Actividad probatoria: inadmisible restricción

With more employers using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to hire staff, Graham Snowdon explains how jobseekers can use them to their advantage

173

Laws of the social recruiting jungle: it can be tricky to be spotted with so many candidates vying for the attention of recruiters. Photograph: Richard Allen

Chances are you are already familiar with social networks as tools for keeping in touch with friends, or to broadcast your thoughts. But if their value as a way of connecting with potential employers has passed you by, it's time to wise up (1) fast. Arecent US survey showed that nearly 90% of employers either use, or plan to use, social media for recruiting. However, the use of social networking to by both jobseekers and recruiters raises several tricky questions of ethics and ettiquette.

On the web, if it can be known, it will be known

A recent article in the New York Times told the story of Social Intelligence, a company used by some US firms to scour (2) the web for information about potential recruits.

Much of Social Intelligence's data reportedly comes from non-social internet use – an individual's comments on blogs or eBay activity records, for example. For many, it is a disturbing vision, and Robert Hohman, chief executive of Glassdoor.com, a website that lets employees anonymously review their employers (see below), foresees a backlash (3) against such data mining that will lead to government regulation.

"When we get down to personal information, there's two types," he says. "There's that which you have willingly shared with the world on social networks, and I think that's completely fair game. Then there's information which you had no intention of sharing which, by some mechanism, is being made available … morally it runs foul of what we think of as privacy."

Tarnowski points out that the Facebook data of real interest to employers may lie beyond drunken holiday snaps and in your primary and secondary connections which, collectively, paint a far more accurate picture.

"The list of people I choose to be friends with says a lot about the kind of person I am," Tarnowski says. "Past job titles say a lot about what I'm likely to do in the future. The courses I've done say a lot about what might be suitable jobs. All these snippets,(4) if you amass them, could be incredibly valuable."

For now, there remains an understandable risk for Facebook users regarding the kind of information employers might be party to. The network's data privacy rules remain notoriously

174

slack,(5) and it is hard to delete permanently a Facebook profile. Google+, a new attempt to rival Facebook, attempts to bridge these problems by allowing users to group their contacts into "circles" – of family, friends and work – and share different updates with each, as well as deploying much stronger data privacy rules.

Perhaps, thankfully for jobseekers, there is a silver lining (6) in that transparency can work both ways. Jeffrey likens the situation for those checking out employers to that of researching a hotel on Tripadvisor: "I don't trust the spin (7) in the brochures, I see what other people have written and trust them to help me make my holiday decisions. You can see the same in recruitment."

For many larger employers, such openness has taken a bit of getting used to. "Companies building social media communities are no longer in charge of the message, which is a bit scary," says Jeffery. "In the old days, you could put a message out there in print or broadcast, and there was no way to respond to it. In the social media age, everyone is talking out there. So whatever companies say about themselves has to be realistic, or else we're going to get shot down. (8)"

Mirror image

Four years ago, Robert Hohman was working for the travel website Expedia and wondering about his own next career move when he had the idea for GlassDoor.com. Seeing how easy it was for employers to research potential recruits, why, he wondered, was it so difficult for jobseekers to see the other way through the mirror?

"There's a tremendous information assymetry (9) between the jobseeker and the employer," Hohman says. "You're asking people to make some of the most important decisions of their entire life … and asking them to do it with almost no information. But it's not because it doesn't exist." At GlassDoor workers can anonymously rate their employers on a range of criteria such as management structure, career prospects, salary and staff morale (10). Collectively the data – 1.75m entries covering 120,000 companies so far – builds up an intriguing and, at times, brutally honest picture of corporate working life.

Hohman says the aim was to build a "constructive, balanced and fair community where we could collect information in a responsible way". All content is reviewed by GlassDoor employees before it goes live (11), and there are strict guidelines about what can go up. "For example, you have to give us some good things and some things that could be improved. We don't want a puff piece, (12) or a rant piece. (13)"

Originally a US concept, GlassDoor is now taking off globally, with the UK being the site's next highest source of traffic. But what do employers under the microscope think of such warts-and-all (14) exposure of their pay and practices? Hohman says much of the initial suspicion has faded away as companies see the wisdom in being honest and open online.

"You can view employer sentiment changing as the years have gone by," he says. "I wanted to build a community that was safe for employers. If they didn't feel that, we had failed. I think we've largely succeeded."

Extract from:

175

1. to wise up a. a text or report designed to promote something 2. to scour b. loose, not very strict

3. a backlash c. a positive aspect of something that is generally negative 4. a snippet d. the (positive or negative) feeling among the workforce 5. slack e. to become aware of something you didn’t know 6. a silver lining f. totally honest

7. spin g. a text or report expressing anger or complaint 8. to get shot down h. a small piece of something

9. assymetry i. to search very carefully for something 10. staff morale j. to be heavily criticised

11. to go live k. to make information public

12. a puff piece l. a sharp, usually delayed, negative reaction to something 13. a rant piece m. very positive, often dishonest publicity

14. warts-and-all n. inequality

READING