Face-to-Face Your Candidate's Facebook Profile
One of the most interesting ideas that came out of my participation as a panel member on Minnesota Public Radio's In the Loop show was something contributed by audience member, Liba Herman. She works for The Carney Group, a Minneapolis-based marketing communications and design firm.
The Carney Group regularly interviews and hires Gen Y candidates. While the candidate is being interviewed, the interviewer will ask them for the address of their Facebook and MySpace pages. The interviewer will then bring those pages up on a computer screen and walk through them with the candidate. Is Carney doing this to criticize the candidate or dig up digital dirt? No, and that's why I love this idea so much. Instead, they're bringing up these pages in order to allow the interviewer and the candidate more opportunities to better know each other. If the candidate's page shows that she loves football and the interviewer saw a great game the day before, they have an increased personal connection and that's going to increase the likelihood that the candidate will want to work for Carney and that Carney will want to hire the candidate.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace present grave dangers to candidates and employers, but also tremendous opportunities. Kudos to The Carney Group for recognizing and implementing the latter.
Steven, how serious do you think the employer risks of this approach are? The challenge from an assessment perspective with social networking sites is always that the interviewer will see something that's not job-related that will influence their decision. A shared football game experience may be fine (albeit resulting in inconsistent interview experiences), but what about someone who prominently displays membership in an advocacy group?
I look at this from a pragmatic point of view. The reality is that it is 2007 and virtually all employers are seeing this type of information whether they admit it or not. When you talk with recruiters privately, about 75 percent will admit to looking at MySpace, Facebook, and other such pages. Yet when organizations are surveyed, only about 25 percent admit to the usage. So the reality is that employers are seeing this information but most have not come to grips with how to use it. Those employers who admit to using it and even embrace it have significant advantages as they can create systems to prevent the misuse. But use is not automatically misuse.
Note how the Carney Group uses the information. They use it to include candidates in the hiring process, not to exclude them. They use it to find common areas of interest and to make candidates and new employees feel more welcome, not to supplement their background checking process.
As we move into 2008 and beyond, this type of information will become more and more prevalent. We can pretend or wish that it wasn't there and that we weren't being bombarded by it but I feel that creates more risk as organizations who fall into that bucket are unlikely to create the systems and policies necessary to deal with this new reality. Organizations which do admit and even embrace the new information will have the right systems in place and they will be able to hire better candidates.
I agree this info is being seen anyway. I also certainly see the risk of routinely finding information that generations of interviewers have been told not to ask about. So whether it SHOULD be seen is the question. The reality today need not be the reality in the future if people come to see the risks outweighing the minimal benefits.
Yes, this is a seemingly creative use, and at least by the time of the interview, if the pages haven't been seen previously they can't be said to have improperly influenced the earlier screening process.
At a minimum, this process should be truly voluntary, with signed consents stating refusal to cooperate with this part of the interview will not be held against the applicant.
And there are plenty of ways to seek common ground for a friendly chat that are less likely to disclose embarrassing or protected-status information.