The City of Bozeman, Montana has agreed to modify its preemployment screening policy with respect to monitoring employment applicants’ social networking sites as part of its background checks. According to the Billings Gazette, job applicants were being asked for their user names and passwords so that human resources personnel could examine any information.
Bozeman has not been the only employer to review job applicants’ social networking sites. Increasingly, this has become a common practice. It is argued by those who conduct such exploratory background searches that what job candidates post on their social networking sites reveals much about their character. Those for it argue that there are strong indicators as to whether an employment candidate is serious about his work, whether he besmirches his past employers, and whether he behaves in a manner not fitting his prospective position.
But others argue this is not always an indication of someone’s character. It has been pointed out that younger employees, especially, may be looser and freer with their postings, but that does not necessarily prove we either incompetence or a negligent character.
We at Corra Group have been asked form time to time whether we would conduct such social networking reviews as part of our background checking program. We feel that this is a very tough call. Establishing thresholds for character assessment is a difficult at best. There is also the issue of social relativism. What may offensive to one person is inoffensive or even humorous to someone else. Different jobs in different industries call for creative and innovative thinking, and sometimes such thinking requires outlets where the employees can blow off a little harmless steam. Social networking sites provide such outlets.
Corra Group believes that most employers would do better with professional reference background searches, rather than monitoring social websites. But then, that is just an opinion. The fact is, municipalities may regard the practice, as evidenced in City of Bozeman, an invasion of privacy. Other employers may think it is fitting and in keeping with weeding out the less desirable job candidates from their working environments. Like I said, it’s a tough call, and one that will not be resolved in the near future. In fact, you can expect to see more employers eyeballing the social networking sites. Especially in a bad economy where employment candidates are plentiful and recruiting may require greater discrimination.
But for the City of Bozeman, anyway, it’s no more FaceBook.
Check them out before you hire.
