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Mark Fullbright 10/25/2013 Instructor Molhere English 112-42

The New Wave of Social Media and the Hiring Process

Social media has become an enthralling part of everyones lives today. As more and more ways to access this media becomes available, access to everyone's personal lives also gets put out there for everyone to see. This includes prospective employers. Its become common practice for employers to use social media to screen potential employees and to get a glimpse of a persons personal life. The Ohio State Bar Association states, In April 2012, CareerBuilder sponsored a Harris Interactive survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals and found that 37 percent of them screen job seekers using social networking sites. Employers are requesting access to personal social media hubs to get an insight of a prospective employees character. They want to know if applicants are trustworthy, clean-cut professionals or are they reckless and irresponsible individuals that make questionable decisions. The argument lies in weather or not its right to do so. 29 percent of employers in the same Harris survey stated previously, said they discovered information that encouraged them to hire an applicant. That is enough information to look at both sides and give it a fair chance. As an Employer I can "clean out the garbage" in a more efficient way and get a more professional and qualified work force hired. Look at it this way if you as an applicant present yourself to be a professional, your personal social portal will reflect that. This in turn will give me a positive boost in quality employees because Im going to hire you. If I have a stack of 100

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applicants sitting on my desk and wanted to use tools at my disposal to get down to 10 of the best applicants in the pile, social media can help me do that. I can write in a simple statement into my job applications saying social media will be used in the application screening process with a signed acknowledgment. It would now be in my best interest as an employer to have a third party to do the digging and strict guidelines on what to look for. Based on what you put out there I should be able to paint a picture of the persons character. I would expect that with social media being used as much as it is, applicants should and will take advantage of the hiring side of it. An applicant who used my access into their lives to highlight their positive accomplishments and activities would go to the top of the list. Even how they carry themselves on their "wall" or "news feed" would be a clear indication of attitude and personality toward others and themselves. I can also scrutinize their communication skills. The applicants that have pictures of themselves engaging in questionable or illegal acts or swearing every other word in their post should be weeded out of the stack. Here is the kicker as an employer, Federal and State laws dictate that an applicants age, race, color, national origin, religion, gender, disability and veteran status cannot be considered when a company is screening job applicants. The ted Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) protects a candidates genetics and family medical history as well (John W. McKenzie, Esq 1). So its established that your personal life is just that, personal. However, if you put the time and effort to put it up on any kind of social website for all to see employers should be able to see it. Its different to say that employers have the right to gain access to your account to scour it for discrepancies, this is a different matter altogether. When it comes to employers asking for passwords to gain access to accounts and log in as the user is wrong! Most of these websites require the user to use personal important information such as phone numbers, your address, and

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even your personal email and passwords just to open an account which is guarded by a contract from the social media company. Do you want employers to have access to this information? There is another aspect of social media that can be an issue. Employers using religious, sexual, racial, political views and even disorders can be used to quietly discriminate against you as an applicant. Well because you signed a statement allowing them access, in one way or the other youre the one allowing them to do so and its totally legal. This is a very controversial subject and there are many avenues we can take to debate the subject. Recruiting by businesses is another angle we can look at. Using social media as an job advertising tool for businesses to find recruits. According to HR Magazine, a source for human resource and business management professionals, the Jobvite 2010 Social Recruiting Survey of more than 600 HR and recruiting professionals, 86% of companies used social media for recruiting. This is a positive thing for companies to do not to mention its efficient and effective. Only 32% of those companies ALWAYS screened applicants and looked at applicants profiles. Large companies are going to benefit from this kind of job advertising the most and social media lets them touch millions of people daily. At the end of the day YOU have full control of what gets put on your social media website, if you don't want employers to have instant access to your social life, don't post it up or put some kind of limited access to it. There are controls on these social media sites for you to filter your content. You can even us an alias to set up a ghost account to further protect yourself and have a little more leniency on what you want to post. Yes you can use social media to gain an edge over other applicants to get a job or start a career. Yes companies can recruit effectively though social media. However companies are opening themselves up a legal can of worms if its used in the wrong way. There are laws in place today that protect people from

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discrimination and companies shouldnt have access to information regarding age, race, color, national origin, religion, gender, disability and veteran status. How can these laws protect an applicants privacy if every aspect of their private life gets volunteered to the public by the applicant? The answer is it CANT and it DOESNT. However why would any company want to go that route other than to build a quality workforce or to discriminate against certain applicants? The answer to that question is because it CAN and its legal to do so. Social media as a hiring in my perspective is not only totally kosher but its inevitable. Because the applicant has complete control over what an employer can see and the company has more access to an applicants information to make the best hiring decision. Both sides benefit and both sides also become more accountable for their own actions in the process. I think thats awesome!

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Works Cited "Social Networking Comes To Fore As Regular Recruiting Tool." HR Magazine 55.12 (2010): 63. Small Business Reference Center. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.