Are your future and/or current employers watching the things you post on social media? Is this even legal for employers to do?
72% of all adult internet users are on Facebook. That comes close to 3 out every 4 adult that uses the internet is on facebook. During what I call “The Great Facebook Migration” in 2008. Lots of people in my generation were moving away from Myspace in onto to Facebook. Facebook was used as an unfiltered community of friends and family. From my view, people didn’t really have a high regard for how public their post or tweets actually were. It didn’t take very long for before businesses were able to create social media accounts. Social media has become a part of the general public’s everyday life whether your posting,reading, or promoting something.
Will what you post effect your future Job opportunities? The short answer is yes. Employers have been using Social media to determine if they will hire a candidate or not. According to CareerBuilder,some employers are using social media to research potential candidates. Employers have also eliminated potential candidates for a varies of reasons after seeing things posted. Things like saying bad things about their former company, boss, or manager to having an unprofessional screen name. The most common reason employers eliminated potential candidates was seeing a post of inappropriate photos or information. Social media also played a helping hand getting some candidates hired. The companies saw the candidate as a good fit based on their personality that they expressed on social media.
Is it legal for employers to check out your facebook before hiring you? The short answer is yes it is legal. In fact, there are currently no laws that stop employers from looking at your any of your social media accounts. However, employers can run into legal issues like discrimination. I see people post things publicly that was way too personal. If you reveal something on your social media accounts that is not asked on the application and the employer decided no to hire you based on that. The employers could face a discrimination lawsuit if it can be proven of course. The above average social media user would say just set your account to private and you can post what you want and they can’t see anything. True, but tell that to the people who employers asked for their username and password. Congress failed to pass the bill titled Password Protection Act of 2012. In 2013 6 states made it illegal for employers to ask for your social media username and password. The 6 states are Califonia, Deleware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and New Jersey.
Do you have a story about social media and your employer?
