Investigating Online Reputations - Acceptable for Recruiting Management?
Posted by Heather Lewko on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 11:24 AM
By: Michael O'Brien- Human Resource Executive Online
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A new survey of worldwide recruiters and consumers finds some interesting differences in the way online searches of job candidates take place in various countries. In addition to differences by country, there are also gender differences as well as perception differences between the HR professionals and consumers who post online. Regardless, the concerns of potential bias or privacy violations remain an issue.
New research by Microsoft finds that hiring managers around the world are increasingly using the Internet to research candidates' online reputations in order to ensure a good organizational fit, but a lack of clarity on the information hiring managers can legally search for could set them up for future headaches.
The report highlights a growing concern that there is not enough governance in place to keep organizations protected from possible claims of discrimination from applicants who have been turned down for jobs.
Among the more surprising survey findings: 75 percent of U.S. recruiters say their companies have formal policies in place that require hiring personnel to research applicants online. That figure drops to 48 percent for U.K.-based hiring managers and 21 percent for both the German and French counterparts.
Lisa Harpe, a senior consultant and industrial psychologist at Raleigh, N.C.-based Peopleclick Authoria Research Institute, calls the study "fascinating." She says one reason the online-search policy figure is so low across the pond may be because of the large number of European privacy protections that are already in place.
"In Europe, there are so many more data-privacy issues, it makes employers want to say, 'We're not even going to touch that,' " she says.
Harpe was also surprised to see that, when 1,345 consumers from those same countries were asked, only 7 percent of the U.S. consumers surveyed said they believe information about them online could affect their job prospects, compared to 14 percent of all the consumers surveyed.
The study finds that 86 percent of U.S. hiring managers have informed candidates they have been rejected due to what's been found online about them.
Candidates around the world are starting to get that message, as eight in 10 of the 1,106 worldwide consumers surveyed say they take at least some steps to keep their professional and personal profiles separate, including keeping profiles anonymous, restricting access to personal sites and refraining from publicly sharing which sites they use. But the question of who is responsible for protecting their online reputation shows that there is still a gray area between hiring managers and candidates: While 62 percent of hiring managers say it is the responsibility of the user to protect his or her own reputation and not rely on the Web site to do it, only 48 percent of U.S. consumers feel the same way.
Its just a matter of time before job applicants begin to file lawsuits claiming they were unfairly discriminated against because of what a prospective employer saw online.
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