Employers are vetting out applicants online. The new adage is “Google them.” Some employers are stepping over the line of a simple web search to asking for an applicant’s password to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. This may seem like prudent vetting practice, but in fact it’s more troublesome and legally dangerous than it is worth.
After an uproar over privacy laws on the Internet, a Montana city government retracted their policy of asking for applicants’ private passwords for social networking sites. Personally, I think Montana was fortunate it was an uproar on the internet and not an EEOC lawsuit that caused them to rethink their policy. Collecting a mere applicant’s or even an employee’s privacy credentials is not only legally dangerous, but unnecessary.
Let’s think through the logic of this. Say an employer, “BigCompany,” wants to vet potential 17-year-old intern, “Sarah Genius;” they want to ensure she conducts herself in a manner that is becoming to BigCompany. BigCompany’s Human Resources staff, namely low-on-the-totem-pole tech “Pete BadApple,” conducts a simple web search and views what the public can see online about her.
Pete BadApple fancies himself an expert internet searcher. He finds every group Sarah Genius had ever briefly been a member of, every update she posted on MySpace, and every forum she ever lurked on. This is all just public information. Pete BadApple makes a note that Sarah Genius suffers from diabetes and kidney problems (information he assumes based on her group memberships). Pete BadApple uses Sarah’s passwords to log in as Sarah on Facebook. He concludes that Sarah is African-American, based on her family and friend connections. Pete BadApple had met Sarah Genius during the interview process (and found her to be quite cute, actually), and this information is jarring to him.
Still, Pete BadApple continues on, looking through Sarah Genius’s friend lists. Lo and behold, Pete finds that Sarah is a cousin of Huge MovieStar. Huge MovieStar has a private profile and is connected only to friends and family that also have private profiles. They are a tight-knit group and protect Huge MovieStar’s privacy fiercely. Well, Pete BadApple is logged in as Huge MovieStar’s cousin, Sarah Genius, so Pete can thumb through Huge MovieStar’s updates. He finds that Huge MovieStar, who is all over the headlines for being tapped to star as the Next Indiana Spider-Terminator, was newly diagnosed with Leukemia. The headlines have no idea about this, and the movie studio would certainly withdraw the offer if they knew. Pete BadApple is a little short on cash this month, so he calls and sells the story to a tabloid, sending screen shots as proof. Pete BadApple finishes his vetting process of Sarah Genius and emails his report to his boss, and then forwards a copy to his friend, adding pictures of Sarah Genius in a topless bikini, captioning the pictures with “Can you believe this chick is Black? She’s totally hot anyway!”
Lo and behold, somehow Pete BadApple’s report and email wind up in the hands of an EEOC lawyer and the local and federal law authorities that investigate child pornography. BigCompany now has a Big Problem.
Even if Pete BadApple was Pete GoodApple, the mere public web search may have brought up information that although public, should not be part of the vetting process. Pete BadApple should not have included Sarah Genius’s medical-condition support group memberships in his report. This information violates the law. The other concern is that every company has a Pete BadApple. Even Pete GoodApple can “turn bad” when faced with potentially money-making information about an applicant. Why put your employees in that situation and your company at risk?
Nowhere in this process should private interactions come into public view. When you vet a person’s background, you should worry only about what the public can see about that person. Of course, password protection and site security aren’t foolproof and one day private information may become public (although this is a very rare occurrence); we can understand why BigCompany wants to make sure Sarah Genius isn’t a closet freak. But just because the Internet makes it more possible than ever to vet out a person’s background, it doesn’t mean an employer should. Employers got along just fine before Facebook. BigCompany can better predict Sarah’s future performance by looking at her past performance than they can aptly predict her performance based on her private web page. In fact, Sarah’s private web persona is most likely very different than her work or everyday persona. If employers make assumptions based on the content of Facebook Walls, they will be likely passing up qualified candidate after qualified candidate (this is especially true when the hiring manager is a Boomer and the applicant is from Gen X or Y).
An applicant’s privacy is better left intact. If you are an employer, rely on the old-fashioned vetting methods like a credit check and recommendations, and add a regular web search of public pages. Ignore memberships in any public support groups or forums. Keep your company free of legal and civil complications.
What do you think? Have you run into a situation at work where someone’s online privacy was violated? Heard of any lawsuits about this type of thing? Let’s discuss in the comments.
If you haven’t already, make sure to go over to Facebook and make an account. Once you have an account, go to facebook.com/username to pick out a “vanity URL” for your Facebook profile.
A Vanity URL is a website application’s unique web address for your profile. Until now, Facebook’s URLs were a combination of odd symbols, numbers and letters that had nothing to do with your name. Now you can have a URL that is similar to your name or preferred username (if you get there in time OR if you have a very unique name). My vanity Facebook URL is facebook.com/christine.cavalier .
Chris Brogan, a social media guy who is one of the area’s more prominent leaders, didn’t choose the URL facebook.com/chrisbrogan. In fact, he didn’t choose anything for several precious hours after the vanity url registration opened up, in which time someone else snapped up the name. He was at odds with the effects of URLs, naming and applications have on his identity. As he says on his blog:
“It’s never about the sites and services. Never forget that. YOU add value to them, not the other way around. “
This is true, but I tend to think a name is the quickest way to find a person anywhere; Having the vanity URL as your name would be most prudent, especially since Facebook’s search engine is notorious for bringing up all sorts of flotsam when you are looking for friends. I oftentimes type a vanity URL in my browser’s address field, e.g. twitter.com/johnsmith, in the off chance I may just find the John Smith I want on Twitter.com with little effort. I want Facebook to work for me this way, too. I toyed with registering facebook.com/purplecar, but instead stuck with my name. I run the risk of someone else registering that vanity URL, because Facebook allows you only one. This was something I could live with, because eventually I will probably phase out “purplecar” altogether. I own my domain name, so perhaps I’ll move to that URL and make “purplecar” a quaint username I offer in chatrooms.
I digress.
Will life end because Chris Brogan’s vanity URL is facebook.com/dotchrisbrogan? No. Will your life end if you don’t rush over to facebook right now and sign up? No. But you will be online somewhere soon, and you will have to choose your tattoo like the rest of us. What will yours be?
(If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, hop on over to Common Craft and watch this video.)
How to Start Using Twitter.
So you’ve gone over to Twitter.com and signed up. Congratulations, you’re a Tweeter! Now what? What do you use it for? How do you find people to follow? How to get people to follow back?
First things first. You must do the following 3 things when you sign up to Twitter:
1. Upload a picture (any picture will do, but one of your face is best. G-rated helps too).
2. Fill out a bio, including Location.
3. Provide a URL, even if it is your MySpace page.
A picture, a bio, and a URL go a long way in making you appear to be someone who wants to join the community. (I also advise new users to keep away from putting numbers in their username as this tends to look spammy.)
TIP: Don’t be afraid to change your bio sometimes. I personally change my bio every few weeks. It gives my followers some variety and a way to learn a little bit more about me with every tweak. Still, I keep the common elements in the bio field (e.g. “writer” and “techie geek”).
OK, you’re all set up. Now what?
Now you start following people. To follow a person means that you subscribe to their feed; you see everything they tweet out in the public timeline.
Hopefully you know a person or two to follow to get you started. If you don’t know a soul on Twitter, follow me! If that isn’t enough for you (which, I can’t imagine), then start searching for people who share your interests. You can do this in a few ways.
Search locally. An ADOBE AIR application called TwitterLocal will show you tweets from people in whatever area you specify. It doesn’t work that well but it does work enough for you to find some local people.
TIP: After you’ve downloaded the free AIR application, check out Twhirl and Tweetdeck for great Twitter interfaces.
Search Google with the following syntax to find a bunch of people to follow: Term location site:twitter.com (replace “term” with “writer” “doctor” “juggler” or whatever you’re looking for, and put your city in the “location” part. My favorite search is writer philadelphia site:twitter.com).
Twitter Grader allows you to put in your city and see the top Tweeters (I’m usually around #12 for Philly). Follow a few that sound interesting. Tweet them (type @ then their username, no spaces. Type your message, then hit send). Start conversations. Most people usually follow back.
Twellow is a service that helps people find niches on Twitter. There are so many of these types of sites popping up everyday. Just look for them.
TIP: Under the Notices tab in your Twitter Settings is the word “@Replies” next to a little pulldown menu. [See picture]. Until you are very familiar with Twitter, I suggest that you set it to “Show me all @replies.” This helps you find new people to follow. If someone sends an @reply to someone else that seems interesting, check out the person they are @replying to. Do this by clicking on the username or typing http://twitter.com/username in your browser’s URL (replace “username” with whatever came after the @ in the person’s tweet). You may find that the person on the other side of the conversation may be just the kind of person you’re looking for. Once you are comfortable with Twitter and have found enough interesting people to follow, then you can change this setting to “Show me @replies to people I’m following.” Doing so will keep the noise in your stream to a minimum.
How to get people to follow back?
Usually people will follow back once you follow them. If they don’t, don’t worry about it. There’s way too much emphasis in the social media world about number of followers. Follower numbers are not trustworthy; as cool as Twitter is, spammers abound, which send follower rates through the roof but make those rates totally bogus. Don’t waste your 140 characters per tweet on desperate pleas for followers either. Just Tweet out things that interest you: links, quotes, musings, etc.
TIP: Under settings at the very bottom of the page is a checkbox next to Protect My Updates. Don’t check this box. If you protect your updates right away, you won’t get any followers and it will be nearly impossible for people to have conversations with you. Private tweeting is more of an advanced Twitter function and requires a little learning curve.
Don’t follow thousands of people. To start out, try about 20 people on for size. See how the timeline suits you. See if people are following back. One of the biggest mistakes that I see constantly is the Major Follow Move. Newbies start on Twitter then click follow buttons all up and down the timeline like a squirrel hoarding nuts in November. DO NOT DO THIS. That’s a dead give-away for “spammer.” In fact, the spammer Major Follow Move had gotten to be such a problem that the Twitter.com staff have now put a 2,000 person cap on new follows. You can’t follow more than 2000 people if your follower::followee ratio is too out of whack.
So, as people follow you back, follow more people. Grow your network slowly. You can always watch the humongous public timeline if you’re bored (Japanese kids are writing novels on Twitter, so be forewarned if you want to absorb the world’s public tweets).
Last but not least, the big question: What the heck do I use this for?
Great question. Once you are familiar with tweeting, you’ll have learned that the simple answers to “What are you doing?” don’t really elicit intellectually stimulating conversations. I don’t use that prompt much anymore myself. Telling my followers “I’m getting my roots done” doesn’t really keep my anyone interested. As a freelancer and stay-at-home mom, I use Twitter as my water-cooler, my board room, my lunch table, and my happy hour. I send out questions to the group that sometime roll into heated debates among many users. Sometimes I retweet a funny link someone else sent me. Just wing it for now. You’ll get into the swing of things.
TIP: Search the internet for 3rd party tools that work with Twitter (it’s ok to give your password to the apps, just make sure your Twitter password isn’t the same as your banking or email or any other password). The Twitter search functions may help you figure out what you want to do with your account and who you may want to follow. Check out this wiki to get started.
Twitter is one of those litmus tests in life: what you put into it will be what you get out of it. Find your people. Start connecting.
And try your hardest to avoid addiction.
Here’s the Better Philly video segment. It’s definitely a very cursory introduction and it is geared toward stay-at-home moms:
Second video, learn about Joey Fortman’s bubble tweet:
Some of you writers out there may not be familiar with the social media world. There are now things called “book videos.” A book video is like a short movie preview for an upcoming or newly released book. In this month’s The Writer magazine, journalist Beth Bakkum writes a short blurb about book videos. Here it is with my added links:
The videos aren’t intended to be Hollywood slick; rather, they’re short, informal clips to help the reader get to know the author and learn about the book.
“I don’t know if we’re reaching people we wouldn’t otherwise be reaching, but we are reaching people who are not necessarily reading book-review sections, or always watching a TV show,”Sue Fleming, Simon & Schuster’s vice president and executive director for online and consumer marketing, tells the Associated Press.
Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Worldwide, points out the success of the book video made for the bestseller The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Igguiden. “It was such a good piece that the Today show picked up on it and aired the whole thing.,” he said.
Author Marianne Wiggins recently made a video for her novel The Shadow Catcher. “I don’t know any writers these days who would say that it is beneath their dignity to make a video. Sales have been flat for publishers and I want to find readers. If my publisher suggests something like this to me, I’m certainly going to go hand in hand with that endeavor.” -Beth Bakkum
Most book videos now contain a short explanation of the story with an interview with the author. The majority of book videos concentrate on promoting the author more than the book. Robin Mizell of the blog Treated and Released has a great article about how we as authors and artists can take this one step up. Robin outlines how creative a book video can be, has links to some contests, and outlines in detail what an author should do to create and distribute a book video themselves. Check it out and learn up – this is where book selling is going.
I’d like to make an added suggestion for those of us who are working on their first project: Make the book video before the book is finished. Heck, perhaps even before you start writing. Why not use video and audio media to help you with your planning? As with writing a logline for your book, making an amateur book video in your own home can help you define your characters and hone in your plot. If you don’t have your logline written, a longer, more drawn out interview can help you get down to the bare bones of the storyline. If you can’t get anything out of it, show the video to a friend and have a discussion about your friend’s impressions. Watch a couple of book videos, do your own, act like a “real” author. This could go a long way in boosting your confidence, streamlining your project, and building enthusiasm to write. Two caveats: 1. Don’t show or publish the book video to anyone but your closest first readers/friends. You wouldn’t want interest to bubble up in a product that isn’t produced. 2. Think twice about sending your homemade book video to publishers along with your transcript. Whereas some may be intrigued by it, others may see it as a gimmick. Do some research first before submitting a book video. Those caveats aside, I think a book video can be a great way to start a project. I’m working on the script for my book’s video today.
Please tell me what you think of book videos and using social media as a creative spark generator.
Tags: behavior, behavioral economics, Dalton Conley, elsewhere, Interview, modern life, NYU, phantom anxiety, podcast, professor, social networking, sociology, u.s.a, web 2.0, what is an intravidual 
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