Employers Allowed Myspace Youtube Facebook Accounts Basis Hiring Firing – Yes
I believe that employers should be able to use MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and any other on-line sites as a basis for hiring employees, and, with some limitations, for firing them. On almost every job application form, there is a disclaimer that allows a potential employer to perform everything from a background check to a credit check to a full-out investigation. On-line checks are part of that investigation.
Let me give you an example of why an employer might want to do such an investigation. I know someone who has created a very effective on-line personae for herself, marketing her talents quite brilliantly, posting a professionally retouched portrait wherever she can, and twisting the details of her professional life so that she seems to be someone she is not. It doesn't take a lot of work to unravel her web of lies and to discover that her professional success is as much smoke and mirrors as the beautiful portrait on her web page. Unfortunately, like many liars, she doesn't have the greatest memory, and sometimes contradicts herself. Should I not, as a potential employer signing her to a freelance contract, have the right to find this out for myself before hiring her and potentially embarrassing my company? If I can easily find that information on-line, so can my customers.
For those who have no intent to defraud, online checks can be unfair. Many of us, especially in the early days of Usenet and other community-type networks, used our real names and freely gave identifying details of our lives. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. Although we resorted to screen names and became more discrete over the years, that information is still floating around in archives. People who are now in their twenties and hitting the job market were in many ways pioneers of social networking sites, and posted photos of high school and college antics that will forever be attached to their name. And even if the beer-guzzling Cancun pole dancer is now a mild-mannered accountant looking for a promotion and the crude Jackass wannabe has settled down and is applying for kindergarten teaching jobs, those pictures remain part of his or her digital heritage.
The ethics (and in some jurisdictions, the legality) of using the sites for checks on current employees is a bit murkier. Does an employer have the right to investigate an employee without his or her knowledge? Is an employee's outside life anyone's business? I guess this is a question of judgment. If you know that your employer can Google you and find embarrassing photos or statements attributed to you, how much do you want your job? We've come a long way from the days where teachers were fired for being seen in a bar on the weekend, and yet access to information that might destroy (or reveal) one's character has never been easier. I had a personal experience where I found that a much-loved local teacher and Scoutmaster was a member of a survivalist group known for its extreme viewpoints on everything from racial equality to national security. His on-line postings revealed facets of his character that were totally at odds with his public image.
Social networking sites aren't the only ways for employers to check up on employees. We've all heard stories of people finding on-line resumes for employees or coworkers and thus discovering that the employee was looking for another job. Worse yet, the resumes are full of lies, and the employer now has evidence that the employee is not only disloyal, but dishonest. Although stupidity is not a crime, it can certainly color an employer's opinion of an otherwise trusted employee.
Whether employers should be allowed to use social and business networking sites to investigate potential or existing employees is not so much an ethical question as a fact of life. That's what companies do when you tick that little box allowing them to investigate you before you are hired. The best practice is not to sit around complaining about it, but to protect yourself so that it can't destroy your chances at a new job or your opportunities in the job you have now.
