Companies have long used criminal background checks, credit reports and even searches on Google and LinkedIn to probe the previous lives of prospective employees. Now, some companies are requiring job candidates to also pass a social media background check.
A year-old start-up, Social Intelligence, scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.
Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity.
“We are not detectives,” said Max Drucker, chief executive of the company, which is based in Santa Barbara, Calif. “All we assemble is what is publicly available on the Internet today.”
The Federal Trade Commission, after initially raising concerns last fall about Social Intelligence’s business, determined the company is in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but the service still alarms privacy advocates who say that it invites employers to look at information that may not be relevant to job performance.
And what relevant unflattering information has led to job offers being withdrawn or not made? Mr. Drucker said that one prospective employee was found using Craigslist to look for OxyContin. A woman posing naked in photos she put up on an image-sharing site didn’t get the job offer she was seeking at a hospital.
Other background reports have turned up examples of people making anti-Semitic comments and racist remarks, he said. Then there was the job applicant who belonged to a Facebook group, “This Is America. I Shouldn’t Have to Press 1 for English.” This raises a question. “Does that mean you don’t like people who don’t speak English?” asked Mr. Drucker rhetorically.
7 comments:
Snatches that I can I still recall from Catch-22;
Col Cathcart? : Chaplain, you are an Anabaptist. Does this mean that you not a Baptist?
Chaplain : No, no not exactly...
Too bad Joseph Heller is no longer around, he would have a field day with PC USA.
Ivan
Mr. Drucker said that one prospective employee was found using Craigslist to look for OxyContin.
Mr. Drucker is very moral: He will only hire people like himself who have never said ANYTHING offensive in their private or public lives since the first day they were born and who have no flaws.
Mr. Drucker will only hire living breathing angels to work with him.
“Does that mean you don’t like people who don’t speak English?” asked Mr. Drucker rhetorically.]
The interviewee should have punched him in the face and sued him for violation of privacy.
Would Drucker pass his own background check? Drucker is greatly offended by Drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex. Drucker must be a very holy man to cast stones.
Would J pass Drucker's background check?
Social Intelligence Corp. is essentially taking the traditional background checks that are commonly used by corporate human resource departments to look for things like criminal records and moving them online to track social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, LinkedIn, and individual blogs.
“You cannot believe the things that we see. The amount of references to drugs and alcohol and the amount of provocative photos and the things that people say is jaw dropping,” says Max Drucker, chief executive of Social Intelligence Corp. “People that we see that are applying for jobs that have this kind of really incriminating information out there.”
Anyone care to dig up damaging social media information about Max Drucker?
Has he ever referred to drugs, alcohol, or sexual innuendo with his e-friends at facebook or similar?
Let he who says he is without sin be stoned to death by his own hypocrisy.
This is starting to look very bad.
It's bad and it will only get worse, imagine all that crawling but automated, and once you're tagged that's it, no job for you. Similar to the no fly lists, where millions are already marked, just marked, not convicted of anything, yet they can't fly. Puritanity enforced by config files and the current political wind instead of laws.
The axe has already fallen, see:
Privacy is Dead - Get Over It (Part 1)
Privacy is Dead - Get Over It (Part 2)
"Private investigator Steven Rambam explains what he does, how he knows everything about you and why he's not the one you should be worried about."
Private Investigator Steven Rambam!
Equal Opportunity Enforcement Officer Francis Rashi!!!
Human Resources Director Antonina Radak!!!!!!!1
O tempora, o mores.
Post a Comment