What you should know about how job recruiters use social media to hunt you down

HR Managers have turned themselves info Social-Networking Hunters...

 

I've been working jobs most of my life, long before anyone knew what "social media" meant. If I can't get hired on my experience, work ethic and attitude alone, then I'm afraid I've not much use for a company, never mind their use for me. I can also tell you that the exact second one asks me for my Facebook password if I even had an account, is the exact second I end the interview and walk. Social media is one of the worst things we've come up with.

 

But how do we prevent the social media industry from becoming and/or tying into something self-reinforcing and self-servicing that is used in a behind the scenes fashion? Like, say, the credit rating industry? Where 1) the absence of a history profile counts against you, 2) the actual raw data and precise algorithms are opaque, 3) errors in that data and/or derived scores are fairly common, 4) addressing those errors is often difficult and in some cases effectively impossible?

 

Well, in the credit industry it wouldn't work so well. The only history it worries about are your bill payments and whether they were on time. What you did in a London pub last summer doesn't determine how much of a credit risk you are. Really the only thing social media data is good for is profiling/law enforcement, advertising and, sadly, job chances/career length. To protect against that last thing, the one thing you should never do is post what may seem like completely harmless photos of yourself doing anything at all that can be used against you. Pictures, posting about topics such as religion, pro-life/pro-choice, the gay community and politics. To mods looking right now, I am not going intentionally off topic, these are topics in profiles known to create issues, especially for teachers, sport careers, high level jobs like CEOs and more.

Your best bet for low-risk social media use is to be about as boring as you can be, and keep your "friending" to a minimum..which of course completely makes the use of social networks rather pointless for most. Ironic huh?

 

It's not unheard of for landlords to check out social media sites when reviewing the qualifications of prospective tenants.

 

No, not at all. That can be good of course, but I'm still against it. I still say your best bet is to be human and be yourself, but make certain your human side doesn't show itself on Facebook for Zuckerberg to keep forever and make a buck off of, or Twitter where it can be screenshot and posted all over the place. Being anal retentive is now called "sophistication", and if one "sophisticated" employer, organization, political person/group and on and on, gets a hold of anything they find the least bit offending, your goose can be cooked.

Yeah, my hatred for social media is very obvious here. But I could fill this section of the forum with plenty of cases to justify that hate. We've come a long way since the heyday of MySpace when people understood you were just being you on there and very few used it as a weapon against you.

 

Against what, Mman? A landlord checking out social media sites when reviewing the qualifications of prospective tenants?

 

Yeah, I kind of am, Page. Maybe that's me being anal retentive, or just me thinking why judge someone based on a post or a photo (provided there aren't dead bodies/written terrorist threats of course, I do have some common sense) . I completely get checking out a tenant, it makes sense in plenty of ways. I don't know, I just think the social thing has gotten way out of hand, and perhaps I've heard and seen too many social horror stories.

 

The problem is there is almost no end to the information that could be claimed to be useful for judging the _____ - worthiness of an individual and, where it applies, adjusting rates to match perceived risk. In the past the collection and analysis of information for such purposes was limited by the difficulty in acquiring information (the manhours required to gather it from a multitude of different sources, much of it being held in private hands, etc) and processing it to extract those bits of information deemed statistically or otherwise important. However, due to the computerization and networking of our society... due to people using technology to create, exchange, store, and surface so much information about their finances, mental and emotional states, spending patterns, hobbies, interests, travels, daily private lives within their homes and other private spaces, etc... it has become tremendously easier to access information and datamine it to create whatever "worthiness scores" someone might *think* is important or simply *claim* to be important for marketing purposes. Just how far one can go via fully automated means is hard to say but technology advances every day and we must not forget this.

Might a landlord want to look at a prospective tenant's $whatever profile and pictures in order to try to assess their employment situation, financial condition, personal character and behaviors, see pictures of how they kept their previous home(s), look for signs they throw wild parties and/or have reckless friends, see if they like animals enough that they might violate a no pets clause, judge whether they have hobbies that might dirty or damage the place, see if the travel and will leave the place unoccupied frequently, etc? Sure, absolutely. However, I think a similar concept would apply to insurance carriers and various creditors. There is potentially useful... revealing... information in social networking/sharing databases.

 

THE PROBLEM OF SCALE

As with so much in the modern world, this issue is transformed by the increase in scale. What is judged simple and allowable between individuals can become pernicious when imposed upon populations.

I may rent my in-law apartment to that nice college kid, but you know how some of them act. Why not check out his FB pages to be safe? After all, he posted freely. And.............

Already well on the way, and universally required in a few years, the professional 'Me' can't get or keep a job at any legitimate corporation or with the government unless I open my personal life on almost every level. And what a great income stream for all those aggregators; Human Resources gets to see the entire file with my permission, or else don't waste our time.

Try writing a law for that one, even without the lobbies.

It's easier for society to cave, as we are. After all, you don't HAVE to play.

 

Re: THE PROBLEM OF SCALE

And THAT, as Baretta used to say, is the name of that tune!
If people are gonna insist on putting their life out there on display, why in the world should they even begin to expect others not to peek?
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
Hey wait, not you! LOL!

 

LOL page..No one would want me anyways,I am to old.to sick and have no patience for some snot nose terd and besides that I am retired.

 

The obvious defence is using multiple identities. Most kids use game personas, anyway. It would be prudent for parents to encourage that strategy.

 

Re: THE PROBLEM OF SCALE

I think we need to remember to differentiate between people truly wanting to share information publicly, for anyone and everyone to see, and people wanting to share information selectively, for only certain people to see. For example, it wouldn't make a difference if you and I were communicating via email, you and I and a dozen others were doing so through an emailing list, or you and I and a dozen others were doing so via some other mechanism (which could be called a social networking platform). We're engaged in a form of private communications. It *is* reasonable for us to object, in the strongest possible terms I would say, to someone else (such as a provider carrying our communications) monitoring and using the information for their purposes. They aren't actually parties to this form of private communications.

Do we *HAVE* to communicate via the net in such or similar ways? Technically no, but in this world we live in the net is routinely used and relied upon to communicate for a wide range of non-essential and essential purposes. So practically speaking I would argue that yes, we *do* have to play to some degree. We *do* have to use Internet based communication systems and specifically those which are widely used and supported. Thus we are in deep, deep, deep trouble when the powerhouses that control the technology we use work to replace and reshape the systems so that we can't keep our communications and information private.

 

Re: THE PROBLEM OF SCALE

That's very true. But here, the issue isn't social media providers who are selling out users. It's third parties who are demanding access to private conversations.

In societies with privacy rights, concern about the issue is driving legislation to regulate access. But even so, discretion and subterfuge are prudent.

 

Re: THE PROBLEM OF SCALE

I do think part of the issue or an issue here is social media providers selling out users in various ways at present (designs/policies which result in greater than desired exposure and use of information) and possibly more so in the future. However, if you mean I broadened the discussion to include additional related (supply-side) aspects rather than focusing on just the demand-side aspects namely recruiters "demanding" that there be some things they can successfully access, then I would agree. Yes, I ballooned the discussion a bit, sorry about that. Zing, there went a photon.

 

Sorry to have been pedantic

What's insidious about Facebook is the apparent privacy. On Wilders, there's clearly no privacy. Everything that we post promptly shows up in Google etc. But on Facebook, there's the illusion of access control. That can sucker users into inappropriate sharing. I wonder if that's intentional.

 

All of the information out there is provided voluntarily by users.
People set up twitter, facebook, etc and share info.
So it's public information and anyone can use it whoever they want.

If you are not smart enough to present a good picture, it's your problem.
Lastly, as much as you are being interviewed so you do interview the company.
Take it or leave it, it's a free market.

Wanna stay anonymous - don't open social media accounts. Simple.

Now, whether this info tells anything useful, that's a different story ...

Mrk

 

In my area the police are moniitoring facebook to see whats being said.In fact the police in my town had arrested two teens for threatining another. Especially after the latest horrific tragedy in CT school,social website are being monitored more so then ever.If you dont want someone to know your life story or hunt you down then stay under the radar.

 

Right, and then there's that kid who got arrested after bragging on Facebook about driving drunk. He was probably also posting drunk

 

I have held the same job for 20 years since graduating college. I am so glad Facebook and the like were not around when I started out. Of course, I still don't have an account there or anywhere else indexed.

The HR at my company is off the hook as much as IT is! ;-)

 

LinkedIn is one that some HR departments look for. I've been turned down in the past because I didn't have an account listed on my resume.

 

This isn't surprising, employers have always wanted to know everything about their employees. Now they just have a new means to do so.

 

And thus, perhaps, a future panopticon state will be enforced not by government tyranny but by public stupidity. "Oh hey, that guy doesn't have a Facebook account... Must be some kind of weirdo."