City Requests Social Site Information from Applicants
It’s long been the case that employers check out the social websites of potential applicants to see the real nature of the people they are considering hiring. But trying to view an applicant’s MySpace listing, for example, can be problematic because there might be multiple listings under a given name, and the listing may be not be available for public viewing.
City officials in Bozeman Montana have decided to stop being sneaky about the whole process. When applying for a job there, applicants will find the following question on the employment form:
"Please list any and all current personal or business Web sites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc." The form also asks for the user names and passwords for all the requested sites.
Of course, organizations such as the ACLU are all up in arms, claiming privacy violations, but the desire of the City is understandable. As has been reported here and at my Internet Defamation Blog, people sometimes reveal amazing things in their blogs. I’ve reported a case involving a nurse and another involving a teacher where their blogs revealed some seriously dark sides and the employees suffered job actions as a result. No one balks when an applicant for the police department is seriously vetted, including reviews of banking records and interviews with friends and former employers. It should not be surprising, therefore, that a city would want access to this truly revealing information.
I offer no opinion on the matter, beyond to say there is just something troublesome about a government agency wanting personal access codes. However, it is also a bit disingenuous to claim an invasion of privacy when the employer is seeking only information that the applicant has chosen to publicly publish. In essence, any objecting applicant is saying that they have the right to reveal only the face they choose to reveal, and that the employer is not entitled to see the face that is shown to others.
Incidentally, the City says that applicants can refuse to provide the requested information, and that will not be held against them.
UPDATE: Responding to the public outcry, the City of Bozeman backpedaled -- slightly. In a press release, the City Manager announced that the City, for the time being, would not request user names and passwords from job applicants. Conspicuous in its absence is any mention that the city will stop requesting information regarding non-password protected sites, or that it will not review those sites.
Again, I think it was a bit much to request user names and passwords, but I applaud the City of Bozeman for being so upfront about the fact that, as an employer, it will seek out these social sites as a part of its background check.
http://www.businesslawalert.com/admin/trackback/140842
it's ok to ask for personal or business Web sites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, and so on, but it's an invasion to privacy to ask for the passwords!!!