Companies Are Using Facebook to Research Candidates
A recent onrec report claims that “nearly half of Brits (43%) would feel outraged if an employer used a social networking site such as Facebook…”
Um…that’s a lot of outraged Brits.
As pointed out on the NowHiring blog, companies and recruiters have been using Google and other tools (in fact, any tools at their disposal!) to find out about candidates.
Of course on Facebook people have the misguided notion that things are much more private than they are. And, the site was original designed to be a private network amongst friends, so people feel more free to post stuff that they wouldn’t want employers seeing. Oops. I’ve argued before that social networks are not personal but in fact are professional tools and should be thought of that way. Yes, they can be used for personal reasons, as long as you very clearly realize that other people are using them for professional purposes.
Candidates should also be using the tools at their disposal - Google, Facebook, etc. - to find out more about potential employers. (If you really want to go crazy, check out Jim Stroud’s 200+ resources for researching companies.)
I would always recommend that candidates do this; you need to do your “due diligence” on companies before accepting jobs with them. It just makes sense.
I don’t really see a difference between using Facebook (or LinkedIn or any other network) and going in a “5 à 7″, and asking someone at random if they know someone who fits a certain job profile.
The power of the human network is now accessible on a different medium and 24h a day. Other than that, pretty similar to me…
The difference between a “5 a 7″ and searching for information on Facebook (or elsewhere) is that you can dig up a lot more dirt online than you can in-person.
And that’s what makes information on the Web much more difficult to manage and what makes it a bigger concern for people. If you put up ridiculous stuff on your FB profile and an employer or potential employer sees it, how will they react? Maybe they’ll like it…but the risk / issue remains.
[…] about massively exposing yourself to potential employers. Smart companies will already be using Facebook and other tools to research candidates, so does it make sense to pull it all together in one neat package? Tags: […]