plarq
Crazy forever
searched. Cannot find anything about me.
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Is it fair for employers to judge a person by what they say on the Internet?
- Thread starter Gary Childress
- Start date
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Don't get me wrong, I still have plenty of good friends that are very forgetful. Even when I used to see them every day or so at the university, they'd still forget to invite me to stuff. They never phone or text about party plans. They just slap on a Facebook event, invite a bunch of people, and say "invite anyone I missed" (sometimes with "if you see this and were supposed to be invited, you are, I just forgot"). I was upset at their forgetfulness once that I nearly stopped being friends with them at one point, until I realized that that's who they are, and it's not personal directed at me specifically.
We're talking about the bigger kind of parties here, where there's gonna be dimmed lighting, music, cute girls. Maybe find a girl and make out with her for the night, maybe get laid. I'm not too big into those parties, but sometimes they are very nice to go to. And nothing's more frustrating (especially to me) than not getting invited to one of those explicitly, because my manners forbid me from coming by to a party even if I know these guys are close enough that they wouldn't mind and it's just because they forgot me (if I ever become aware of this party, that is).
So, although not utilizing social media may seem like you're not missing out, and that there's no difference... the difference is in the things you don't notice.
Well I'm married so I don't need to go to parties to meet cute girls and since my wife and I mostly share mutual friends I find out what's going on through her Facebook account. So no Facebook for me, never had one and I don't forsee that I'll ever need one.
As to the topic at hand, I fail to see how an employer doing as thorough a background check as possible is a violation of your civil liberty. All the information an employer can gleen from your internet usage is legal just for the simple fact that you made it publically available. Sure you may need your Facebook to stay connected, but that in no way means that you HAVE to post things you wouldn't want a potential employer to see.
If you post a picture of yourself getting sloppy drunk and an employer judges you negatively because of it, you have no one to blame but yourself. You can't just put whatever you want out there for everyone to see and still expect privacy.
I mean, put yourself in the position of the employer. Since your main objective is to provide a product or service to turn a profit you want the most productive employees you can possibly find. Therefore if you see a lot of pictures of a potential or current employee drinking heavily on a consistent basis, then you can reasonably assume that eventually affect his/her productivity.
Not to mention the simple fact that a business owner has the right to hire or not hire anyone they want as long as the decision complies with equal opportunity laws. As of right now, it is perfectly legal for an employer to discriminate based on your internet persona.
In my opinion I feel this is okay because, unlike race or gender, what you say and do are absolutely 100% YOUR choice thus it is perfectly okay to judge someone based on their words and actions.
NetGear
King
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2002
- Messages
- 729
This pretty much happened to me when I stopped using facebook. Life goes on though. People worth contacting will still contact you. That's all that matters.
What you say should have consequences. Saying something online doesn't mean you shouldn't have to deal with that cliche. If you don't like it hide your real name, make a fake email and register stuff to that. With all the info floating around on the web, im sure someone can track everything you did down if they really tried eventually.
The issue is that even if you are sensible and turn up your privacy setting sufficiently, employers can ask/(pay?) Facebook to gain access to your profile regardless, from what I've heard. So maybe when I party, I like to party hard (I don't, but let's say)... should I lose the potential for a job because some people took some photos of me?
Murky
Deity
The most sensible solution is just to use common sense when it comes to posting on the Internet. Don't think of it in terms of fair and unfair. Employers who make stupid public statements suffer consequences too. Don't expect to be excluded from being screened based on your Internet persona. Expect, at a minimum, that some HR person will google your name before calling you in for an interview.
Old Hippy
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2011
- Messages
- 3,606
if applying for a job it would be sensible to set up a face book page to show all your charity and Voluntary work, even include some pics of you using the employers product, link it to a blog that highlights any issues the company would find desiable... say an anti climate change site for a large company(that has a power sub set of investments), and just generally tailor it, like you would do with your rehearsed answers to the job interview questions,you know ..."can you think of any negative aspects about your self" "well people have mentioned that I'm just too meticulous with detail compared to them"...
i wonder if this would be fair
i wonder if this would be fair
Mise
isle of lucy
Well you can untag yourself from photos where you're drunk and stuff.
Tahuti
Writing Deity
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2005
- Messages
- 9,492
That's the problem: Once tagged by the search engines, it takes quite a lot of time for a search engine to disassociate you from these pictures you've untagged your name from.
Mise
isle of lucy
Yeah, that's really annoying =/ Typing my real name into Google still shows my twitter account, even though (a) my real name is no longer on my twitter profile, and (b) my tweets are protected. I wish I could delete my own content from Google's cache.
Smellincoffee
Trekkie At Large
It doesn't have to be your real name. If you list an email address, they might search for that username online. Woe betide you if that name was picked by someone else on an internet forum who likes flamewars and babe threads.
Disgustipated
Deity
It's kind of ridiculous that an employer doesn't expect you to be nude outside of work, or they expect you not to have sex or fun outside of work. I'm almost inclined to agree with the OP.
hint: humans were born nude, it's our natural state. Humans were also born with a sex drive. It's ridiculous employers expect us to have no sex drive.
It works both ways. Not many of us would want to work for a corporation that had too many ill-advised mergers and acquisitions.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Well employment wasn't our natural state either. If you want to embrace the natural state fully, then by all means go ahead. The employer will be more than willing to oblige you with that.
And really, it's not so much having "fun" (I fail to see how drunken antics or nude pictures of yourself are fun, but that's just me, I guess) outside of work that is the problem. The problem is posting such things on the Internet or associating with people who would do such things for you. Though a modicum of self-control would help a lot. You can't always say or do whatever the hell you want.
And really, it's not so much having "fun" (I fail to see how drunken antics or nude pictures of yourself are fun, but that's just me, I guess) outside of work that is the problem. The problem is posting such things on the Internet or associating with people who would do such things for you. Though a modicum of self-control would help a lot. You can't always say or do whatever the hell you want.
Except that's not what employers are saying to their employees at all. There is not a single employer out there who has fired some one for having fun, but they have fired people that party excessively to the point where it is affecting their performance at work.
I'm sorry, but if you show up to work so hungover that you can't do your job, you deserve to be fired.
Employers also use internet postings to ascertain the truthfulness of their employees' statements. For example: If your boss calls and asks you to come in on one of your days off and you tell him you can't because you are ill, and then he/she checks your Facebook and sees you bragging about how you fooled your boss or post pictures of you doing things a sick person wouldn't be doing, then he/she will look upon you negatively for lying to them. This could mean denial of promotions and raises or could get you fired if this isn't the first time you pulled something like that. And they would be in the right to do so, because no business owner wants an irresponsible liar working for them.
Whether you like it or not, a business is trying to keep a positive image in the public's eye, and any employee that jeopordizes that image will be gotten rid of. Again the businessis right to do so because if they let all their employees tear down the company's image they go belly-up and then you'll be out of a job anyway.
Don't worry, other people can post those pics of you.
And you don't even have to have an account for them to be able to do that.
True but they won't show up under a google search under my name.
Silurian
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2010
- Messages
- 7,567
What happens when cheap image recognition software becomes available.
Mise
isle of lucy
Good point. I guess at some point, employers will be more discriminating in what they discriminate about.
