Facebook posts can cost you a new job

January 22, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif.

You might want to think twice about bad-mouthing your former boss on Facebook or posting those racy pictures of yourself from last night’s rollicking bachelor party. It could cost you a new job.

In a controversial twist on the exploding use of online social media, employers are poring over the websites to weed out job applicants whose posts reveal that they use foul language, take drugs, associate with gangs or have other questionable characteristics. Some employers demand that job candidates disclose social-network user names and passwords.

“We have seen pictures of people driving a vehicle with a beer in their hand, and that’s posted,” said Max Drucker, CEO of Social Intelligence of Santa Barbara, Calif., which helps screen the sites for employers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. “We found a picture of a person wearing a T-shirt with flagrantly racist remarks.”

While companies long have kept an eye on workers posting information that might hurt business, their screening of job applicants’ social-media pages is proving especially contentious. Employers say they do it to keep from making hires they’d later regret. But courts have yet to hash out the legal implications of the checks, and critics find the practice offensive.

“That’s completely inappropriate,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “It’s like saying, ‘Can I read your personal diary?’ I believe that chills free speech. If everyone thinks that to get a job they have to have a perfectly clean social-networking site, no one will say anything to anyone.”

Another concern is that information dredged from social-media sites may be inaccurate or may confuse two people with the same name. If mistakes occur, “how would the job applicant even know?” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

In a survey last year of companies that screen applicants’ social-media sites, 73 percent said they don’t give the applicants a chance “to explain questionable information,” according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Other surveys have found that anywhere from 18 percent to 63 percent of employers review social-media sites to assess job candidates. But many don’t know that. A 2010 Microsoft study found that just 7 percent of those it surveyed in this country realized employers might peruse that data.

And while employers often find positive information about job seekers on the sites, that’s not always the case. Of more than 2,600 hiring managers surveyed by CareerBuilder in 2009, 35 percent had rejected candidates after finding objectionable material, including photos of them using drugs, bad-mouthing previous employers and lying about their qualifications.

Even posting information deemed to have a negative tone can turn off some employers, according to Vlad Gorelick, CEO of Reppler, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that helps social media users “manage their online image.” From what employers have told him, Gorelick said, it’s a bad idea to constantly post “I hate this” or “this really sucks,” because it suggests you might be negative at work.

It’s unclear how many employers do social-media checks. While Intel doesn’t, according to a representative, Hewlett-Packard declined to discuss the matter and representatives from two companies that advise employers on social-media screening wouldn’t identify the Silicon Valley companies they say engage in the practice.

Many employers should be skittish about social media — particularly if the information they find prompts them to reject a candidate, some lawyers warn. Such sites often reveal a candidate’s race, gender, disability or other federally protected status, they note. So if the candidate doesn’t get the job, the employer could be sued for discrimination, forcing the company to prove that the social-media revelations didn’t influence their decision.

On the other hand, employers could be sued for not using social media to screen applicants — particularly if they hire a dangerous or otherwise unfit person, whose negative qualities could have been spotted through a social-media check.