We've all heard the tragic stories about individuals being fired, or not hired, because of content found in an online profile. This begs the question; Who's to blame? The person who freely consumed alcohol, whimsically flipped birds at photogs, openly spoke their mind about the world around them, yet failed to lock down their account? Or, the employer who rifled through that profile looking for who knows what...?Late last year I was forwarded a letter which had been sent as a reply to an employer who had discontinued pursuing a candidate because of content contained within their Facebook account. It begins an interesting debate into whether or not companies are simply weeding out toxic employees, or if they are misguidedly forming assumptions about an individuals work performance based on behavior in their (seemingly) "personal" life.
To quickly summarize the note, "Kyle" (the guy's name) mentions that the employer's older age was the only thing keeping the misguided behavior of his past, in the past. He goes on to align Facebook and LinkedIn as the equivalent personal and professional personas that we adhere to in our daily interactions. To use his words, he describes LinkedIn as a "front". Lastly, he tosses over a pot shot pondering ramifications for George W. Bush had he had a Facebook profile during his college years.
This guy raises a few good questions however. We are arguably more ourselves online than we are in reality because we often remove our social filters to reveal the actual views, opinions, and ideologies that govern our daily perceptions. Just consider how many vile comments you've read in forums simply because these folks knew that they were anonymous and knew that they had social distance. You very well may be one of those people!
I'll acknowledge that Facebook is a different beast as it's not anonymous and we can arguably manipulate how we present ourselves in these spaces. The problem is, we tend to forget that our views and opinions seep through into our social networking personas simply by way of the content that we post, share, retweet, and 'like'. You might not openly say that you agree that Sarah Palin is qualified to run on the 2012 G.O.P. ticket, but if you click "like this" after a friend has posted an article supporting that notion, you may as well own it in reality too.
I would submit that employers sifting through the Facebook accounts of potential candidates can very quickly lead down a road of profiling out certain individuals based on anything from political affiliation, to the types of television shows they enjoy. There's obviously a reason that people are on their best behavior when going in for a job interview; we want them to be professional! It's just an unrealistic expectation to think that people can be professional in all corners of their lives and then, consequently, base the quality of their professionalism on how their downtime is spent.
...but if you were an employer, would you use social media profiles as a means of screening candidates?
