wonder if my HR person is on Facebook? I would add her, and my boss. The people I work with are easy going so I wouldn't have anything on there that would give me grief. Actually, it would help if I posted MORE evidence of drinking after hours. Although for your a job at a large company with strict codes of conduct, you probably wouldn't want to invite your boss or HR person to check out what you do with your friends unless you're willing to do those things with them.
Then again, if you're posting pictures of parties, social events, etc then at least they know the kinds of things you do as opposed to what you COULD be doing when you're not at work (criminal activities, etc). Still, I wouldn't post something that could be damaging if a potential employer found out. Not that it'd make a difference whether I posted it or not because where I live all the IT people pretty much know each other and basically switch between the various employers in town with in-house development (about a dozen). We joke about the incestuousness of the situation. There's at most a few hundred of us here in town and if you were thinking of hiring someone, you'd at most be within 3 (typically 1 or 2) degrees of separation from knowing them personally. You'll be at lunch or a party and there'll be IT people from 4 different companies there. Heck the Dragonboat team we put together had IT/IS people from 6 different companies on it!
August 1, 2008 at 6:43 am
Funny, I just set up a LinkedIn account and both my boss and my HR were on there!
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