Have you increased the privacy level on your Facebook settings? If you do, it not only protects you from harassment from some nasty virtual stalkers, but also spares you the silent grilling of employers who are now screening candidates by looking at their Facebook pages.
A survey conducted by the online employment website CareerBuilder found that 37 percent of hiring managers use social networking sites to research job applicants, with over 65 percent of that group using Facebook as their primary resource.
Despite the danger of using Facebook to check candidate backgrounds without permission, it’s still irresistible for employers to abstain from it. The question is why? Up to ten years ago, there was no such magic window to probe a person’s private world in a second, but now all that is needed is access to the internet.
Some employers believe that a candidate’s personal life correlates with their work performance. They are trying to identify those “personality red flags” on Facebook so as to filter candidates whose personality or appearance may not be compatible with the company’s expectations, culture or brand. The “reddest flags” include but are not limited to using drugs, excessive drinking, wild “performance art”, badmouthing former employers, discriminatory remarks or simply “inadequacy in writing well”.
In addition to those universal taboos, employers from different cultures may look for different “flags”. In some cultures, employers would prefer female applicants to be single rather than married. In other cultures, sexual orientation that goes against tradition is not accepted. In countries with entrenched immigrant history, racial discussion is always sensitive and provocative.
A recent study published on Journal of Applied Social Psychology explored the impressions that hiring managers formed solely based on candidates’ Facebook page. This involved looking at what was publicly available on their Facebook pages (photos, status updates, and conversations with friends) and then assigning each person a score, on important qualities for being a great employee. Some of these qualities are shown in the picture below.
Although the sample size was small, the researchers found a strong correlation between employee performance and the employability predictions that were made based on their Facebook pages.
When hiring managers are happy with the Facebook spying, job seekers obviously feel differently. Compared to Twitter and LinkedIn, job seekers treat Facebook as personal territory rather than a job hunting arena. Many take it for granted that Facebook is more private and posts on there should be immune to employers ‘ judgements. However, that’s why many applicants with perfect resume beat their brain not knowing that they got rejected due to a provocative picture on their Facebook page. So let’s face the music, versus the professionalized image you decorate on LinkedIn, the real “you” on Facebook piques more interests to employers.
While many people argue that one’s personal life has little to do with the behaviours at professional workplace, there are only 11 percent of companies studied by Careerbuilder, that explicitly banned searching candidates via social networks.
Some job seekers settle this “to post or not to post” dilemma with a different approach - “I would not work for them in the first place if they judge me on my private zone. It certainly crosses boundaries, which predicts a lousy shallow employer.” Well, it’s a good mentality to ease anxiety, but what we really need is a more equal job searching environment.
While the issues over “Facebook Screening “ continue to raise more attention in the field of ethics and human rights, the regulatory/legal structure is still playing catch-up. Till then, as a job seeker it is better to be more cautious in monitoring your Facebook activities. And here are some hints for doing this:
- Set your privacy settings to “only to friends”.
- Take down provocative pictures and reject invitations for being tagged in such pictures.
- Check your past status, wipe off words that elude or lead to an interpretation of a bad manner.
- Be mindful and respectful of what you are going to say. Once posted, the impact is made.
- Search for yourself on Google and see what results pop-up from Facebook, so you know what other people can see and take down any material that is not appropriate.
