BUSINESS
CAREERS
MIND THE
MISSTEPS
IN ONLINE
STORY BY
RICHARD
SKINULIS
JOB DANCE
RECENTLY, Linda Smith got a tip
about someone she was thinking
of recommending for a job.
“Somebody sent me a link to the
person’s Facebook page,” says
Smith, principal consultant with
recruiting firm Career Aspira-
tions. “That page had references
to a neo-Nazi group. That person
didn’t get the job.”
The incident brings into sharp
relief a growing concern in the
workplace about the appropriate
use of social media by employers
and prospective employees.
“We use the public pages of
Facebook when searching for
candidates, but only occasion-
ally,” says Warren Bongard,
President and co-founder of ZSA
Legal Recruiting. “From my per-
spective, LinkedIn is the most
interesting and useful online tool
out there and that’s what we use
the most. And from a privacy
point of view it’s very safe.”
LinkedIn is so useful, in fact,
that Bongard believes in 20 years it
may replace recruiters when pla-
cing junior or entry level positions.
Despite its usefulness, however,
some firms use online searches
sparingly for ethical reasons.
“When we use the Internet to
look up a candidate, it’s usually a
simple Google search,” says Deb-
orah Glatter, director of profes-
sional development and student
programs at Cassels Brock &
Blackwell. “And it would just be
something in the candidate’s c.v.
that looks interesting, or maybe
they belong to an organization that
we don’t know anything about.”
Glatter, whose firm does not
hire outside search firms, says
she doesn’t use LinkedIn, saying
that the market is such that when
a position is announced, she is
deluged as it is. And her strong
sense of privacy would keep her
from even trying to seek out
information on a candidate from
the web, although she believes
this bar may lower as the younger
generation of “digital natives”
becomes managers.
