KARLA PORTER

Recruiters in many con­tem­po­rary orga­ni­za­tions are exper­i­ment­ing with social media to attract, source and court prospects, in many cases very effec­tively. Par­al­lel to social recruit­ing is another emerg­ing prac­tice, cyber-vetting. Never before has it been so easy to to find out the skinny on a poten­tial can­di­date than it is today. A few key­strokes and clicks of a mouse and a savvy Recruiter can view anyone’s dig­i­tal footprints.

Cyber-vetting is an impor­tant area of study for employ­ment law and orga­ni­za­tional com­mu­ni­ca­tion because of its poten­tial to affect identity(ies), work and orga­ni­za­tional prac­tices, includ­ing selec­tion and socialization.

Cyber-vetting is a process by which orga­ni­za­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tives use freely acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion gath­ered from online tools or sites such as search engines or social net­work­ing com­mu­ni­ties to gather infor­ma­tion about (poten­tial) employees.

What Recruiter or orga­ni­za­tion wouldn’t want to save time and money and have a third eye?

Hav­ing insight above and beyond a back­ground check has always been a painstak­ing process. Calls to employ­ment ref­er­ences no longer yield the results employ­ers look for in our liti­gious soci­ety. Employ­ers are too afraid to speak and all you’re likely to get are dates of employ­ment, title and pos­si­bly a salary.

How­ever, it’s not ille­gal to ask an employer or ex-coworker about the work ethic, qual­ity of work, and any other habits you would care to know about before fur­ther con­sid­er­ing a can­di­date. So, what’s the dif­fer­ence in get­ting the infor­ma­tion from a voice over the phone or dig­i­tally? In my opin­ion, not much. If a Hir­ing Man­ager or HR type does decide to spill the beans of unde­sir­abil­ity you’re liable to get a dose of sub­jec­tiv­ity that will leave you with your eye­brow raised just as high as might the hairy scary things you find star­ing you in the face on your monitor.

How­ever, your mon­i­tor isn’t likely to have duct tape on it like the Manager’s lips do.

What’s impor­tant is what you do with the infor­ma­tion you learn.

Recently 2 very telling stud­ies were released. Peo­pleclick pro­duced a com­pli­men­tary eBook, Social Net­works and Employ­ment Law, by Dr. Lisa Harpe of the Peo­pleclick Research Insti­tute and Career­Builder part­nered with Har­ris Inter­ac­tive to sur­vey over 2600 hir­ing man­agers and HR pro­fes­sion­als about their use of social media.

While I rec­om­mend you take the time to view both stud­ies, in a nut­shell as they per­tain to cyber-vetting, they both con­firm what we already know. It’s hap­pen­ing. In fact, CareerBuilder.com reported an increase in Hir­ing Man­agers pre-screening appli­cants from 22% last year to 45% in 2009 and another 11% plan­ning to start in the near future.

So why the con­tro­versy about cyber-vetting?

Take a look at your orga­ni­za­tion and where within it you find the least pro­gres­sive, most con­ser­v­a­tive element?

While some are mav­er­ick cyber­nauts in the Wild Wild West of social media recruit­ing, the major­ity are voyeurs hold­ing back, peek­ing out from behind a thinly veiled recruit­ing cloud wait­ing for cor­po­rate attor­neys to give the go ahead or the first pub­li­cized law­suits to put a com­plete cabosh on cyber-vetting.

Have no fear.….

In the U.S., Fed­eral anti-discrimination reg­u­la­tions pro­vide the guide­lines you cur­rently fol­low in your recruit­ing and hir­ing prac­tices, right? Apart from pro­vid­ing for what they are intended to do, guar­an­tee fair hir­ing prac­tices, the cool thing about these reg­u­la­tions is that they do not stip­u­late how you attract or screen can­di­dates, just that you treat them all the same. Just like you do now, if you are still using more tra­di­tional methods.

To ensure you don’t do some­thing poten­tially career dam­ag­ing, unfair to to can­di­dates and ille­gal, no mat­ter how you source, attract, engage and screen can­di­dates, fol­low these laws enforced by the Equal Oppor­tu­nity Com­mis­sion (EEOC) to the fullest extent.

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act – pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, color, sex,
  national ori­gin or reli­gion. This fed­eral law cov­ers pri­vate employ­ers, state and local
  gov­ern­ments and edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions with at least 15 employ­ees. Pro­tec­tions
  have been extended to include dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of preg­nancy, sex
  stereo­typ­ing and sex­ual harassment.
• Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act of 1990 (ADA) – pro­hibits employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion
  based on dis­abil­ity. Employ­ers may not inquire about dis­abil­ity prior to an offer of
  employ­ment and must make rea­son­able accom­mo­da­tions to per­sons with disabilities.
• Age Dis­crim­i­na­tion in Employ­ment Act of 1967 (ADEA) – pro­hibits employ­ment
  dis­crim­i­na­tion based on age, par­tic­u­larly pro­tect­ing indi­vid­u­als 40 and older.

Fed­eral Con­trac­tors addi­tion­ally need to adhere to this law, enforced by the Office of Fed­eral Con­tract
Com­pli­ance Pro­grams (OFCCP).

• Exec­u­tive Order 11246 – pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, color, sex, national
  ori­gin or reli­gion. Also requires fed­eral con­trac­tors to mon­i­tor their per­son­nel
  prac­tices and take affir­ma­tive action where indicated.

If you are not work­ing under U.S. law, it would be ultra pru­dent to check out the reg­u­la­tions in Tim­buktu or wher­ever you hap­pen to be. I don’t know, I feel com­pelled to say that. It’s a CYA thing.

Optional digres­sion: Do you think there is ben­e­fit to check­ing out Tahit­ian employ­ment law? If I’m blog­ging tomor­row about cabana boys bring­ing exotic trop­i­cal drinks to my ham­mock strung between 2 palm trees you’ll know that osmotic trans­port is not strictly endemic to sci­ence, it has prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions  too.

Now that job seek­ers know that we’re out there look­ing at them (and I don’t believe that even one doesn’t), many make tremen­dously good use of social media to mar­ket them­selves as viable and desir­able can­di­dates. In fact, Recruiters and HR are out there tweet­ing and blog­ging tips on how to max­i­mize a job seeker’s social media pres­ence.  Are Recruiters and Hir­ing Man­agers to ignore these gems too, or just the trans­gres­sions? To see one you must see the other. Why would you think it’s OK to attract and source but not look?

There may be things you are not think­ing of in regard to doc­u­men­ta­tion. For exam­ple, if you are ask­ing can­di­dates to friend you on Face­book and con­nect with you on LinkedIn, are you doc­u­ment­ing that? Aha! It’s a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and just like you would doc­u­ment phone calls and save any other elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the can­di­date this isn’t any different.

Tip: Screen cap­tures are a lot eas­ier than typing.

Read the reports and do some search­ing on cyber-vetting, check with your cor­po­rate attor­ney, find out how com­pa­nies with cor­po­rate poli­cies on this sub­ject are man­ag­ing it. In other words, edu­cate your­self to CYA, and pro­tect your com­pany and candidates.

Have fun, be fair, and check out socialseek, a cool new down­load­able app I recently came across and like.

P.S. Thanks to Car­men Hud­son, aka. @peopleshark for the sug­ges­tion to blog on this topic.