Recruiting Scenarios for MySpace and Facebook

UPDATE July 2008:  I'm hosting a webinar for Recruiting On MySpace on May 21st, 2008.  If you're looking for a live walkthrough of how to source, filter, and generate referrals in MySpace, join the Social Media Headhunter Series and register at this link.

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The following is an excerpt from a speech I gave December 7th at the AACE Fall Conference.

A college student posts videos of himself drinking from a beer bong during a party.  He has a 3.8 average, cleans up well, has a business major, and interviews like a champ.  On his Facebook profile, he also is the biggest organizer of keg parties on campus and has pictures of drunken underage classmates on his site.

Do you hire him when you find out what he’s posted on his site?  It’s not an easy question.  The Millennials worship their privacy, and react strongly to anyone researching them, at the same time that these technologies have a major impact on careers.

Let’s say that you extend a job offer to this student, and two weeks later, his campus police use a video on his site to prosecute a fraternity house for underage drinking. The story gets out in the paper, and you now have a new employee who is the center of a media firestorm, and the reporter just happens to mention that the student has just been hired by your company (because he put it on his Facebook page).  Do you go through with the hire?  Do you let him go? 

If you let him go, the story gets more oxygen, and all of a sudden your company is part of it.  Are you ready for that kind of scrutiny for a new hire? 

Maybe that example is too extreme.  Rather than a hard-partying senior, let’s say that you have a hard-working student, socially respectable with good grades and a good reputation.  She interviews for your company and gets the offer, but it’s less than she had hoped for.

On her MySpace page, she tells her friends that she got the job, but at far less than she expected, and she thought the recruiter was a bit rude about the offer, telling her she had only 48 hours to reply.    Her friends leave comments insulting the recruiter and calling your company cheap.  If you run across that comment, do you withdraw the offer?  Now remember, her comments aren't bad - it's her friends that insult the company and the recruiter.  What is your answer?

Let's say the comment is on the first page of Google Results for a search of your company, and your CEO comes across it.  Does that change your answer?

There is a line to take, a path that allows you to connect to this generation without infringing too much on their privacy, but the line is not set in stone.  The question in front of us is the balance between people knowing not to publish material online they wouldn't want seen on the front page of the newspaper, and how far companies should go to intrude on the lives of their employees.

For those who think this is a Millennial issue, imagine what would have happened if cameras followed you around to the bars at 2 a.m. When you first started working?  Would you prefer to be judged by your actions at 2 a.m. Or 8:30 a.m. When you arrived at work?

Comments

[Stoned Sourcerer]

I don't care whether a candidate is a binge drinker, or whether he or she smokes weed or somesuch substance. I would be bothered though if the person just had marijuana leaves all over their profile and tons of pictures of themselves drinking.

The problem is the lack of judgement on their part for making that info public while looking for jobs. Everyone gets messed up, but keep it under wraps.

[Amybeth]

I agree with the last comment. Everyone has skeletons, but if you are dumb enough to caption every picture on your MySpace page with "I was so drunk...." or "This chick I hooked up with..." then it's your own undoing and in my opinion you don't have a right to complain if you are passed over for a job because of your party habits that should have been kept to yourself anyhow. Sooner or later it's time to grow up and take responsibility for yourself and stop blaming everyone else for the stuff you do or don't do. Folks should remember that there is always someone watching what you do. Whether or not it's right to judge people based on the activities in which they engage outside of work is irrelevant; it happens and we all do it. So until we all take off our black robes and put down our stones, we are all going to be judged for both on- and off-the-clock activities. It's up to us to decide whether or not those activities are worth possibly jeopardizing our current or prospective employment situation. We each individually need to consider our own actions and the adverse consequences that could happen as a result.