The conversation continues on and offline regarding the ethics of researching job applicants (read digging for dirt) vs. the perceived lack of intelligence for putting anything other than positive self-spin on social networking sites like MySpace. I know how I instinctively feel about the debate – but I decided to get on to MySpace and check it out for myself (go on, visit me, make a page of your own and be my friend..BTW – thanks to Ilya from GetCareer for being brave 
). Why is this such a hot topic for recruiting? The audience of course! According to the B2Day blog today:
Hitwise announced that MySpace surpassed Yahoo Mail as the most visited site on the Internet. Although it seems odd to parse it that way. Yahoo Mail is part of Yahoo.com. It is the most visitied part of Yahoo. But perhaps if you add the rest of Yahoo, MySpace would not be No.1 quite yet (Hitwise, can you clarify that?).
One side recognizes that social networking could ruin or catapult your career depending on a variety of factors. But I want to explore how the companies might embrace MySpace or face the risk of job candidates that might flip the scenario and roast the companies that don’t and or worse…use them to judge applicants. Farfetched you say? Don’t doubt the influence of these types of communication channels on the next generation of job seekers. In a recent post exploring the ROI of blogging – Dennis Howlett writes:
I am 100% convinced that within the next 5 years the MySpace generation will bring their social networks to the workplace. They will want to know why corporations are not engaged in the kind of informal conversations that typify blogs. These new generation employees will hunger for knowledge. It is here I see the greatest potential ROI because learning adds value way beyond the things we learn.
Further – MySpace users could very easily turn the tables and use these very sites to wage negative campaigns against certain employers once they get wind that they are judging their job candidates by their MySpace pages.
Companies and their recruiters should be striving to be as relevant as possible to the next generation of job seekers and embrace these sites. Look at what Adidas did here with their MySpace page (which quickly gathered 55,000 + friends) and think of how this might be leveraged to build employer brand equity with segments of your applicant pool. Mike Davidson, the CEO of Newsvine, said recently on his blog:
As for additional streams of revenue and monetizing MySpace further, I’d drop the hope that companies will purchase pages that users will want to “friend” and concentrate on more on turning each and every kid into a walking product endorser. In fact, if I wasn’t running Newsvine right now, that’s the business I’d be in.
More ways on how to do this in the next segment.
EXCELER8ion is where Shannon and Julian Seery Gude write on Social Media & Recruiting, Digital Marketing, Technology, Internet Business, and other Geekiness. 
4 comments ↓
(Engelstalig; Online Recruiting)Employers Using Facebook for Background Checking: Is It Legal? (Engelstalig; Collegerecruiter)Land the Ideal Job Using Social Networks (Engelstalig; About Jobsearching)MySpace Online Recruiting Adventures continued (Engelstalig; Exceler8ion)How Employers Should Use Social Networking Sites (Amerikaanse video van Collegerecruiter)Searching for Entry Level Job Seekers on MySpace (Engelstalig; Collegerecruiter)Use Online Networks to Find Your Star Employee
I agree that “companies and their recruiters should be striving to be as relevant as possible” when judging their applicants. All to often you see employers trying to control what their employees do on their own time. Having a myspace.com page is done on an employees own time, and what that person does on their own time is their own business.
This problem with companies judging their applicants and employees by invading their privacy is not limited to myspace.com. Food servers in an Atlantic City resort are forced to be within certain weight limits. If they go over those weight limits, then they are suspended for 90 days to get their weight back to acceptable guidelines. Who are they to decide what an individual’s acceptable weight is for a job? What does weight have to do with being a food server?
Other examples of employers crossing the line include firing someone for having a John Kerry bumper sticker on their car or drinking a beer of a competitor at a bar during after hours. What do these actions have to do with the employee’s ability to do a job? Employer’s are threading on thin ice by invading the privacy of their employees and their prospective applicants.
Hi Nick, Thanks for the comment – nice to hear from another South Florida local!
The use of online information that makes up our “virtual self” or now even our “online personal brands” for hiring decisions is disturbing to me mainly because there is no way to know what piece of information is really being objected to. I understand that many would just take the easier way to control this and only list what is “safe” content on their MySpace pages. Just don’t put anything “questionable” online right? But who gets to decide what is questionable? Did the candidate lose out on a job because they have a picture of them at a party tilting back a bottle of tequila OR is it because their picture shows that they are of another race or their profile says they are gay?
I love technology and love the ability to connect with people that never would have connected to before – but the use of our data and the “surveillance society” and the way that some will inevitably use data that they find is disturbing.
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