Facebook information can hurt job applicants

A job applicant with an Ivy League education and a phenomenal resumé can have his job application sent straight to the garbage bin if the employer finds an inappropriate photo of him on his Facebook profile.  

Reported by NBC news, Van Allen, a recruiter of job candidates for hospitals and clinics nationwide, found himself in a similar situation when he stumbled upon a well-qualified psychiatrist, but was forced to turn her down after scanning through vulgar pictures of the candidate on her Facebook profile.

Nowadays, many employers are using Facebook to get a better understanding of job applicants. Because of social media, employers have the ability to view private information job seekers never intended to make public.

There are people who study assiduously from their first day in high school to the day they graduate college in order to build up phenomenal resumés and widen their repertoire of various skills, all for the day they apply for jobs. It is not fair for employers to reject the applicants based on their personal lives instead of their qualifications and work ethic.  

As of January 2013, it is it illegal for employers to request the passwords of job applicants in Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Illinois and California. Especially in these states, employers are now exploiting Facebook’s new privacy settings, which reveal more information on users’ profiles, because employers can no longer require applicants to give up their passwords to their Facebook accounts.

According to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com, 37 percent of employers use Facebook to research job applicants. There are too many companies digging for information that does not pertain to work. Since work and personal life should be separate, Facebook (personal life) should be left out the job application process (work).  

In the states that do allow employers to ask for job applicants’ passwords, applicants are forced to give up their basic privacy rights in order to compete for a job in a tough economy. Job seekers can no longer afford to be fastidious when applying for jobs — they are desperate for any work opportunities and be willing to sacrifice one of their valued rights in order to secure a job.

As we are entering the computer technology era, personal information is now shifting to the online world. Many high school and college students are under the impression that whatever they share on Facebook is contained to only them and their friends. In reality, the information that they post online may become more public than they intend and remains on the Internet like digital footprints for others to trace.

There is a fine line between briefly checking applicants’ histories and trying to find dirt on them. Whatever applicants did in high school or even college doesn’t define who they are now. It is a waste of time for employers to use Facebook just to find out the past of applicants, which may have no bearing on what they do now.  

Also, rejecting an applicant based on information on Facebook is a kind of discrimination. People should have the right to express themselves in any way on their free time. As long as applicants are willing to abide by the workplace conduct policies, there should be no reason to reject the applicant if their actions or thoughts outside of the workplace are unusual.

Employers should remove their noses from intimate information of applicants, which are irrelevant to the workplace.