Cyber-vetting of potential employees!
I found this article today of how companies in the US and UK have began conducting web-searches of potential employees to dig up any ‘digital dirt’ on them. The websites commonly checked are social websites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook (I guess in Singapore it would be Friendster).
All this could mean that that video clip that your friends posted of the guys’ wild drunken night-out could come back to haunt you.
Common internet reputation — or “NetRep” — black marks cited in the poll included “alcohol abuse”, showing a lack of respect for your job, or that the candidate was “personally into some activities that did not fit ethically into the company”.
Although I’m sure that many people would be quick to call foul, claiming that what they do in their own time and in their personal lives should be of no concern to their employers, I think that to a large extent it is a reasonable and expected practice. Employees inevitably are their company’s representatives and as such, their actions, even those outside of working hours would have an effect on the reputation and, correspondingly, business of these companies. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the company ‘owns’ their employees. It merely means that employees must behave responsibly at all times.
Additionally, I think that cyber-vetting might be relevant as many people practice blogging and they talk about their lives including work within these blogs. Trade secrets could be revealed (and if a potential employer sees this potential employee exhibiting this tendency) which would certainly be good grounds for concern. It is also a good source of information about the potential employee’s general attitude towards his work. He is the type who constantly complains about his employers and the nature and scale of his work? All these would certainly be relevant in deciding whether to employ this person or not.
Bottom line: These people choose to put all this information out there. They should realise that it should be done responsibly. And since the information is already in the public domain, companies should not be faulted for making use of these pieces of information to assess the character and suitability of potential employees.
I found this article today of how companies in the US and UK have began conducting web-searches of potential employees to dig up any ‘digital dirt’ on them. The websites commonly checked are social websites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook (I guess in Singapore it would be Friendster).
All this could mean that that video clip that your friends posted of the guys’ wild drunken night-out could come back to haunt you.
Common internet reputation — or “NetRep” — black marks cited in the poll included “alcohol abuse”, showing a lack of respect for your job, or that the candidate was “personally into some activities that did not fit ethically into the company”.
Although I’m sure that many people would be quick to call foul, claiming that what they do in their own time and in their personal lives should be of no concern to their employers, I think that to a large extent it is a reasonable and expected practice. Employees inevitably are their company’s representatives and as such, their actions, even those outside of working hours would have an effect on the reputation and, correspondingly, business of these companies. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the company ‘owns’ their employees. It merely means that employees must behave responsibly at all times.
Additionally, I think that cyber-vetting might be relevant as many people practice blogging and they talk about their lives including work within these blogs. Trade secrets could be revealed (and if a potential employer sees this potential employee exhibiting this tendency) which would certainly be good grounds for concern. It is also a good source of information about the potential employee’s general attitude towards his work. He is the type who constantly complains about his employers and the nature and scale of his work? All these would certainly be relevant in deciding whether to employ this person or not.
Bottom line: These people choose to put all this information out there. They should realise that it should be done responsibly. And since the information is already in the public domain, companies should not be faulted for making use of these pieces of information to assess the character and suitability of potential employees.
posted by Clem | 12:08 AM
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