News broke last month
of recruiters requesting theFacebook login
details of job
candidates in order to screen profiles prior to offering them a position. The
news set off a firestorm of controversy about what recruiters had the right to
ask for. The debate soon broadened with news reports that a teaching assistant
was fired by her
employer for not
allowing them access to her Facebook profile. This rapid progression of
controversy has prompted some states to sponsor bills that would make such
requests illegal.
What’s driving this
invasive trend is the perceived importance of what gets posted on social media
when it comes to evaluating a new hire or current employee. It stems from a
study published earlier this year that claimed a glance at someone’s Facebook profile was a better indicator of future job
success than more traditional personality tests.
The practice of
screening what’s publically available when selecting a job candidate is far
from new. It’s standard practice to do research on a candidate via their social
media profiles, be they on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or any other social
networking platform. A 2011 survey by social media monitoring service Reppler
found that 91% of recruiters reported using social networking sites to evaluate
job applicants.
So is requesting Facebook
access any different than requesting access to someone’s email account?
Browsing a public profile is worlds apart from requesting access to that which
the individual has expressly denied the public access to. Facebook has
already stated that
such request from employers undermines privacy and security policies. They went
on to say that Facebook would be working to protect its users private
information by engaging lawmakers and pursuing legal action, including
“shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.”
There’s also the fact
that recruiters who are engaging in this practice open their organizations to
litigation. Since an individual’s Facebook profile will likely reveal
information such as their age, race, gender, national origin or disabilities,
there’s not a lot of grey area when it comes to the discrimination potential of
requesting access to their profile – which is akin to asking for that
information outright in an interview.
“We don’t think
employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords,
because we don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said in a statement. “But
it also may cause problems for the employers that they are not anticipating.”
It’s clear that the
temptation is incredibly high to pry into someone’s Facebook account, but
ethically and legally the best course of action for recruiters is to resist
that temptation and ensure that their relationship with the employee gets off
on the right footing.
Source: HRMToday
