It’s now common for companies to Google potential employees to uncover peccadilloes from the past. It took me all of 30 seconds, via Google, to discover one applicant’s very public infatuation with indecorous sexual escapades and another’s unhealthy fondness for abusing industrial strength pharmaceuticals. Needless to say, neither was hired. —Jim Louderback —On Media in Our Lives: Embarrassment forever (SFGate.com)
Will, this one will probably annoy you, but the reason I’m posting it is because it’s written by one of the people who actually makes the decision to hire an applicant or trash the resume.
Has Louderback read The Diamond Age? His penultimate paragraph seems to refer to Neal Stephenson’s ideas about the Neo-Victorians.
We could evolve into a much more tolerant and forgiving society, where everyone’s secrets are laid bare, and no one — aside from your mother — really cares. Don’t hold your breath. The more likely outcome is that we’ll devolve into a new age of crushing civility, one that makes the current “PC” climate look downright permissive. I see a new Victorian Age dawning, where everyone’s proper and polite on the outside, yet out of control in private, when the curtains are drawn and the power is off.
Good points, Will.
Haha, well, you got me there!
Though to be fair, it’s not the reminder that companies do this that bothers me – it’s the feeling that someone (usually you, in my case :-)) puts it out there as “companies do this, and it’s they’re totally right to do this”.
Companies do a lot of oppressive, stupid things that students should be aware of when they interview. That doesn’t mean, however, that the company is *right* in trying to scour your private life to pass judgement on if you are “allowed” to get a job and earn a living. They passed anti-discrimination laws exactly because they felt it wasn’t right to deny people a job because of their race, age, religion, or sexual orientation. Making such a huge decision as telling another human being that “You can’t earn a living” isn’t a petty, minor matter.
Students should be aware that companies may well search the internet for the students name, if companies do this and it could affect their job. But just as hiding the fact that you had black friends or employees from your employer or customers in the 40s might have been a good practical, pragmatic decision, it doesn’t mean that it should be mistaken for the morally right decision.