“About that Facebook Pic . . . "

By Linda Brenner

Is it fair to search social networking sites for info on prospective employees? There are people in talent acquisition who include it as part  of their due diligence, but what does an unseemly picture taken during someone’s off hours really tell you about their potential at your company?

Plenty. It’s not only fair to scour a candidate’s social media presence to find out what their online presence is … it’s absolutely key if you’re hiring for a key position.  Legal issues aside, a recruiter considering a candidate for one of these positions would be remiss, at best, to not check.  And these days, it takes a minute or so to do a pretty thorough social media scan.

Consider the judgment of a person in a job search who has tweeted an offensive or racist comment. What does it reveal about this person if he allows compromising photos and information about herself to float around on a public blog? At the very least it indicates a lack of technological savvy and questionable judgment.

When it comes to filling a critical job, a good recruiter needs to make sure that a candidate can do more than just interview well.

Comments:

Simple solution - keep your FB page private.

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I am most certainly not a proponent of penalizing people for normal (maybe out of contex) behavior.  However, there are no hard and fast rules here.  What if the guy in the picture above is a candidate for your VP, Investor Relations job?  Versus an Assistant Manager position for  a videogame store?  What if *this* guy applies for your Director of Sports Marketing>>  http://bit.ly/dRknFh?  Do you want a VP of Operations candidate for a restaurant company - who would lead a team of 50,000 diverse employees - authoring a daily, rabid right- or left-wing blog? 

I think it’s all important data points - and if (or how) the information is used depends on the circumstances.  But I don’t think it’s irrelevant or wrong to consider it.  In some cases, I think a recruiter - acting as guardian of talent into the organization - is absolutely compelled to find it and consider it.

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While I would certainly agree that certain tweets would be grounds for removing a prospective candidate from consideration.

However, I’m not so sure about pictures. In many pictures, it is very difficult to understand the context. In the picture above, the ‘prospective candidate’ is dressed up and holding a beer. Unless, he is underage; there is nothing about this picture that should call into question his judgment to do a job.  For example, he could have simply been at a Halloween party having a good time.  Why would attending a party and partaking in an adult beverage signal questionable judgment?

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I had similar thoughts as the above reader. Why is drinking a beer grounds for rejection for a job, even if a picture was taken of the drinker? Often, this is exactly the time (Halloween, New Year’s, etc.) people take a lot of photos. I’m not sure being tagged on a Halloween, New Year’s, rally, protest, concert, etc. photo indicates a lack of tech savviness.

Similarly, when you said people should be eliminated for posting things that offended others, I’d be interested to hear some specific examples. If I post on Facebook that I despise the Lakers, I may offend someone who loves them. If, on the other hand, I click on a button that I love the Lakers and “like” or am a fan of Kobe Bryant, I may offend someone who hates him as a player or as a person.

If I comment about Barack Obama, George Bush, Sarah Palin, Tiger Woods … any of the many people I see commented about within Facebook pages … I will offend many people either way I comment.

I’d say the devil’s in the details here as to the sort of photos and comments that should disqualify people — I’m not sure a comment that could offend others would be the criteria.

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The picture above is actually from a specific incident that gained national press.  An intern told his boss he needed to go home for a family emergency and then posted that picture (from a Halloween party) on Facebook.  He was fired for lying.

I’m not a great fan of using social media to find information on candidates, if for no other than it’s difficult to know you have the correct person.  Similar names & backgrounds can make it hard to know with certainty that you have found the right person (I once hired two people with the same name/same spelling from the same MBA program…I think we did it to avoid rejecting the wrong one).  Certainly if someone puts it out there, you can use it — you just need to be careful that you have the full picture before you decide.

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Social Media is a complete catch 22.  You want people to have profiles but you don’t want them to have anything the least bit “incriminating” within them.

I’ve always done my recruiting job based on the concept of finding the qualified candidate. Who meets the bar set by the hiring manager…. I don’t care what they do in their off hours as long as it does no harm and isn’t a crime…federal offense or otherwise. Sitting in judgement of someone’s momentary social media lapse…that’s not for me.  People make mistakes, and what’s most telling is if they learn from them and move forward.

I hope that if you’re a recruiting/talent management pro that is going to research someone on social media before hire that you have the cojones to tell them why you’ve disqualified them so they can fix their mistakes and move forward.  Anything else would be wrong.

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People make mistakes, and what’s most telling is if they learn from them and move forward.

But some people won’t let some things go.  Maybe it’s human nature. As an early 18th century saying goes: “First impressions are the most lasting.”

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I think you have a good point about understanding the context/intent of a picture.

I imagine recruiters not telling the candidate they didn’t get the job because of something you found while googling is more likely, mostly because you are telling someone you’re judging them based on something they didn’t disclose to you, which - even though it’s googleable and public - feels private.  

This seems like an invasion of privacy and judging candidates for something they didn’t disclose to you (as we judge based on what we see/heard on a resume, in an interview, from references) feels like crossing the line. Soft references would not fall into the category of information provided to us, it’s fair game because at least it’s related to their work performance.

As a recruiter, it’s our job to find out all the information we need to make a decision during the interview process. I am against googling candidates because I feel like it’s a cheap way to get dirt/info on someone instead of doing our job, like getting to know the people we’re recruiting to make sure their values align with our organization’s.

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