Thefacebook.com addicts, beware: Although your beer bong-glorifying picture may accurately reflect your lifestyle, the message this picture sends may reach more than just students-it may reach potential employers and decrease your likelihood of being hired. Several employers have discovered thefacebook and use it as a tool to investigate student job applicants. In turn, employers decipher the disparities between r??sum?? and reality without ever notifying the student. From the perspective of an avid thefacebook user, this new strategy of investigating job applicants is an unethical affront to students' privacy that can lead to unfair discrimination in employment.
Employers stand on a fine line of unethical hiring practices when they choose to investigate student job applicants on thefacebook. Checking the profile of a student almost inevitably damages and rarely enhances the character of the student as a potential employee. For the technologically backward students who have never heard of thefacebook, it is a database that allows people to form social networks at colleges and thus provides a plethora of opportunities to denote illicit behaviors. Perhaps between joining the drunken kleptomaniac interest group and the contact card club students forget to mention their more redeeming activities. Clearly, a thefacebook profile that embodies the antithesis of a resume works to the disadvantage of student job applicants.
Student Orientation, Advising and Registration Coordinator Brian Jenks noted, \Thefacebook presents a brutally honest picture of students. Generally, the students who applied to be SOAR guides and demonstrated irresponsible or unprofessional behavior in interviews had thefacebook profiles that affirmed these behaviors."" Easily accessible thefacebook profiles may unintentionally advertise such behaviors to employers and compromise students' likelihood of being hired.
Still, students make the decision to sacrifice a certain amount of privacy when they register on thefacebook. The database is available to all members of the university community who have a university e-mail address, not just students. Jenks noted, ""When students or members of the university community register on thefacebook, the information provided is public. If registered employers research applicants, it is not unethical use of thefacebook or snooping; the student has made the decision that their information is not private."" However, employers should use discretion between recreational and invasive use of thefacebook when researching job applicants or accessing student profiles.
Thefacebook attempts to provide a small degree of privacy by requiring that each user sign in before viewing others' profiles, but unregistered employers may easily breach this barrier as long as they have a registered contact.
If employers choose to disregard the right to privacy that thefacebook provides, they have unduly defied students' right to privacy in the hiring process.
Whether or not employers harbor overt discriminatory sentiments, the personal information provided on thefacebook may facilitate discriminatory hiring practices. Most profiles contain information that has historically provided the basis for job discrimination-gender, sexuality, religion and race. In contrast to the limited information presented on a resume, thefacebook may answer many questions that an employer legally or ethically cannot request. Jenks maintained that thefacebook played no role in qualifying or disqualifying students for SOAR based on these characteristics but conceded, ""Providing demographic characteristics is definitely a risk."" A student will never know if their application is prematurely rejected solely on the basis of the information on their profile and this indicates a crisis of veiled discrimination for otherwise-qualified job applicants.
If thefacebook becomes an information resource for employers, it will quickly lose its value as a networking resource for students as they change their profiles to align with their resume. Students should have a right to openly express their personal attributes on thefacebook without the fear that employers will abuse it as a resource for discrimination. Hiring any employee requires a calculated risk, and both students and employers should retain their integrity by openly addressing concerns about job qualifications.
