Job Analysis and Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM is a management approach that concentrates on teamwork, integrity, continuous improvement and continuous assessment jobs and their worth. On the other hand, job analysis deals in investigating each job separately and collecting the job-related information. Usually, the process is conducted in an organization once in a while especially when HR department has to source […]
Human Resource Development (HRD) – Meaning and Important Concepts
The field of HRD or Human Resource Development encompasses several aspects of enabling and empowering human resources in organization. Whereas earlier HRD was denoted as managing people in organizations with emphasis on payroll, training and other functions that were designed to keep employees happy, the current line of management thought focuses on empowering and enabling […]
What is Competency Based Assessment – Meaning and Important Concepts
With the ever evolving and diversifying business challenges, the approach to the management of human resources has also undergone a paradigm shift. The competitive advantage achieved through technology, new products and information is short lived and vastly evaporating. The only distinguishing feature from the competition which remains, are the skills and contribution from the employees. […]
Steps in Creating Individual Development Plan
Individual development plan plays an instrumental role in employee development. Individual development plan is generally prepared both by the employee as well as the employer as to what all initiatives the organization needs to take to enhance the skills of an employee and help him grow both personally as well as professionally. Individual development plans […]
What is Social Business ?
Social business is a business that is aimed at addressing a social cause. The investment made by the investors is entirely with a vision of contributing to the social welfare and not profit entirely. The investor may however get back his money after a certain time and cover all the operational costs of the organisation. […]
In recent years, there has been a noticeable trend among HR professionals to check the information supplied by a job applicant by comparing it with the information available on his or her Social Networking Websites or SNWs profile.
While this trend first become apparent in the West and in the United States in particular, it is catching on in the rest of the world as well where recruiters turn to the SNWs profiles of job applicants to verify and seek information about the candidates.
Indeed, this trend is both welcome and worrisome as there are potential legal and ethical implications not to mention privacy and security issues.
The trend is welcome because the recruiters have a need to know all the information about job applicants’ background and suitability especially for sensitive jobs where the job applicant needs to be totally “clean”. Further, the trend is welcome because employers can escape the negligent hiring charges that of late have become common in the US. This means that the recruiters can glean information from the SNWs profiles of the job applicants and if there are any serious character or integrity issues, they can spot them right away.
However, the trend of using the Social Networking Websites (SNWs) profiles of job applicants is worrisome, as the recruiters do not have the legal basis of using such profiles without the consent of the job applicants.
Further, the recruiters run the risk of being unethical in their approach as well as “lazy” in their recruiting process if they take the information from the SNWs profiles of the job applicants. Apart from this, the job applicants can be discriminated on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.
Moreover, the privacy and the sanctity of information that job applicants post on their Facebook and SNWs profiles is compromised. There is also the risk of security as once the recruiters get access to the profiles, information can be hacked by third parties and leaked which means that there are many implications to this practice.
Therefore, it is in the interest of all parties if there are proper safeguards that are drawn up to protect both the parties and this process is followed diligently. This means that the recruiters cannot access the SNWs profiles of the candidates without their consent and the job applicants are aware of their rights and disadvantages of posting personal details on their profiles.
We have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of recruiters accessing the SNWs profiles of the job applicants.
Taking the discussion further, it is advisable for job applicants to be aware of the fact that in the present information age, any details about themselves and their friends can be accessed by anyone and hence, they must be careful about the kind of information that they put out on the big bad World Wide Web.
Further, for many positions in the US, job applicants are required to undergo a narcotics test, which means that they would be medically tested for traces of any narcotic substances in their bodies. Therefore, a strong word of caution to the job applicants is that they better not reveal what they did last summer especially when they are applying for highly competitive jobs.
For recruiters, the word of advice is that they rely on the traditional route of background checks by independent agencies and not only on the SNWs profiles of the job applicants to base their hiring decisions.
Finally, whether the information is private or whether it has been obtained illegally and unethically, the fact that such information exists in the internet domain is cause enough for concern.
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