Employers Should Resist the Urge

Posted by Judy Anne Cavey on Dec 15, 2011 in Career Advice, Interviewing, Job Seeking | No Comments

 

According to a CareerBuilder 2009 survey, 45 percent of employers research candidates on social networks.

But, what a University of Illinois unpublished researcher, Paige Deckert, discovered should give employers cause to resist the urge to investigate potential hires and employees online.

According to Deckert’s research, two thirds of participants who saw only the resumes for three fake job applicants made a better call on who was most qualified. Those who saw the resumes and Facebook pages got the right candidate half the time.

Why the difference? Employers take note: they found that more information is not always better. In fact, it creates a “dilution effect”, according to the researcher, “Having irrelevant data on hand–even if they don’t include drunk party pics–distracts us from the essential facts.”

Basically, employees and prospectivel employees should privatize their online page if they want to get hired, or stay employed. And employers may want to resist the urge to invade too much of an employees privacy.

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©2011