What about social networks and personal comments?

I received this in another organization's bulletin:

How Social Media Is Muddying the Waters for Jobseekers

Caution People! How Social Media Is Muddying the Waters for Perfectly Good Jobseekers … and How Companies are Letting it Happen

Invited to an interview, you step into the room and unload that heavy
photo album you’ve been clinging to onto the conference table. In
addition to a resume and brag book, you have pictures on your iPhone of
your dogs and the neighbor’s cat stalking the birds enjoying your new
bird feeder. The interview progresses by you opening and flipping
through the pages of your album, pointing to your family and friends.
You gladly draw the interviewer’s attention to those older pictures
taken during your college days … and to the many of your drunk, sleeping
positions your friends encapsulated forever through one click of a
camera.

Eeerrrk!!!

What? Personal items presented during an interview?

Why not? Isn’t that basically what hiring companies are doing
rummaging through your public social media accounts, learning more about
you and your online activities?

The next few years are certainly gray, unchartered waters for
jobseekers. The issue of whether a person’s personal life and
involvement online should have any place in the hiring realm is
definitely a topic that will be battled over for years — maybe even decades.
Some might unexpectedly find themselves entangled in lawsuits, as
privacy experts grow increasingly concerned that disqualifying a
candidate based on information gained online can introduce certain forms
of discrimination into the hiring process.

Jobseekers have every right to be concerned about protecting their
online identities from prying eyes, but where should the line be drawn?
Employers shouldn’t be given uninhibited access to a jobseeker’s private
life, should they?

Interestingly, a recent study released at Microsoft’s 4th Annual Data Privacy Day identified that 70% of those surveyed in the US indicated they had disqualified a candidate based on online information.
What was the incriminating online information that caused the
disqualification? Of course this was not made public … and behind the
curtain of hiring, only HR managers and recruiters seem privy to such
information.

The deeper issue is whether employers should be allowed to open that
flood gate by bringing social media activities into the hiring world in
the first place. I’m reminded of a line from the movie Jurassic Park. When referring to scientists, Jeff Goldblum’s character says, "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Maybe
employers poking through a jobseeker’s online activities are so
preoccupied with the fact that they could that they never stopped to
think whether they should.

Ahh, but hiring companies won’t find my online activities. Think
again. Technology giants have only just begun leveraging the social
media phenomena; and not surprisingly, for financial gain.

Microsoft announced the integration of Social Connector software,
which will be released mid-2010. The add-on software is designed to let
someone like me readily see the online communications from those who
send me email. Microsoft’s Group Product Manager, Dev Balasubramanian,
was quoted as saying: “As you communicate you can see their social
activities; you can see all the folks in your social network and it
updates as you are reading your e-mail.” Certainly it appears to
offer great benefits to the masses, but for jobseekers, it just might
leave an unpleasant sour aftertaste.

No doubt, employers will soon be given a larger spy glass — and
unfortunate for jobseekers, Microsoft isn’t the only company abuzz with
developing new applications that will take public social media data and
translate it into something that can be researched and used, for good
and evil.

Regardless, employers need to take a long look at their current hiring
practices to determine whether a drunken party photo showing Joe
Jobseeker has anything to do with the value Joe brings to the table
professionally, and how well he performs while on the job.

The issue isn't a picture of Joe Jobseeker with a lampshade on his head...it's should Joe not comment on ANYTHING online, lest a potential employer who doesn't share his opinion on that subject read it?

Paul