My Thoughts On Using Social Media As A Hiring Tool · 10:47pm Sep 21st, 2016
Using social media to judge someone who works for you or using social media as a hiring decision (for future employees) are two things I personally disagree with.
There are people who have told me they haven't gotten jobs because a potential employer saw that they were a certain spiritual belief or sexual preference on their Facebook and chose not to hire them. This is against the law, but let's face it; employers do it anyway.
There are many stories of people who have gotten fired just because they posted a joke on their Facebook timeline or had a picture of them acting goofy with their friends.
And extreme case of this was of a young woman who posted a photo with a scarf draped over her head with the caption of, 'This is what it will take for his parents to accept me.' She was making a statement about how her boyfriend's family wouldn't accept her because she was white. It was just meant to be an inside joke between friends, but it went viral. She got so much negative attention that it caused her to commit suicide.
People who can't take a joke on the internet or criticism of any kind shouldn't be making the decisions about what is appropriate to post online. And when you start adding employers into the mix, things are bound to end bad in one way or another.
There was another case where a teacher got fired because she posted pictures of her drinking some alcoholic beverages with some friends to her social media. My question is; why should a school care what a teacher does on their time off? What does a teacher having a good time at a restaurant or bar with friends have to do with them teaching their students? The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet they still got fired for it.
In my opinion, it should be illegal to use people's social media to make a hiring decision or as an excuse to fire someone from a job. Unless of course they are uploading child porn or doing something that is truly illegal. Or perhaps are acting so unprofessional that the best course of action is to fire the employees on the spot. But firing someone because they are hanging out with friends? Or as I read in one case, banishing a nun from her order (fired in a sense) because she spent too much time on Facebook? That is ridiculous. What you do on the internet has nothing to do with what you do in real life. It's the internet. Why can't people tell the difference between going out in the world an having a life and having an online identity? It's not that hard.
Well, these are just my thoughts on this topic. But what do you guys think? Should employers use social media to make a hiring decision? Should they be able to use it to fire people from a job or expel students from school because they don't agree with what they are doing? I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.
What you do with your time is part of who you are.
4220643 This is a valid point. But let me put it this way. People post memes, jokes, and even shitposts on sites like 4chan all of the time. The things they post are not meant to be taken seriously whatsoever. Yet people are often fired, expelled from school, or even passed up on a job opportunity because of something they jokingly put online. I personally don't think that is right.
Let's use this site as an example. Let's say a potential employer or school acceptance board sees that a potential employee or student is writing pony fan fiction. Due to the current system, they most likely wouldn't get accepted into a university or a job because of something they just happen to like doing in their spare time. While a person might enjoy writing fan fiction and it is a part of who they are, it shouldn't be used as a reason not to hire someone.
This might seem like an extreme example, but there are cases of people being fired for keeping online journals or basically punished for having any kind of online presence at all. And I personally believe that this system should be done away with. It causes more problem than it solves. And I foresee it will only get worse with the passing of time/ advancements in technology.
This is why I don't Facebook at all. And even if employers were to check on me, I only have the information available to friends.
4220682 That is a smart move to take, to be honest. I've heard of employers typing a person's name in an online search tool (like Google) and searching through any site that pops up with their name attached to it. To me, I feel that it is an invasion of privacy. But these companies and such do it anyway. The less you put online and the more you mark any social media profile as private, the better off you are in terms of getting a job or accepted into another type of program.
Hmm... Where's the thumbs-up button for blog posts again? Oh yeah, that's right, I guess I'll just have to make it myself.
4220914 Thank you for the giant like on my blog post. That is a definite first for me. :P I am glad that it was a subject you could get behind. :)
Fuck no. One place I worked at actually encouraged management to friend all employees on facebook, just so they could monitor what they say about their job. Anything negative and they got fired.
I saw three of the honest, hard working people I was proud to call my coworkers get fired. Simply because they questioned why management doesn't do their job, and enforce the rule about employees not being able to flirt with customers while on the clock. I knew who they were talking about, and when they got fired I was careful about who I friended.
Even had this conversation several times.
"Hey, I saw you haven't friended me on Facebook. What's up, you don't want to be friends with your boss?"
"That's not the reason."
"Then what's the reason man, I thought we were friends."
"We are coworkers, specifically you are my manager and I am your employee. I come here do my job, and do as the company tells me, and go home. What I do in my off time is not for the company to know."
"So you'll do as you are told, so long as it's an order from the company?"
"Don't abuse your status here, once I'm out the door you have no authority over me."
"You want to keep your job right?"
"You want a lawsuit right?"
"..."
I don't believe that they should mate. The employers should learn about the person first hand, not through the shroud of the internet.
I don't like social media, there is far too much drama and chaos in there for me to handle. Even this place gets on me sometimes, so, for me, I'm not gonna be signing on anytime soon.
4221100 Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous the length that employers will go to keep an eye on their employees. And in my opinion, following someone on social media to keeps tabs on them is an invasion of privacy as well as a form of stalking. Both of which are minor offenses in the legal system by the way (which can sometimes land people jail time or a fine of some nature). So I don't know how employers get away with it.
4221320 I agree with you on both topics. There needs to be a clear separation between what people do online, during their time off, and what people do out in the real world.
Social media is a challenging thing to work around because if you say one wrong thing, it can haunt you for the rest of your life. So you have to be really smart about what you put online in general.
4221340 But, knowing us Humans, its pretty much impossible not to say the wrong things.
4221507 This is very true. No one is perfect. And it's actually better this way. Life would be boring if everyone was the same and never made any mistakes. ;)
4221515 Amen to that sister.
4221538 Yes indeed. ;)
4221334 The excuse they have to do this comes from a woman who was caught coasting her job. She had blogged that all she had to do at work was play games, goof off, take naps, and waste time. All while getting paid to do this. Her blog floated around for a while before her boss saw it, after seeing it she fired her, the woman tried to sue the company for firing her but the judge ruled in favor of the company.
That is the only reason I can understand for stalking someone on the net, just to make sure they aren't wasting company time and money. And that they are doing their job.
4222099 I can understand them using social media as a way to bring evidence against someone in court or something. They already use social media as evidence for murder cases and other serious crimes. But I still don't think it should be used as a tool to monitor employees on the job, an excuse to fire people, or a tool for hiring. Because using social media in this way seems very much like an invasion of people's privacy. And that is something I very much do not agree with.
4222111 And I agree with you wholeheartedly.
4222123 It sounds like you've had bad experiences of your own, so I can see why you don't support it as well.
I had an experience where a past employer followed me on Facebook and would actually make me leave the job early some days if I mentioned needing to pay a bill or something. This might seem like they were helping but...no. They weren't. Because I needed all potential hours to pay the bills in the first place. They knew this, but used it against me as an excuse to send me home anyway. And this isn't the only time something like this has happened to me.
4222130 I've just had employers claim they only wanted to be my friends. I only had to learn this once the hard way. When your boss is your friend, it means you have someone you can trust. When the boss makes a friend out of you, it means that you are a scapegoat to anything they screw up on.
Since then I've never made friends out of employers and in rare cases co-workers.
4222170 Yeah, friendships in the workplace are tricky. Especially with bosses. I've never been good with social situations. And the experiences I had at certain jobs basically just made that anxiety worse.
I had a few job experiences that were so bad that they added to my PTSD. After my last job experience, any confidence I had to work outside of the home was completely shattered.
I wrote a journal entry about my bad job experiences before. But I'd love to make a full video documenting everything I had to deal with, if I could get away with it.
4222397 As long as the video doesn't go viral then I'm sure you could, other wise your old bosses would have a lot of crap coming their way.
4222419 Yeah, that's a good point. But on the other hand, if I don't use any names or talk about the companies themselves, I don't think there is much they could do about it. It's something I have thought about making a video on for a while to raise awareness for workplace harassment/ abuse. But I would have to be very smart about the way I went about making it, like you said.
4222679 I believe that you can do it.
4222807 Thank you for the vote of confidence, my friend. It is very much appreciated.
4222852 You're welcome.
4222884
I completely agree.
4223390 I am glad that it is something you can agree with. :)
4223399
Same here ^_^ The internet is good, but it can make things bad
4223682 This is very true.
4223888
I'm glad you agree
4224205 I do indeed.
4224589
It's nice having a friend who sees things they way you do
4225255 Yes it is. It makes you realize that you are not alone in thinking or feeling a certain way. ;)
4225318
Indeed it does
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