Chapter 6, Employee Selection

When hiring for a specific job, employers look at skills, education, past employment, background, and many other things, including your personal profile online. Some look on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or Orkit. They may also be able to find your Blog and read it, as if reading your journal. I don’t think this is appropriate for a prospective employer to do. Although it is wise for them to find out as much about the person they might hire, as possible; by looking at these personal pages, they might find out more personal information about a person than they would find out in a year of actually working on the job with them. I think it is more appropriate for a prospective employer to call past employers to find out what kind of WORK character they have. “Is this person reliable, are they trustworthy, do they work hard, how is their skill level?” Those are the kinds of questions that are appropriate. A personal networking page or Blog may contain information about problems with their family or it can indicate their religion. If an employer isn’t allowed to ask these questions during an interview, then shouldn’t it also be illegal to base if off information they found snooping around in someone’s personal life?