My Dad sent me Growing Up in Public from the Wall Street Journal (used Google News link so you can see it for free) just minutes ago. This is me.
Watch Jason Fry's video on his article. I love the ending that talks about how an HR person now finds it more out of the norm for a person not to come up for a Google search than to come up for one. In fact, some HR folks would consider it a bad thing.
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I also think it's a bit creepy when I can't find a single trace of information about someone. (Inviable Man)
However... There are some things that I don't want to know about some people that I've worked with in the past. They did a great job at work but I would not want to dig into their personal lives. Sometimes I don't want to know about it.
Don't ask, don't tell might become a popular policy.
For example: Let's say someone applied for a job and they seemed perfectly normal, well qualified and a good candidate for the job... But Then... You discovered a bunch of party pictures with the job applicant in a crotchless chicken costume during a pre-employment search?
You might think to yourself... "I did NOT want to see that."
Lets say the person was smart and could see you visited the personal website based on the server logs, etc.
Now both parties know you have been snooping into the applicant's personal life.
It might be illegal for you as an employer to use this information to discriminate against the applicant and deny employment based on the strange but perfectly legal images you've seen. But... how can you take them seriously after seeing something that?
Some things you just can't "Un-See". It might be a big can of worms.
Posted by: Hawaii SEO | June 5, 2007 12:39 AM