"A new tool for human resources; a caution for job seekers"

Note: Emails are organized in the order received, with first received at the top.

Added caveat... getting into college is tough these days, especially the really good colleges. College admissions people also look at prospective students' Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace postings.

Next it will be the IRS, ATF, DEA, CIA, FBI, TSA, ... and for our friends up north, the RCMP.

Larry Wells
Atlanta, Georgia
USA

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Jim,

I immediately passed this along to my two college aged children. This week's column was particularly germane to the subject of job seeking in the current economic environment. I'm reminded of the caution that was given to us some years ago by the HR department about e-mail (which is still pertinent): "Never send an e-mail that you don't want posted on the front bulletin board." In other words, assume that whomever you don't want to see the e-mail will eventually see it. The same warning applies for our personal e-mail as well as our professional communication, by the way.

My mother, the wise woman that she is, always told me that "Fool's names and fool's faces always appear in public places," which makes me wonder why I have a Facebook account in the first place. There is real value to these new mediums of communication, but to reveal one's inner self without the benefit of personally knowing the people who are receiving the information...that's a problem.

Thanks, as always, for your weekly words of wisdom; good advice indeed.

Thanks,

Jon Kerr
Cellulose Community Board Member
Andritz Inc.
Loveland, Ohio
USA

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Jim,

Your article reminds me of an experience my daughter's new sister-in-law ran into this past wk.
Lindsay was married Sat. Wonderful experience!
They no longer have a bachelorette night out. For both he and she, it has become a weekend somewhere (!).
Lindsay and her girl friends went to Panama City a couple of weekends ago. Her future sister-in-law was to be part of the wedding party, and went along.
She is an attractive mother of two, and sang a solo in the wedding.
They all had a great time. No trouble that I heard about.
However, some photos of that weekend which were "posted" showed her having an "adult beverage" at a restaurant. Some ladies at her church somehow became aware of it, and suddenly she was being asked to resign from her church positions and you'd think they were going to paint a scarlet letter on her! I think a letter of apology is supposed to resolve this, but it gives an example of your comments. In fact, this happened because of photos posted by someone else, which she happened to be in!
We have to be very careful!!

I'm very unfamiliear with this area of cyberspace, but I think your comments are right-on.

Jeff Smith
Account Manager
BTG Americas, Inc.
Norcross, Georgia
USA

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The answer regarding the 20 clients who receive 20 reports at random can be obtained as follows:

The probability that a client receives the correct report is 1 in 20 or 0.05 (5.0%).
Therefore the probability that a client receives the wrong report is 1- 0.05 = 0.95 (95%)
The probability that all 20 clients receive the wrong report is therefore 0.95 raised to the power of 20 = 0.358 or 35.8%.

As the number of clients increases, the probability that no client receives the correct report increases slightly. (i.e., for 40 clients, the answer would be 36.3%).

A more challenging question from this example would be: What is the probability that exactly half (or some other proportion) of the clients receive the correct report?

Steven J. Moore
Wausau Paper Corp.
Rhinelander, Wisconsin
USA

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Jim,

You're assuming employers actually care...associations like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers don't seem to be a problem for most people, who's going to care about a drunken night at college? ;-)

Name withheld
Ohio
USA

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Jim,

Thanks for passing on your current edition of "Nip Impressions". As one in the current "job seeker" category, its a good reminder that nothing is sacred in cyberspace. To date, I've stayed away from even checking out the strictly "social networking" sites such as "facebook", etc.

I only entered LinkedIn after the urging of close colleagues and the career transition company Lee Hecht Harrison that I've been working with. I will closely watch what I post and only include what I deem beneficial information.

Bruce Redmond
Michigan
USA

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Jim,

Great to see a response from Bill Fuller this week. One of the wisest people I know.

I'll quickly add to last week's comments: Prattville High School is starting up an elective program centered on educating students on explaining the engineering profession and on what engineers do. The teacher is going to have a group of professional volunteers to help steer the program. I may get involved. It sounds exciting.

Facebook: Oh my I can't agree more with your comments. While my facebook pages can be seen by "friends" there are many out there with open accounts that anyone can see. I fear most for kids and teenagers who in their naivety, put anything on facebook or myspace. But these web accounts are also great tools for keeping in touch and communicating. I try to guard what I write as if anyone could see it.

As a teacher, I do not have any student "friends" on these web accounts. I don't think it is appropriate and I tell the kids so.

Youtube - one fantastic source of music videos. I try to avoid everything else there!!!!

Good seeing you in Montgomery. Wish you could have stayed longer.

Peace,

Gene Canavan
Prattville, Alabama
USA

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Jim -- great article about social networking. You hit the nail on the head!

Jeff McKenna
Duluth, Georgia
USA

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Jim,

While I respect the fact that paging through potential employees Facebook and Myspace pages can provide a massive amount of information that would not otherwise be available, I have some serious problems with using this information as a basis for judging a person's "hireability".

As a recent college graduate myself, I do keep a facebook page. I primarily use this page as a way to keep in touch with friends who I no longer see, and for posting pictures of recent trips, events, or adventures that I have been a part of. I can assure you that this page, while perfectly respectable, was never intended for the eyes of any potential employers. I can also assure you that my facebook page is not "out there" for anyone to see. The only way that anyone can view anything besides a small picture of me is to request that I allow them to view my full page. While I wish that everyone with any social network page would do the same, I also have to wonder what conclusions an employer might make about me just based on that information...

Imagine that you are looking into hiring me, and that you decide to take a look at any social networks pages that I might have as a part of the process. You do a google search of my name and come up with a facebook and a myspace page; however, that is as far as you can go. These pages are restricted, and you cannot view them. What is your impression of me at this point? Do you think I am just doing a better job than most at guarding some of my more personal information? Or, do you start wondering what kind of information is on these pages that I would have reason to hide? If you start wondering what kind of party pictures, personal rants, and devious groups I belong to, or decide not to hire me because you think I am hiding something from you, then we have a serious problem.

One employer, the city of Bozeman Montana, has already come up with a simple solution to this problem: require every applicant to provide passwords to all their social networking pages. I wont even get into what a violation of personal privacy this is, but I will say that after receiving heated responses from individuals, the London Guardian, and the ACLU, Bozeman discontinued this particular practice.

My ultimate point is this: When using social networking pages as a hiring tool, where do we draw the line? What are the boundaries of the acceptable and the unacceptable? If I post on Twitter that I am happy I bought a new car one day, and sad the Michael Jackson has passed away the next day, it's not because I'm bipolar, it's probably because I'm bored. What happened to the days when a series of personal interviews was the best way to evaluate a candidate? If you want to hire me, and you want to see my Facebook page, ask me. If I say no, that's the end of it. If we start using people's social networks pages today, when do we start asking to look at email accounts, or for copies of all my personal correspondence. I'm not saying abandon the practice altogether, I'm just saying beware.

Corey McBain
Montana State University - College of Engineering Graduate '09
Bozeman, Montana
USA

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Thanks. The point is, it is out of your control. You may feel it is not right, unjustified, etc., but that is irrelevant. Employers will judge you by this information (unless prohibited by law) just like they judge your appearance when you show up for an interview. It is like I tell young people all the time, you certainly have a right to have tattoos, bolts through your nose, whatever, but employers still have a right to not hire you. And you will never know why you didn't get the job.

Jim

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My point is that in the hands of someone who takes these things too seriously, any innocuous online remark can be dangerous. By googling your name, I was able to find a blogger under the name Jim Thompson who is (apparantly) located in Georgia. I have no idea if this is you or not, but if I were a potential employer I could deduce (and am
probably completely wrong) that you are a republican, that you dont have a very good opinion of fraternities, and that one piece is titled "Lets Kill Lobbyists..."

As a Democrat and past Fraternity president (my house had a no alcohol policy) I might decide to hire someone else who had no such blog just because they might be democratic, fraternity friendly, non violents. And you would never know why you didn't get the job. Basically, I could come to ridiculous conclusions based on nearly anything I found about you even though I'm sure you're a stand up guy. And this blog might not even belong to you!

I'm just saying, if you go into this with the idea that there is something bad out there to find, I promise you that you'll find something.

Sorry if I'm monopolizing your email. Thanks for the reply,

Corey McBain

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Well, Corey, you can scream personal rights all you want to, but you will not win this one (and it is not winning it with me that I am talking about). Employers will do what they want to. The prudent will not put anything on the web that they are not comfortable with everyone in the world seeing.

I hope you read the letters column in the upcoming edition of Nip Impressions. You'll see some other views.

The last time I checked, there were 270,000 Jim Thompsons in the United States, so I enjoy a bit of anonymity myself.

Some of my prejudices? I would not hire anyone that has belonged to a fraternity and I have told my step son who belongs to one that he needs to be careful. I wouldn't put that on a resume unless I was very sure all the people that might read it are fraternity friendly. You would be surprised how many are not--I would guess half of all employers have a dim view of fraternities.

I am sure you are a great person, my point is you have absolutely no idea nor control over what impersonal future employers think of you. The more you make public, the less control you have.

Jim

Something I didn't say to Corey when I responded above. These days, employers are looking for reasons not to hire you. They have plenty of qualified candidates and the challenge is to weed them out, thin out the group to a manageable size. If you have any questionable issues at all, you will be tossed. A goofy line or questionable picture on a social networking site is all they need.

Jim

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