Should You Be Asking Your Applicants About their Social Presence?
President-elect Obama is requiring prospective aides to disclose, in a 9-page questionnaire, ALL social interactions and presence including blog posts, comments and “any Web sites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity”. This also means disclosing Facebook profiles, MySpace pages and even posts on Match.com.
“…that requirement would force applicants to disclose information about Facebook and MySpace pages, profiles posted on dating Web sites, and even what was posted on Web sites like CNET and YouTube that allow readers to append comments.”
Should companies be forcing their applicants to do the same?
Technorati Tags: Facebook, Obama, candidates, applicants, social interaction
10 Comments Add your own
1. Phil Fersht | November 18th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
No - companies should present employees with social media guidelines, i.e. to represent the firms professionally and avoid major conflicts of interest, and allow them to venture forth onto social digital-heaven. Sadly, many firms are still far too paranoid to allow their staff to venture into social networks, as they see no benefit in it for themselves - only the downside and the risk. And it’s the big corporate firms that are the worst offendors. LinkedIn and Facebook seem to be largely accepted, but its blogs, twitter etc that are still widely banned by corporates. End of the day, as long as staff behave responsibly, restraining them from developing their social media skills is surely going to discourage innovative ideas and networking opportunities that could result in new business. “That pesky new Internet thing” -:)
PF
2. Marie Adams | November 18th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I agree with Phil on this one. Companies should establish guidelines and trust that employees will act responsibly.
For every company that fears social networking, there’s another out there that embraces it. Look how well social networking has done for Zappos, where employees are encouraged to connect with customers on Twitter and the company blog.
Instead of fearing it, find ways to make social networking work for your business.
3. Bill Kutik | November 19th, 2008 at 4:17 am
No, companies should not do it. But presidential administrations absolutely should! Governments live and die (sometimes) by the press and what they disclose, and social media have become the 21st century “press.”
Just as I darn well want to know who’s been giving money to Bill before Hillary gets to be Secretary of State, I want to know what kind of lies those guys have been telling on Match! It’s public and available without subscription.
I am blown away by Obama’s websites and use of YouTube. He is so far ahead of most companies in reaching out and creating community among his target market.
Let me add, gratuitously, that after two years of seeming too gracious a guy to govern, I couldn’t be happier that Obama seems to be assembling the biggest political thugs in Washington to get things done!
You can’t change nuthin’ without people who know how to manipulate the levers of the system. Won’t happen with sit-ins.
4. Naomi Bloom | November 19th, 2008 at 4:25 am
I don’t think the issue raised by the Obama transition’s questionnaire is do they are don’t they but rather, given that they probably have done, is there anything out there which reflects to the discredit of the applicant in the eyes of the prospective employer or, in this case, is going to distract from the business of the administration. Just as an employer might find that an applicant’s conduct in any other personal sphere of activity — letters to the editor condemning the company’s products, photos taken at a meeting of some extreme group, conviction for child abuse, etc. — is cause for concern (which is why background checks are done — and I believe they will expand to cover behavior in the Web 2.0 world), so too is the electronic trail that we all leave as it reflects on our suitability for a particular company and/or position. A moment’s reflection before we twitter something that we would never say in an interview with the Wall Street Journal might be very good advice. Care with our social network entries, e.g. not overstating our credentials there any more than we should on a formal resume, is also good advice but not universally adopted.
5. Lisa | November 19th, 2008 at 6:10 am
I am sad to know that Obama has to give up his blackberry prior to 1-20-09 but glad to know he’ll be the first president to have a laptop on his desk. Progress is being made.
I concur with Bill that it’s one thing to ask a private Chuck Q Public applying for a job at the Buy More to turn over all of his social presence info. and entirely another to ask the potential Secretary of State. It’s all about the clearance and need for propriety.
I also agree with Naomi (as I often do)… think people! As a Bostonian, I love the saying attributed to Boston pol Martin Lomasney, Lomasney created a famous saying on the importance of discretion: “”Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.” Eliot Spitzer recently added the warning, “never put it in e-mail.”
6. BryanB | November 25th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Absolutely companies should require applicants to disclose that information!
If they never want any member of Generation Y or younger to apply, that is.
7. Jennifer Jarratt | November 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am
It’s interesting that this raises the question of whether membership of social networks is public or private life. Obviously for political jobs there isn’t much that is private anymore. But for ordinary business life, what’s private? Is Facebook my private life and LinkedIn purely professional? Look at all those people recently outed who belonged to a far-right group in the UK. Was that their private life? Probably not anymore!
8. Laura | December 29th, 2008 at 8:56 am
What I find interesting is that the first thought about these sites are on the ‘negative’ side…that the social websites are demonstrating the ‘bad’ side of someone. (Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, they do!) However I think that many are missing the opportunity to use the social networking sites as opportunities to highlight what one does, who one is and what one can bring to relationships, with their career, and to a workplace. I remember when we questioned what some people choose as their email address and they would actually put it on their resume! The same for social sites, if you have a site demonstrating your business acumen, then put the site it on the resume!
9. Mike Alfred | January 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
To comment on BryanB’s point, I don’t think it matters whether the applicant is older or younger. It seems like there are more 50+ folks on Facebook now than ever before. It’s pretty unbelievable to see how quickly these folks have grown accustomed to participating in social media.
10. John Hunter | March 27th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
It does seem like a crazy idea to me. You have another blog post talking about whether Google’s exhaustive hiring process is now a liability. Well, if a company actually did this can you imagine how many people that would have to hire to just try and determine whether their is anything significant that needs to be considered in the hiring process. To say nothing of getting agreement on how to evaluate all sorts of material - I can imagine that being a nightmare that gobbles up tons of time with almost no value.
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