“Please list any and all, current personal or business web sites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc…”
Are you prepared to answer this question on a job application? If you are applying for work at the City of Bozeman, Montana, you will have to be, and some unhappy folks decided to take this practice public with the local news station. Here is a related article on ABCnews.com.
Since the airing of the story last week on WBZK TV, the city commissioners have been bombarded with angry calls and letters from people who find the practice invasive and believe it interferes with the right to privacy. City officials have defended the practice stating that working in public employment requires greater scrutiny and they only request, not require applicants to provide password information.
Question: If we create a public space which can be viewed by anyone, do we then have the right to say that it is an invasion of privacy for an employer to ask what public spaces we inhabit on the Web?
If we think back to Personnel 101 and interviewing do’s and don’ts, we will remember that questions about a person’s membership in clubs or associations may later be construed as a means to select out candidates deemed unsuitable, based on non-job related factors. Human resource professionals advocate selection criteria that focus on the requirements of the job.
However, the employer has a legitimate claim to personal information too. For example, does an applicant have a bad driving record (where the job involves use of a car), or convey openly hostile views toward a race or group of people? At what point does an employer become liable for NOT exercising due diligence when screening a job candidate?
So, yes, personal information is often very relevant. But here is the caveat and where the City of Bozeman is likely to run into trouble. It may be o.k. to investigate applicants, including the public spaces they create on the web, but the time to do it is after the an offer has been made, not before.
In addition, it appears that the City asked for passwords to enter sites that were not public, and this could be problematic, although careful construction of a policy and practice for certain professions, such as police officers, may make this legal (I am not an attorney and advise you to ask one if you want to do this.)
For an excellent legal perspective, head on over to the Delaware Employment Blog and learn more about how employers use social networking information in the candidate screening process.
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