A popular employment issue over the past few years has been the use of social networking sites by employers for information on prospective and current employees. Millions of people worldwide have joined sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Friendster. The focus of these sites is to build online communities of people who share similar interests. The sites allow users to create pages where you can display photos and share information about yourself with friends and the public at large. While these sites may have originally appeared to have been tailored to teens and tweens, their usage has become widespread. A recent survey revealed that 65% of business professionals are utilizing personal and professional social networking sites. Not unexpectedly, employers have become more aware of such sites and it is easy for them to find information job seekers may have preferred to keep private.
A 2007 survey by Careerbuilder indicated that 22 percent of hiring managers said they use social networking sites to research candidates prior to making a hiring decision. This is twice the number that the same survey found in 2006. 34% of these hiring managers reported that they found content that caused them to dismiss a candidate from consideration. Employers have also fired employees for information found on social networking sites. For example, one person in Boston divulged on Facebook that his workday consisted of “screwing around on IM” and “talking to my friends and getting paid for it.” After being confronted by the CEO about these entries, the person was fired. Examples like this highlight the need for job seekers to consider the content they post on these “social” sites in the context of their professional, as well as private lives.
Multiple articles on this subject have focused on the legality of using social networking sites as background checks of current employees or job applicants. Before I begin discussing this subject, please note that this is not intended to be legal advice. The common claims and questions have involved discrimination and invasion of privacy. As one author put it “like it or not, as a general proposition employers are free to make . . . hiring and termination decisions, even based on false information, as long as in doing so they do not violate some specific law.” At the moment no law prohibits employers from searching social networking sites on the Internet to conduct their own background checks of current employees or job applicants. An employer can then terminate an employee or refuse to hire an applicant based on information found on the Internet so long as the information learned from the Internet is not used in a discriminatory manner or is otherwise prohibited by law. An example of discrimination in this case would be if an employer only checks for damaging information on applicants or employees based on race or gender. A claim of invasion of privacy is unlikely to succeed as this claim requires a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This is especially true if the site is readily accessible to the public. However, there is a potential argument that using social networking sites to conduct background checks violate state statutory law. For example, California and New York have statutes that prohibit employers from interfering with employees’ off duty private lives.
It has been difficult to find any example of a successful claim against an employer for the unlawful use of social networking sites. At least one expert believes that lawsuits over internet snooping are only a matter of time. However this is merely speculation. There is only one true way to prevent your social networking sites from negatively impacting your career: be careful about its content. You should assume that future employers will read everything you post.
On the other hand, using your sites affirmatively can give employers a positive view of you. In the same Careerbuilder survey mentioned above, 24% of hiring managers indicated that they favored some job seekers over others because of their social networking profiles. These job seekers included/illustrated attractive information about themselves in their profiles such as great communication skills, wide range of interests, good fit for employer’s culture, professional image, and creative ideas. There are other ways of preventing negative attention from employers based upon information on social networking sites such as changing your privacy settings on sites such as Facebook so that only certain people can view your profile. Periodically checking your friends or acquaintances’ sites for contents concerning you can also help to make sure you don’t get any unpleasant surprises during the hiring process or during your employment. Finally, Google yourself! Use a search engine such as Google to see what information people can find out about you on the internet and make sure that what you find is appropriate. Look at what you’re putting out to the world about yourself with a critical eye if you don’t like what you’ve found be proactive and change it – don’t let your social networking persona negatively effect your real life career.