Be careful who you apply to work for...
OK this is getting ridiculous and a little scary. I mean, how many hoops are we going to have to jump through in order to get a job so that we can avoid foreclosure and bankruptcy here?
First there are references from past jobs – that’s ok, I get that. Wanting to hear from past bosses that I worked for them is fine – as long as they don’t break the law and tell you that you shouldn’t hire me for whatever reason. Then there’s the resume and cover letter – not a problem. You want to see if I have done anything at a previous job that would translate over to a position you are looking to fill – I have no problem with that. Credit checks are a problem with me however as they are a problem with other people looking for employment right now. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, a credit score is not a qualification for a job and should not be used as such.
Yet unfortunately there are some HR honks out there who are using credit scores as a means of eliminating qualified candidates for open positions. This is not right!!! If you are going to hold a credit score against somebody and deny them employment on that basis then you might as well stop looking to fill the position all-together. In this economy it will be rare to find someone who has good credit anymore because of what has transpired over the past year. People need jobs so that they can pay their bills and improve their credit score. However they can’t get the jobs because of their credit score, so their bills go unpaid and their credit score gets worse, yet they still need the job to improve their credit score, but they are denied the job because of their credit score so their credit score gets even worse, yet they still need the job to…
…we’ve been over this, haven’t we?
But then there’s this cheery bit of news out of Bozeman, Montana!
It seems that the City of Bozeman was requiring applicants for city jobs to provide something extra on their employment applications. The City of Bozeman was asking applicants for city jobs to provide their usernames and passwords for “any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubsor forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.”
To say that this has pissed off privacy advocates is an understatement, but one of the city’s attorney’s, a Mr. Greg Sullivan, actually tried to defend the policy:
…we have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity for those positions… we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the city.
In other words, they use the content of the pages on the site against the applicants to eliminate them from job contention. In other words, if they have views on politics, religion or if there are any skeletons in their closet then we don’t want them working for us.
This was a bad idea from the word “go.” This doesn’t just raise privacy issues but it is also, in some cases, a Terms of Service violation on many sites, including Facebook. It’s in the Terms and Conditions section listed on many social networking sites that you must safeguard your username and password at all times to prevent someone from gaining access to your account and attempting to impersonate you online. It could cause not only trouble for you, but it could also cause trouble for the site itself if any “objectionable” content is posted on the site. In that case, that site could be in trouble with it’s host who has it’s own Terms of Service agreement that the site has to live up to.
Let’s say that you had a supervisor who didn’t like you for some reason. He or she wanted to make your life difficult and logged into your Facebook account, and started posting the most vile things imaginable. You could be called onto the carpet by your boss and their supervisor and actually fired for whatever content you may have on your Facebook page. Not only that but Facebook has also come after you because of what was posted on there, all without your knowledge and consent. All because you provided your Facebook username and password on an employment application. It gave someone the opportunity to steal your identity – and that is what we are really talking about here people!!!
The City of Bozeman must have a ton of username and passwords by now, so they have the potential to do a lot of damage to people if they wanted to. Let’s face it, not everyone out there is as scrupulous as you or I, there are a lot of “haters” out there who would love nothing more than to make people miserable for their own personal entertainment. Stealing someones online identity is a perfect way to do it.
Fortunately the City of Bozeman has seen the light and has discontinued the practice after a lot of outside pressure and bad publicity. But I have to say that as a job seeker myself I am beyond mystified that someone actually thought that this was a good idea in the first place! The potential for abuse that arises from something like this is astounding! Did anyone in Bozeman even stop to consider all of the possible ramifications of this policy?!? Did no one there stop and think about what could possibly go wrong?!?!?!?
Speaking as a web-site owner myself, since I own a different site where people can register to post on a forum board, if I ever found out that one of my members had given over their username and password over to a potential employer – I would ban that account immediately. I can tell you that owners of websites have enough to worry about. What with spammers flooding our sites with advertisements for Viagra, Porn and World of Warcraft sites, we don’t need someone coming onto our site impersonating a member who was in good standing and stirring up trouble. If we have a friendly community we will want to keep it that way, we don’t want someone coming onto our site with their own personal agenda trying to get someone else in trouble by impersonating them and pissing our other posters off.
Now I know that companies need certain information on applicants like Social Security numbers to verify certain information. I get that and we all as job applicants accept that. But some things like credit scores and now usernames and passwords for websites that we frequent is going too far in my opinion. What will we be required to provide next in our quest to gain employment? Will we be required to provide bank account numbers and their routing numbers next? Will we have to provide copies of the keys to our houses and apartments when we show up on the first day? Will we have to submit to daily blood and urine tests? How about a breathalyzer just to get in the door? Will we have to submit to surprise inspections of our private residences to ensure that we have no “subversive materials” at our disposal? Will we have to buy only “company approved” items when we go to the grocery store at the approved time that is set by the company?
Seriously, in our quest to support our families where does it end? Where do we draw the line?
It has made me think sometimes about the things that I write on this site as something that can be used against me to deny me much needed employment, and Wifey has told me that I should be careful about what I write. But I figure at this point that somebody will simply Google my real name from my resume, find this site in any case and make a decision one way or another as to whether or not to even bring me in for an interview let alone hire me. I figure someone who is good at their job and wants someone who is not only passionate about what they do, but is also intelligent enough to make sure that what happens at work stays at work and doesn’t make it onto the pages of this blog will hire me for something that I am qualified for. I also figure that someone who would look at this site and hold the content against me is someone who is not very good at their job and is someone that I would be better off not working with anyway, so the loss would be theirs – not mine.
I will bottom line this for everybody, there are a few lines that should never be crossed. One of those lines is an employer telling an employee that they must turn over any and all aspects of their private lives to the company. There are some things that people don’t need to know and is none of their business. What I say or post online should in no way be used against me to prevent me from having the ability to support my family. For anyone to take my words and use them as an excuse to deny me employment is unprofessional, immature, inexcusable and a sign of incompetence at your own job. Because if you just base your hiring decision on something that you see here, at Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, or any other site, then you must not be very good at your job. If that is the case then you are not looking at that applicants total history and you are missing the big picture. In that sense you are depriving the company you work for of someone who could be the most qualified applicant for the position in favor of someone who, more than likely, will not be up to the task.
If that is the case, then perhaps it is you who needs to be replaced!
